6 Tips To A Better Click Track

Many musicians, producers and engineers fight with the click track for various reasons, but most of the time it's because the player just can't hear it in a way that's conducive for playing in the pocket.

Here are 6 tips from The Music Producer's Handbook about not only getting the click to cut through the mix and making it groove, but preventing any bleed into open microphones as well.

"Many times just providing a metronome in the phones isn’t enough. What good is a click if you can’t hear it, or worse yet, groove to it? Here are some tricks to make the click not only listenable, but cut through the densest mixes and seem like another instrument in the track too.

1. Pick The Right Sound. Something that’s more musical than an electronic click is better to groove to. Try either a cowbell, sidestick, or even a conga slap. Needless to say, when you pick a sound to replace the click, it should fit with the context of the song. Many drummers like two sounds for the click; something like a high go-go bell for the downbeat and a low go-go bell for the other beats or vice-versa.

2. Pick The Right Number Of Clicks Per Bar. Some players like 1/4 notes while others play a lot better with 8ths. Whichever it is, it will work better if there’s more emphasis on the downbeat (beat 1) than on the other beats.

3. Make It Groove. By adding a little delay to the click you can make it swing a bit and it won’t sound so stiff. This makes it easier for players that normally have trouble playing to a click. As a side benefit, this can help make any bleed that does occur less offensive as it will seem like part of the song.

Preventing Click Bleed
OK, now the click cuts through the mix but it does it so well that it’s bleeding into the mics. You’ll find this mostly with drummers (who usually want to hear it at near ear-splitting levels) and string players (who play very quietly and therefore need the gain of the mics turned up). Try the following:

4. Try a different set of headphones. Try a pair that has a better seal. The Sony 7506 phones provide a fairly good seal, but the Metrophones "Studio Kans," the Vic Firth S1H1’s, or even the Radio Shack "Racing Headphones" (they’re mono though), will all isolate a click from bleeding into nearby mics.

5. Run the click through an equalizer and roll off the high end just enough to cut down on the bleed.

6. Have the players use one-eared headphones. Many times players will leave the phones loose so they can hear what’s going on with the other players in the room. If they can have click in one ear (in the headphone) that’s sealed closely to the head, then they get the live room sound in their free ear. One-eared phones have become almost standard for ensemble recording for horn and string sections, and are sometimes preferred by vocal groups as well. A good example is the Beyer DT102 (shown on the left)."

Sometimes all it takes is one of these tricks to put a smile on the face of everybody both in and out of the control room, so give them a try.

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Secrets Of The Click Track

It's time for another book excerpt, this time from The Music Producer's Handbook. Here's some advice about not only getting the click to cut through the mix and making it groove, but preventing any bleed into any open microphones as well.
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Many times just providing a metronome in the phones isn’t enough. What good is a click if you can’t hear it, or worse yet, groove to it? Here are some tricks to make the click not only listenable, but cut through the densest mixes and seem like another instrument in the track too.

• Pick The Right Sound. Something that’s more musical than an electronic click is better to groove to. Try either a cowbell, sidestick, or even a conga slap. Needless to say, when you pick a sound to replace the click, it should fit with the context of the song. Many drummers like two sounds for the click; something like a high go-go bell for the downbeat and a low go-go bell for the other beats or vice-versa.
   
• Pick The Right Number Of Clicks Per Bar. Some players like 1/4 notes while others play a lot better with 8ths. Whichever it is, it will work better if there’s more emphasis on the downbeat (beat 1) than on the other beats.
   
• Make It Groove. By adding a little delay to the click you can make it swing a bit and it won’t sound so stiff. This makes it easier for players that normally have trouble playing to a click. As a side benefit, this can help make any bleed that does occur less offensive as it will seem like part of the song.

Preventing Click Bleed
OK, now the click cuts through the mix but it does it so well that it’s bleeding into the mics. You’ll find this mostly with drummers (who usually want to hear it at near ear-splitting levels) and string players (who play very quietly and therefore need the gain of the mics turned up). Try the following:

• Try a different set of headphones. Try a pair that has a better seal. The Sony 7506 phones provide a fairly good seal, but the Metrophones "Studio Kans," the Vic Firth S1H1’s, or even the Radio Shack "Racing Headphones" (they’re mono though), will all isolate a click from bleeding into nearby mics.

• Run the click through an equalizer and roll off the high end just enough to cut down on the bleed.

• Have the players use one-eared headphones. Many times players will leave the phones loose so they can hear what’s going on with the other players in the room. If they can have click in one ear (in the headphone) that’s sealed closely to the head, then they get the live room sound in their free ear. One-eared phones have become almost standard for ensemble recording for horn and string sections, and are sometimes preferred by vocal groups as well. A good example is the Beyer DT102 (shown on the left).

To read additional excerpts from this and other books, go to the excerpts list of my website.

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To Click (Track) Or Not To Click

One of the perpetual questions for a producer is whether to have a band use a click track when  recording basic tracks. Over the years, the decision to do so has become easier as a whole generation of players has grown up playing along with a click or loops, so it's a lot easier to find drummers who are more comfortable, and therefore better able to perform, with a click.

Here are the benefits to cutting a track to a click:

1) The tempo is more even so the song can feel better as a result (more on this later).

2) Because of the even tempo, it's easier to cut between different takes to obtain a superior performance.

3) During mixing, it's easier for the engineer to time delays and reverbs to the track so they blend better.

The major downside of cutting to a click with a drummer who's not comfortable with it is that the track can sound stiff and machine like. If the song doesn't feel good, none of the above benefits matter much.

While it's easy to believe that every hit song has an even tempo, that's not the case at all. I found the following graphs on a post called "In Search of the Click Track" that had some plots showing the tempo deviations from the average tempo for a number of songs. It's pretty easy to see where machines set the tempo and where it was all human clock.

The first example is a comparison between a Police song ("So Lonely') and a Britney Spears song ("I Love Rock n' Roll"). There's a huge deviation between Stewart Copland's playing (he's always been ahead of the beat and it sure is in evidence here) and virtually none in the Britney song, which is obviously a machine.

If we look at "Ya Ya" by jazz great Art Blakey, we see that the guy is as solid as a rock and as close to perfect as a human can get without playing to a click.

Charlie Watt's playing on "Sympathy For The Devil" is all over the place, but it's always felt pretty good to me and I never would have thought you'd find a deviation like this. It's a 17 bpm difference between the beginning and ending of the song!

But Nickelback, on the other hand, is obviously playing to a click, and the time hardly budges.

The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" proves that Keith Moon was playing along with a sequenced synth (you can see him wearing headphones during live concert videos of the song). The thing is, he could really do it well as he still made the song feel good, even despite his unorthodox style.

So what can we learn from these charts? If the feel is good, so is the song. Tempo variations are mentally overlooked by the listener under the right circumstances, and a solid steady tempo doesn't necessarily sound boring. Each song is unique, and therefore the question of "To click or not to click" remains unanswered because there is no answer.

I believe that the difference between a good drummer and a bad one is how good his internal clock is. That is, if the drummer can play steady and even within himself (where the snare and hat always hit in the same place relative to the kick drum, despite the tempo), the drummer will be considered "solid." I think these charts prove that what makes a song is not a tempo thing, it's a feel thing. A good drummer equals a good feel, but a good drummer may not always equal a good tempo.