Click Tracks - I think I'm Going Insane

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:58 pm

I really didn't have any problem following her tempo. She's done a syncopated thing here and there but she stays on tempo, if you count it through. Music doesn't always need a click track.

For the many commercial jingles I produced 25 years ago, we had a good solid percussionist and so we didn't use a click track, except as an initial reference when judging the actual length but I had to be able to edit a 60 second music bed many different ways, into rearranged 60's, 30's, 20's, 10's, without any problems with Tempo.

Don't try to count beyond 2 and it will work.
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 12:05 am

Ahhhhhhh, the dreaded click problem. I am a drummer. When I started my recording career, a producer introduced me to using a click track. This of course was after the first time I was in the studio recording a demo. A year later, I recorded an album with the same band and producer. I fell in love with the click track cause it took to load off me as far as performing. Actually, live we used tracks from the studio as backing vocals. They were timed with a click track. Talk about pressure. If we were off, then you can guess what happened. Fortunatley, this never happened, but given the difficult monitor mixes etc.... It could have happened a million times. OK enough of that! As a producer etc... you are indeed in a hard situation, but there is a way to take the load off of you and put it on her so she can make better decisions. You mentioned that followup overdubs are going to be crazy. Well, I would go with that. explain to her that it is going to be extremely unfair for her to expect other musicians to overdub tracks and get them right! If indeed there are other musicians. Alternatively, if there are others, maybe a live recording will work better. Some musicians believe it or not have better meter when playing in a group situation. They can feel what other are doing and lock in subconsciously. You can also play with each persons monitor mix to help. Cut back her monitor mix so she has to push to hear herself. This usually works with people who do have velocity issues, but it has worked somewhat with metering problems.
For whatever its worth.

Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 5:24 pm

Hi, I agree with RemyRAD. There's nothing wrong with the rythm if you keep in mind that it was recorded by one person with no clicktrack.
The accents are very nice actually and to my opinion it gives the song more space.

Here's the solution: when such a thing happens count one beat extra after the 4th beat (so make the "strange thing" beat nr. 5) and at the end of the song count two extra beats (5 and 6) and keep counting! You will return at beat number one again.

So if the beat goes: 1234/1234/1234/1234 etc.
Do this at this break: 1234/1234/12345/1234 (keep counting 1234)
And at the end do 1234/1234/123456/1234 etc. but slow the tempo down a little.

If you want a more steady rhythm overall (which is not necessary I think) just program a nice percussion part (or get a percussionist) with a shaker for her to place on the headphones in the background (watch any bleedthrough on mic) and all should be well.

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:46 am

I had this problem last not too long agao and there is one way and only one way (as far as I know) out of it.

1. Record her as she is without any click.

2. Clap along with her afterwards on a separate track so that you have a varying click to work with. I bang on an SM57 and take that.

3. Find that part of the song that is at the best tempo and set up a MIDI map at that tempo.

4. Cut and paste the crap out of the thing so that your new 'click' matches the new MIDI map. This will of course sound fairly nasty as there will be all kinds of cut, paste and stretch issues with the sound, but it is just as a ghost track.

5. Now get her to firstly sing along with that and then play along with that on her guitar.

Yes, my problem singer-songwriter was a girl with a guitar as well and we spent an entire day footling about with different clicks and click sounds, untill I just told her to get on with it. She was a bit hesitant at first, but strangely, she was able to sing and play in perfect time once she could hear herself on the ghost track.

In the good-old, bad-old days, we used to replace steps 1 to 4 with a professional musician playing the songs to a click and of course that is still a possibility.

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:53 am

Just have to say first that I was trawling online forums without ever registering, hoping to find a fix for my sound problems when I came across this thread and found myself reading Thomas W. Bethel's last reply and felt compelled to register just because I was pissing myself laughing so much at his second example (the 'musician')! Brilliance.

In reply to the forum post, she goes between sounding grungy (My Head), which would benefit with a mildly distorted guitar, a drummer and perhaps some subtle bass work, to sounding almost identical to Phoebe out of Friends on Nitrogen song. Literally. While drums may not be the answer to every track, they certainly would complement and enliven the more uptempo pieces and i'm sure that she should have no problem playing her own songs along to a decent drummer.

That discounted, perhaps the most natural thing to do is to get someone with a good sense of rhythm and a sense of her songs to play bongos, either to her headphones or in the same room (audible to her but hopefully not to her mic) which would give a more free-flowing rhythm and be less intrusive to her than a nasty, rigid click-track.

Or you could just try screaming at her till she gets results. Might work, that's all I'm saying...

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:55 am

Thomas W. Bethel wrote:

Second example. A "musician" who was at best a "primitive" and at worst a lousy musician. He had recorded himself on a four track cassette recorder. His instruments were a toy piano, pots and pans, and a flexisteel percussion device. He also sang. The music was more spoken than played, he used the wrong bias setting on the cassette deck and it was all distorted and his playing a singing were terrible. He wanted my to master it and make it all sound GREAT. He brought along a couple of CDs that he wanted me to listen to before I did the mastering. One was Ray Charles and the other was Sting. He was so excited about "getting my music out of my heart and head and on to a CD" that he was not hearing what real garbage he had created. I listened to the material made some suggestions and told him to go home and really listen to what he had done. He called me up and said he had heard some problems but that they were corrected and he wanted to come back and master the material. He came back and to my ears he had not really done anything to the material but he thought he had done some "wonderful things" to the music. I did not want to take his money for trying to do what I though was impossible. I begged off doing the mastering but he wanted me to try so I did. It was not a fun experience but I did a professional job on the material and he seemed pleased. About a week later he called me up to tell me that he had a recording contract and was going to be making "lots of money" all thanks to me. I have never seen his name in print nor have I ever gotten a copy of the CD (he designed his own cover and CD graphics) but stranger things have happened.

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:23 am

Some musicians I work with can't play to a click. It's not because their musician ship sucks, it's just they lead, and can't follow. What I do is record without a click, then add a tempo map. It is easy with Pro Tools.

If you have a PT keyboard it's the ' and l keys. They are labeled |<- and ->|If not, turn on tab to transient and use the Tab key.

Change everything to sample based instead of tick based.

Move the cursor to the first clear beat with the tab key or ->| key Press Ctrl-I and type 1 for the first bar, first beat.

Go to the next down beat press Ctrl-I and type 2. Now most of the bars should be in place. Find the first place where it deviates significantly and use the Tab key to move exactly to the down beat and type Ctrl-I and enter the correct bar number.

This normally takes me about 15 minuets. After all the bars are in place change everything back to tick based.

To record other parts, straighten out the out of time playing by View->Transport->Midi options. Then Window->Transport and click Conductor mode.

Record other parts. When you are done, make sure everything is in tick mode, and turn off the conductor mode.

Obviously If you are recording audio and not MIDI, elastic audio will be used, and you will loose some quality. It can save the recording, and if you are doing low budget stuff, with mediocre musicians it happens.

I'm not at my DAW now, so this is by memory, but it should be pretty close.

OOps. I didn't realize I was digging this thread out of the grave.

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:15 pm

If you're in pro tools, you can just use Beat Detective, I'm not sure but I believe Logic and probably Cubase has a tempo mapping plug.

Hey, let's face it...some music doesn't go to a click.

Funny thing though...whenever I play to a click, I can never hear the damn thing...it disappears under my note attacks.

Smile

dwoz

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:18 pm

GeckoMusic wrote:

This normally takes me about 15 minuets.

After 15 minuets I'm typically drenched in sweat and too tired to take her home.

dwoz

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:28 am

She sounds on to me... just changes. It's got a theatrical timing scheme to it, but it really does sound like she could be dead on if she wanted to. Let her do her thing and have the other instruments play along with her. If you have good players it wouldn't be hard at all... especially with punch-ins. Smile

Just another opinion.

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