welo wrote: Sooooo... we have a recently formed unit that's starting out as a Queensryche tribute then using that set as the basis to proceed with original music. Our drummer had never listened to QR until I turned him onto them, but he's 50ish with a very nice kit, and has gone through the years playing Zappa, Rush, Police, Yes etc. There's no doubt he can play the stuff.

The thing is, I'm having real trouble slowing he and Tommy (axe) down at times (I sing the stuff and it's hard enough as it is). We nabbed the Rockenfield book and CD and gave that to the guy, and while exploring it he discovered that pretty much everything QR does is to a click track, especially live. Sounds like a well-imposed discipline to me, so now comes the project of creating one.

Which I've never done.

So where do I even start? I'm using FL Studio and have DrumSynth so theoretically I should be able to construct something. Also seems to me like I'd need to ad a few beeps and buzzes here and there to let us know where we are in the song (verse, measure, etc.).

If anyone here has already done this I'm sure listening to your advice.

Read these:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=484298
http://www.11elt.com/cct/

You can do this in FL very easily, by using the sounds there. Accent the beginnings of the measures, etc.

Operation Clickcrime!

Well, the first thing you'll need to do is figure out the tempos and tempo changes for each song. Bands tend to play songs a bit faster on stage than what they do on a record. So, you'll need to adjust the tempos of the songs to match your live performances if that's the case.

If the song only has a single tempo, then using fruity will be easy. You just set the tempo, find an appropriate sound (or two) and set that sound to "click" on the beats. Work with your drummer on this. Some drummers prefer different type of sounds. It could be a click type of sound or a "ding" or something entirely different...a man with 3 buttocks.
Also, the click of beat 1 should be different from the click of beats 2, 3 and 4. Generally higher in pitch.

If the tempo changes during a song, I don't exactly know how to tell you to do this in FruityLoops.

One thing to consider is whether or not you play from one song directly into another with no break. In those cases you'll need to chain two songs together.

Have you decided how your drummer is going to listen to the click track? Instead of using FruityLoops, you might want to look into getting a drum machine. All of them have a Metronome and if the drummer doesn't like the sound of that, you could create drum patterns that are made up of a click track sound that the drummer does like.

Thanks for the responses. The obvious main issue is most of this material doesn't maintain the same timing throughout, so we can't just use a metronome. If I were going to go through every song and try to recreate the timings in DrumSynth it could take months. For the original stuff I'm working on it'll be relatively easy to add clicks because all the basic rhythms are done on computer first so I can run them by everyone.

Talked to the drummer tonight though, and we think what we can do is just to get him to lay down a track with his Edrums while listening to whatever song (this is a second kit - won't be using them live or during rehearsal), then port it into Fruity as a midi file - or even directly to wav, but midi is much more editable - and let me add clicks and beeps that way. If nothing else I found a way to make sure he practices :).

(Dead Link Removed)

"Operation Clickcrime." That's pretty good 8-)