Tracking without click

MrUserNameIV said:
All good points. Personally, I record everything to a click, but I don't do acoustic stuff. It's possibly just my aesthetic but I'd think acoustic music would gain from being a bit more imperfect in the tempo dept. If you take old recordings and put them into a DAW you'd be shocked at how much the tempo deviates and you don't even notice it.
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I mapped out the tempo of the mix contest that they threw a year or so ago when they were giving away a set of focals to the main winner.

The deviation was less than 3bps and never anything over 1 bpm from bar to bar. Good players don't deviate that much.
 
Guitargodgt said:
Good players don't deviate that much.
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Not necessarily true. Good players make the song sound good. Whether that means tempo variation or not depends on the song.

I used this online tool to check out the temp plots of various song and I found it interesting how different bands, or the same band at different times, handled the issue. For example I looked at two songs by The Cure, Primary and Lovecats. Primary is recorded with a click and Lovecats is not.

In Search of the Click Track
 
The drummer in the last band I was in was horrible in keeping/playing the correct tempo. Only after recording or videoing could it be shown. He refused to use a click, of course.
 
That's because some drummers think it's more about their intent rather than their execution when playing...
...not to mention their image. :D

I take it you moved on with a different drummer? :)
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Not necessarily true. Good players make the song sound good. Whether that means tempo variation or not depends on the song.

I used this online tool to check out the temp plots of various song and I found it interesting how different bands, or the same band at different times, handled the issue. For example I looked at two songs by The Cure, Primary and Lovecats. Primary is recorded with a click and Lovecats is not.

In Search of the Click Track
Click to expand...

Yep, pretty much. If you load up some classic jazz recordings in a DAW, sometimes the tempo is all over the place much more than you would think, and I think you'd not find too many people to claim that jazz musicians aren't good musicians. Sometimes variations tempo can be used to aid the emotionality of the music. My thoughts were that if it's acoustic music, then tempo variations would especially not matter that much.
 
Tempo variations that suit the dynamics of the song are completely different to the tempo changes that just speed up until the song is faster at the end then at the beginning or the song slows down and speeds up all over the place.

Alan.
 
Tempo variation and rubato are two different things. Rubato doesn't work very well with a back beat.
 
Has anyone mentioned how difficult it is to keep time when the bass player is wanking away with "feel" and the guitarist is playing ahead of the beat and then bitching about the song speeding up? Maybe all of you stringed instrument players should set up a metronome and check yoself b4 you wreck yoself. I have only twice in all my years heard a guitar player that could play to a click without fucking up repeatedly. I even had one say my click was off in Cubase. Checked it against a stand alone digital metronome and he actually had the balls to say that I had messed with it because they were both uneven. Guitar players suck at keeping time. Keyboard players tend to be worse.
 
cafehonda said:
Guitar players suck at keeping time. Keyboard players tend to be worse.
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All musicians have an equal amount of trouble with click tracks in my experience - some can, some can't. It's a knack that tends to come with a persons playing ability being at certain level. (I'm talking playing gigs & with others here, not practising those two licks til they're shit-hot in your bedroom and thinking you're a guitar god/the equivalent for other instruments).

The best players can play with a click and ignore it when appropriate, make it groove when appropriate and not use it when appropriate.
 
cafehonda said:
Has anyone mentioned how difficult it is to keep time when the bass player is wanking away with "feel" and the guitarist is playing ahead of the beat and then bitching about the song speeding up? Maybe all of you stringed instrument players should set up a metronome and check yoself b4 you wreck yoself. I have only twice in all my years heard a guitar player that could play to a click without fucking up repeatedly. I even had one say my click was off in Cubase. Checked it against a stand alone digital metronome and he actually had the balls to say that I had messed with it because they were both uneven. Guitar players suck at keeping time. Keyboard players tend to be worse.
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You need to find better musicians to play with. Once you get out of 'clueless fuckwit' territory, you will be in much better shape.
 
Jake_JW said:
All musicians have an equal amount of trouble with click tracks in my experience - some can, some can't. It's a knack that tends to come with a persons playing ability being at certain level. (I'm talking playing gigs & with others here, not practising those two licks til they're shit-hot in your bedroom and thinking you're a guitar god/the equivalent for other instruments).

The best players can play with a click and ignore it when appropriate, make it groove when appropriate and not use it when appropriate.
Click to expand...

That must be a more modern phenomenon.
When I started guitar and piano as a kid...the metronome was always involved. Both my teachers used it.
I still have the old-school metronome from my early piano days...and I'll use it when I don't feel like booting up the computer to generate a "click".
Just about everything I do I check against the click/metronome...from getting the initial BPM of a song, to laying down tracks during recording.

I don't understand why it's such a problem for people to play against a click...or even to simply be able to hold time with their foot and be steady.
 
miroslav said:
That must be a more modern phenomenon.
When I started guitar and piano as a kid...the metronome was always involved. Both my teachers used it.
I still have the old-school metronome from my early piano days...and I'll use it when I don't feel like booting up the computer to generate a "click".
Just about everything I do I check against the click/metronome...from getting the initial BPM of a song, to laying down tracks during recording.

I don't understand why it's such a problem for people to play against a click...or even to simply be able to hold time with their foot and be steady.
Click to expand...

I think it just takes a little practice. When I first started doing recording a few years back, I couldn't do it. The I would play to a groove, then a groove with a click, now, many times just to a click. It just took me some time (and practice) to get my head comfortable with a tempo.
 
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If a guitar or bass player can't follow a metronome, how would they expect to follow a drummer?

I'm convinced that the only reason I never had a problem playing to a click as a drummer was because I spent so much time as a guitar player having to play to a drummer.
 
Farview said:
You need to find better musicians to play with. Once you get out of 'clueless fuckwit' territory, you will be in much better shape.
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Oh I wish it were that simple. I have played with and recorded with some of the best local talent. Even the best can struggle with keeping even time. My point really was that it is nearly universal, in my opinion, that people who play melody instruments like to think that it is the sole responsibility of the drummer to keep perfect time white the rest can twat up the whole thing and if it doesn't work out let's blame the drummer. Heaven forbid they actually practice to a metronome.
 
cafehonda said:
Oh I wish it were that simple. I have played with and recorded with some of the best local talent. Even the best can struggle with keeping even time. My point really was that it is nearly universal, in my opinion, that people who play melody instruments like to think that it is the sole responsibility of the drummer to keep perfect time white the rest can twat up the whole thing and if it doesn't work out let's blame the drummer. Heaven forbid they actually practice to a metronome.
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It's hard for me to believe that they can put together enough bands at McMurdo Station in Antarctica to put on a music festival every year but you can't find some decent musicians in your area.

18OCT_ICESTOCK2010_s.jpg
 
I'm in Minneapolis. Maybe we all have a difference of opinion on what it means when a player keeps proper time. My point was really that, by and large, melody instrument players tend to vastly overestimate their skills in regards to timekeeping and love to blame the drummer when they can't seem to keep it in line. Perhaps where you all are the guitarists and keyboardists spend their nights and weekends playing along with their metronome. I'm not sure I know one that even has a metronome, at least one they could locate in under a day. All I know is I have had to say, far too often, "It sounds weird because you won't stop playing ahead of the beat" or "If you would stop dragging after the chorus the pickup into the next verse would actually sound right."

Having said all that, I have had the opportunity to work with some truly gifted people who know how to keep time and play with great feel. Usually they consistently play with a good drummer and not strummy-strummy in the basement by themselves.
 
In all fairness, I do remember dealing with people like that. But not really past the high school level. Mind you, I was playing in the 80's (back when being a virtuoso guitarist wasn't a punchline) with a bunch of people that were into being very technical. Even bands with drummers that were all over the place, like metallica, had guitar players who could follow anything and remain tight with it. Metronome included.

If you couldn't keep time and/or follow a drummer/metronome, you weren't in the band.
 
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