* The click track
This subject comes up often enough to warrant some discussion. The dreaded click track. What is it and why should we be afraid of it? Should the band play along to a click track during recording or just wing it? Let's just cut to the chase shall we? What we're basically talking about is playing along with a metronome. Can you do it or not? Here's a link to a nice multi-part video series about playing to a metronome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1HXLBYJETg A click track is a dedicated track of audio that contains something like a metronome clicking sound. It's a timing reference. The artist or band hears this rhythmic clicking sound in their headphones when they perform the music. The click track is used to keep everyone in time. It's just like playing along to a metronome. It's that simple. If you don't play to a click track you will probably have a tendency to speed up or slow down during a performance. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on a number of factors (I'll get to that in a minute). The type of sound used to generate a click track can be anything you want it to be. These days, modern recording applications come equipped with a number of virtual tools for the job ranging from a simple virtual metronome to more complex drum programs and soft synths. I'll ask the artist before we begin recording if they have a preference for the type of sound they want to hear. We'll audition some of the sounds until we find something suitable. I always record the click/drum sound during the initial take so it becomes an actual WAV file that can be transported along with the multi-track arrangement if the artist wants to continue work at another location. So... there ya go. The click track is just a timing reference which the artists use to keep themselves playing steadily. Now for all the caveats. 1) What is the correct tempo of the song? It's bliss when the band or artist comes in prepared with that information. All I have to do is dial in the correct number and away we go. However, 90% of the time the band or artist isn't sure so I'll have them play the song for a little bit while I listen and attempt to find the exact tempo through trial and error (tap tempo works great for work like this). Seems like it should be simple enough. But it's been my experience that it often doesn't end there. Usually we go through some serious listening and evaluating to make sure the tempo is just right. We might have to do a few takes of the song at different tempos to decide what is the perfect tempo. I've seen heated discussions between band members on this issue. Is it 120 beats per minute or 121 bpm? Believe it or not, small changes in tempo can sometimes make a big difference in the overall feel of the song. 2) How loud should the click track be in the headphones? This gets a little tricky too because you need to be able to hear the click in order to maintain the proper tempo while you're playing the song. But on the other hand, that noise can get very annoying very quickly. If the song has many soft and loud sections, the click can get drowned out. Usually you need to play through the song once or twice to make a proper determination where the correct level should be set so everyone can hear it properly. Also, you have to be a little careful when it comes to headphone bleed because sometimes that sound can travel through the headphones and right into the microphones and be picked up and recorded onto other tracks of audio (really critical for quieter forms of music like folk or classical music or whatever). The default solution is keep the click volume as low as possible to get the job done. 3) Time signature changes What if the song has time signature changes? What if it starts in 4/4 and switches to 3/4 at some point in the song? What if it jumps all over the place from measure to measure? What if the tempo is supposed to speed up and slow down in certain places for dramatic effect? This tends to complicate things greatly. In order to establish a click track with multiple time signature changes and shifting tempos, the song has to be completely mapped out measure by measure. So generally what will happen is I will sit down with the guitarist or keyboardist (or whomever) and we will play through the song from start to finish while we map out the changes measure by measure. This takes time. It's not uncommon to spend a half hour or more to completely map out a song and make the programming changes to the software. This is billable time in case there's any question about that :-) 4) Can the band actually play to a click track? Ha ha ha.... here we come to it. It has been my personal experience that 90% of the clients who try to play to a click track fail miserably at it. In order to play to a click track you have to practice playing to a click track (or a metronome). I am of the opinion that if you can master playing to a metronome, this is a skill that you never forget. Unfortunately, most of your garden variety musicians never bother to practice like this. So they never acquired the skill. You can't just wake up one morning (like the day of the session) and all of a sudden magically have the skill to do this. Sorry. Don't work like that. So what ends up happening is that the band will make some heroic attempt to try to play along with the click track. Usually, one or two members of the band will complain about this before they actually start playing. I can tell right away they are the weak links. The band will get a short way into the song and all of a sudden fall off the click. Sometimes they can re-navigate themselves back onto the click but usually they fall so far off they just grind to a standstill. Then they have to start over. Depending on how many takes go by, I might do the band a favor at some point and simply mute the click track and let them carry on without it just to see how far they can get. Then the band just decides it's easier to simply play along with the drummer and hope he can keep a relatively stable beat. So they give up on the whole idea of playing along with the click. I am of the opinion, that an ever so slight drift in and out of tempo is not the end of the world - especially if the band is agonizing over it to the point of frustration. At the end of the day it's probably better to get work done than to agonize over it. Better to go home and practice some more. Leave with a decent sounding demo if nothing else. The alpha male bandmate may or may not agree with this perspective. I have no agenda to push but I just don't like to see people frustrate themselves out of the creative mood. 5) Should you play along with a click track even if you can? A ha! Another good question. Does the song benefit from having a steady tempo in the first place? Or is it better that the song swings and breathes a little? Hmmm.... who can tell? My opinion is that it's better to let the song swing if it's jazz or blues or folk. Most of the modern rock, pop and metal styles really benefit from a stable tempo. Should you speed up and slow down in certain sections of the song? Sure why not. That adds some dramatic impact to the song. And going back to point #3, do you really want to waste time setting up click track templates for songs with involved timing changes? You can easily waste an awful lot of time doing that. 6) Editing It's easier to copy and paste sections of the song if you play to a click because everything will line up as expected. This might be important if we have to loop sections of the song or copy and paste vocals or guitar parts throughout the song. 7) The inherent timing stability of a drum machine or metronome I have to mention something because this actually became a problem for me a while back. I learned a valuable lesson about digital drum machines and metronomes. It has to do with creating a click track using an external hardware drum machine as your timing reference. The problem with hardware is that the timing has a tendency to drift due to the clock circuitry inside the unit. I assume the cheaper the unit the worse it gets. This may, or may not, pose a serious problem. The amount of drift involved is usually so minor that you don't notice it over the course of a 4 or 5 minute song. But if you were to record a drum machine set to a certain tempo and then try to match it up with the timing in your recording software, you will notice that the timing starts to change over time. It's not 100% aligned to the recording application time line. Does this pose a problem? Probably not unless you intend to do things to the arrangement that involve outside influences (such as transporting the WAV files to another studio for further work) or some MIDI work.
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