questions for the pro's

  • Thread starter Thread starter smellyfuzz
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Maybe that was you!

Were you singing at all last night? I woke up around 4:30am EST with the hair on the back of my neck standing up! :p

Bruce

:D :D
 
well, we could type one line each, in turn.

Prism, all a click track really is is a metronome recorded at the right speed for the song. Some DAW software, like Pro Tools, has a "build in" click, just set the timing and go. For anything else, you can just use a track from a drum machine.

For those of you who have a 'puter but are going to say; "I aint gotno drummechine", do what I do, because I use free software for most of my initial guide (click) tracks.

Download Bram Bos' HammerHead freeware. It works, its fun, and you can download hundreds of user made sound libraries for it
http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/

Another thing:
If you want to track to be as tight as a duck's ass (and that is water tight), use a short, tight percussion sound or the "original" click. If you want to encourage a drummer to play with a little bit of shuffle (in other words, with a "live-feel" mild time variance), use a lower sound with a bit of reverb on it.
 
sjoko2 said:
Another thing:
If you want to track to be as tight as a duck's ass (and that is water tight), use a short, tight percussion sound or the "original" click. If you want to encourage a drummer to play with a little bit of shuffle (in other words, with a "live-feel" mild time variance), use a lower sound with a bit of reverb on it.
Click to expand...
That's a cool tip SJ2, thanks!

Bruce
 
My trick is to program a Shaker sound doing 1/8th notes and to have the downbeat about 25% louder then the upbeat. This gives a nice "pulsating" feel to it that drummers find easy to play to. I don't recommend at all using just 1/4 notes for a click. Way too stiff to groove to.

Of course, you can always use two different sounds too (like I describe earlier using a bongo and shaker sound) to do the same thing.

Another click track trick. Starting two measures before the change into a chorus, start accelerating the tempo in a linear fashion over the 2 measures so that it winds up being around 4-6bpm faster during the chorus. Coming back to a verse or whatever after the chorus, I have had good luck with just dropping the tempo straight back. Although, if you want your second verse to have just a bit more edge, try having the tempo of it about 2bpm faster then the first verse. This WILL of course reek a little havoc if you intend to cut and paste edit parts from one part of the song to another, but nobody does that right? ;) (well, I don't at least. Maybe background vocals in the chorus I will cut and paste, but not really anything else).

http://www.xdrive.com Username: SoundCracker Password: mp3s Song: Mastered. This was recorded using a click track. Does it seem to lose any "feel" at all? I don't think so.

Ed
 
cool tips Ed. The bpm increase would be fun to do ....... especially if you then give it to someone else to do some MIDI sequencing on ............ :)
 
yes, let them try to work that eh? ;) Those sequencing guys have it too easy normally! LOL.....

Ed
 
Oh yeah, and there is this other small thing you need for a click track, these things you feed burgers and beer. I think they are called drummers?
The problem with those things is that a majority of the seem to find it real difficult to keep up with a good click track!
 
Squze me?

Whats this "you have to use a click track when you do overdub" bull? You need a TEMPO when you do overdups, ie, you need something to keep a beat to. It's just like playing with somebody else, you gotta keep the tempo.

I have done recording that has no drums whatesoever, but has a guitar playing through the song. And I can do the overdubs with no problems to that. I recorded the guitar, then I did the singing, then I did the harmonica, then I did the "talking". All in time, no "click track" needed.
 
in that case, regebro, you can obviously do without it.
However, try and do some sequencing to a track done without a click, and you're f'd.
 
Damn, Sonus!

2329 postings, as of THIS post.... you must be nuts. :) Don't you have a hobby or something? ;)
 
Sequencing? What do you mean?
If you are talking about syncing something, a clicktrack won't be very useful, will it? You need a sync-track, with SMPTE or something.
 
Hey regebro! Don't bite my head off! :) I'm only trying to help!
Please put my meandering in the right perspective, I can only answer from my experience, which is not home recording but commercial recording and production. I try not to turn anything into geekish tech talk. I try I try!

If I'm recording something like a track with a couple of acoustic guitars, bass, some percussion and vocals, I very likely won't use a click at all (unless they are wildly lacking in timing).
But, most of my mixes have a LOT of tracks, anything under 40 to 50 is an exception, a lot more the norm. Thus a tight rhythm becomes crucial in building the tracks. If not - lots of re-takes and a headache to keep the whole thing sounding tight in the mix.
 
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