Order of operation recording question.

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p.babs

New member
Hey there,

I'm currently recording an EP, and I would like to avoid using click tracks while recording. I'd like to capsure as much of a 'live' performance quality as possible. where the song naturally slows down a few bpm-rather than robotically chugging along.

The solution I have come up with is as follows:

I will record the drums first-while I do some Direct input bed tracks of guitar and bass.
Then simply build the recording from there, layering everything overtop of those "live-esk" drum tracks.

Anyone else ever attepted anything like this? Previously we were doing essentially board tracks (without direct input), which sounded good (minus the brutal bleeding), and suited us fine for a demo. So I guess we are just doing the same thing with Direct Input rather than micing the cabs live.

Anyways, any opinions, and tips would be appreciated.
 
I'm not too sure about your terminology, but this seems to be what most people do. Record the drums and bass, and scratch tracks of the vocals, guitars etc. Then overdub and rerecord the guitars etc.

So yeah this is pretty much the standard (if there is one).
 
Unless you use some kind of digital modeling on those DI guitar tracks....they will probably sound like ass.
The bass going DI will be OK.

AFA the drums....whatever works for you, but here's something to consider....
If you play the bed tracks without any set rhythmic reference (like a click) and you just tap you foot and play...and then you play the drums to those tracks...your drums will be following whatever rhythmic deficiencies you have in your "free style" guitar playing. Then if you use those drum tracks to record other tracks...there will be more drift between them all.

I don't think using a click forces you to
play robotic...you can still move around the beat for a nice natural feel. I know some folks have trouble with click tracks, but IMO that's just about getting use to it. I always use a click, and if I look at all the different tracks in my DAW...there is still plenty of "human" feel...as there are always beats/notes that don't hit right on the click.
 
Personally, I don't like click tracks but that's just me. My son and I do stuff all the time in just the manor you're talking about and I suppose they come out OK (good enough for us anyways). If the drummer's meter just sucks, well, you have bigger problems then that a click isn't gonna fix.
 
miroslav said:
Unless you use some kind of digital modeling on those DI guitar tracks....they will probably sound like ass.
Click to expand...

Maybe he means he'll use the DI'd guitar parts just as a reference during the drum tracking and throw them out when he's done? Not sure, but that's how I read it.

Anyway, I think that approach will work, however if the drummer is inconsistent it might be a PITA to record the guitar tracks.
 
I had the same reaction as aaronmcoleman. At one time, that was pretty much the only way people recorded. So far as I know, it's not wildly unusual today.

While it's not exactly closely related to the OP's situation, how do you think they record classical music? Does the director wave his baton to a click track?

Just to mention one side point: if you want later to add MIDI tracks to a "free played" recording, you'd need to add a tempo map. Most (if not all) DAW software allows you to do this in a couple different ways, some easier and some more accurate.
 
Yes, I plan on throwing away the DI tracks, and overdubbing them later on.

glad to hear that this is probably the way to go.

And its not that we struggle with click tracks, its just that I like the natural flow that 'jamming' the song out brings.

As for a drum map, i don't mess around with MIDI, so I'm not concerned about that.

Thanks for the comments.
 
Greg_L said:
Lol. That's common response 1A from people that fear click tracks. :D
Click to expand...

I'm sure your right about that usually-but not in this case, i've put in way to much time with the metrodome over the years to fear rhythm. What I do fear is a nun wacking your knuckles when you screw up on a piano (no wonder I quit).
 
miroslav said:
If you play the bed tracks without any set rhythmic reference (like a click) and you just tap you foot and play...and then you play the drums to those tracks...your drums will be following whatever rhythmic deficiencies you have in your "free style" guitar playing. Then if you use those drum tracks to record other tracks...there will be more drift between them all.

I don't think using a click forces you to
play robotic...you can still move around the beat for a nice natural feel. I know some folks have trouble with click tracks, but IMO that's just about getting use to it. I always use a click, and if I look at all the different tracks in my DAW...there is still plenty of "human" feel...as there are always beats/notes that don't hit right on the click.
Click to expand...

the first point about it causeing more drift is interesting.
What I've actually done with click tracks is when I use them I will exchange the click for a drum pattern from EZ drummer, I found that it was more natural playing to a drum set than an annoying beeping sound-and it really helps with people who do stuggle with click tracks (i'd recommend this tip to pretty much anyone).
 
I guess the other thing I could do is learn about (I can't remember the term) tempo mapping(?). And just speed up and slow down the track by the bpm as I require.
 
The first thing is that there are no rules. Only the things you feel are right. After all, they are paying you to be you, not someone else.

There are tricks that are time tested and still work, but it's about connecting the dots for this band. Based on what the artist is telling you, you have to say, "I want the final mix to sound like this, what do I have to make *them* do to get what I want and what they want?" So it's not like a traditional approach may work on this.

The idea depends on what you have to work with gear/room wise and what the music calls for. In a very direct sense, this would be a producing call. If the goal is to retain a vibe with a live band that is known for being a tight live band, then of course you'd want to preserve that. If it's a pop type recording, then live might not be as important...you might end up chopping the hell out of the mix anyway. Essentially you're creating those scratch tracks to keep a vibe and to create a sense of direction.

In my experience, most bands can benefit from using a click track...even bands with weird tempo changes. No matter how good a rhythm section ends up being, you're probably going to end up editing takes; being on some type of a grid is essential to that. Unless it's an exclusively live type of situation (jazz for example) there are ways to track without a click and then build a grid around that. However, I'd still have a band program a click to those changes and learn them well. That can't be figured out in the middle of recording because you're gonna end up with tentative sounding takes.

The idea is to rehearse the hell out of that click, not to see how well they can follow a click, but to get to a point where the click becomes second nature. At that point, the band starts putting that click in the back of their mind instead of being led and dragged along by the click. There's a huge difference between the two.

The whole point of doing the live track thing is preserving a vibe. In professional or believable productions, vibe is everything. Vibe is the difference between a heartfelt performance and an engineer assisted recording, which is not to say it's a bad thing, but most of the time, engineer assisted productions have a very mechanical feel. You're either gonna be the "5th Beatle" on this or a transparent producer.

Vibe comes from how you place your musicians in the room, how you set up the headphone mix, how you tell them to practice before hand, whether they can handle a click or not, whether a click is the best route and how you choose to bring in each instrument. In rock music or most types of contemporary music, you build a solid rhythm section before anything else. Drums, bass, scratch vocals and rhythm guitars. If the rhythm section is not vibing, then there's a good chance the rest of the track will not vibe together later on. Without a frame of reference, that's where all sorts of weird timing issues start happening and the track starts falling apart.

Super tight sounding recordings need a solid frame of reference. Unless you have Terry Bozzio on the kit, you need a mechanical frame of reference to bounce your groove off of. Sloppy recordings rely more on human timing, which may or may not need that click. Still, a click sets a heartbeat to your track.

Both have pros and cons and should be decided before the first mic is ever set up. That's a crucial step to getting recordings that translate into believable works of art. At the end of the day, it's really a producing call and depends on what you're going for and if the style of music will benefit from that. If you can imagine the drums will work with those scratch tracks, and they do, then go for it. If you deeply feel that something isn't right from the start, don't do anything else until that's corrected.
 
While I have no beef either way with clicks, I think they make way more sense for home recorders that need a solid time reference, particularly if the drums are going to go on after other keepers are laid down and particularly for those multi instrumentalists that either play everything themselves or those that play most things but have a drummer coming in later. If, however, the drummer is part of the original foundation and it is going to be the take and they're playing with another instrumentalist, I don't think it's crucial. Can be useful, is definitely worth thinking about but lack of it won't diminish what's happening.
Despite the numerous free jazz experiments of the late 50s, 60s and beyond where the drummers dropped the notion of keeping some sort of time altogether, it is in the very nature of drums and percussion to establish times and rhythms. We can't help it. We're human. It's just the way humans are wired. So for me, the drummer with timing difficulties is like the singer that can't sing and all the clicks in the world aren't going to solve that problem.
They'd make an intersting cacophony though.
 
p.babs said:
[click]...an annoying beeping sound...
Click to expand...

I never used some of the weird click sounds you get with some default setups. I always found a drum sound...usually a wood block sound because it really cuts through even at low volumes. I also take the click track and pan it way off to one side of my headphones and turn it down low enough so that it's just audible with all the other tracks going on. That way....the click is simply *there* but not dominating everything. You can almost ignore it, but yet easily find it if you want to check your reference.

If you are going to record as a group...or at least drums, bass and rhythm guitar at the same time...then you'll have a better/solid rhythmic foundation and can probably avoid using any click. It's when you start doing track, by track, by track that NOT having ONE solid reference can sometimes create a "drift multiplier"...because each new "freestyle" track is using some other "freestyle" track as it's reference or because you may have several "freestyle" tracks going on at the same time, each with it's own individual drift (because each was done one at a time rather than as a group of players).

If you do it track-by-track freestyle, I suggest you always focus on just ONE of the other tracks as your reference...usually the drums, but sometimes that's not as simple as it sounds when you have 3-4 other instruments also playing and giving rhythmic cues.
It's doable but needs solid focus for each new track you add...which is why I just do the click in the manner I described above. It's there, a solid reference, but non-intrusive or dominating.
 
I never play to a "click". I play to a programmed drum beat.

A good drummer can play to a so-called "click track" without sounding robotic, or losing the groove, or whatever lame excuse people use when they're really trying to say "I'm not good enough to be able to play with a click track". Like anything else, if you don't practice doing it, you'll never get good at it.
 
I'm reading an article/interview with the Foo Fighters in the new Electronic Musician magazine, first issue...about how they recorded their new album in Grohl's garage with Butch Vig producing, and they didn't want any DAW editing or any kind of computers used..they just wanted it raw to tape...etc...and they talk about using a pair of Studer 24-track decks and bouncing down master drum tracks from the first deck to the second, mixed down to 4 tracks...and then trying to save the master tape just for the mix, slaving to second deck...
...anyway, it's about them doing it raw and loose and no edits....
...but there's a comment in the article how Vig and the Foos did allow a click track for drums...because they were not insane. :laughings:

Point being...as much as they wanted to do it raw/loose...they weren't totally nuts as to NOT at least use a click...because with all those tapes and no editing and lots of overdubs, etc...the tightness would be just too loose if they at least didn't set the drums tracks to a solid reference like a click.
 
I've been playing drums for about 45 years (off and on), and my opinion is "screw click tracks, I can keep time".

Or at least that was my opinion until I sat down and tried to play to a click track and found out how wrong I was.

So now I have "blank" Pro Tools sessions, with nothing but a click track, ranging from 65 bpm to 130 bpm; I throw them on and practice to them every so often just to keep my time sharp. BTW: I found it easier to start with my click set to 1/8 notes, then I switched to 1/4 notes after I got it together a bit.

Work with your drummer and learn about tempo mapping. You can set up a tempo map that will speed up and slow down over the course of a song.

For just general "feel", as has been noted in other posts, you can play ahead or behind the beat a little bit to provide "groove".

A click track is a tool, and you can never have too many tools in your toolbox...
 
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miroslav said:
I'm reading an article/interview with the Foo Fighters in the new Electronic Musician magazine, first issue...about how they recorded their new album in Grohl's garage with Butch Vig producing, and they didn't want any DAW editing or any kind of computers used..they just wanted it raw to tape...etc...and they talk about using a pair of Studer 24-track decks and bouncing down master drum tracks from the first deck to the second, mixed down to 4 tracks...and then trying to save the master tape just for the mix, slaving to second deck...
...anyway, it's about them doing it raw and loose and no edits....
...but there's a comment in the article how Vig and the Foos did allow a click track for drums...because they were not insane. :laughings:

Point being...as much as they wanted to do it raw/loose...they weren't totally nuts as to NOT at least use a click...because with all those tapes and no editing and lots of overdubs, etc...the tightness would be just too loose if they at least didn't set the drums tracks to a solid reference like a click.
Click to expand...

Lol. You don't really believe anything in that article, do you? :laughings: :laughings:
 
I use Band in a Box frequently to program drums-it allows for changing BPM every measure. I like to push and pull the tempo a little throughout a song to avoid a mechanical feel.
 
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