mostly i guess it's probably lame...but i don't think for everything...Wendy Carlos couldn't have done Switched on Bach, etc without a click track...in my band we use one for part of one song...it's the intro, it's just two guitars before the bass and drums come in...and it's very sparse and the guitars play at the same time (we play different notes but the same rhythm...) so we've fond it pretty difficult both keeping the exact same time with nothing else going on...so we often have a metronome on the floor set to blink with the sound off and use that...i'm sure we're just terrible musicians but that's something i'm willing to live with...

Whatever works. I can record my shit either way, but I always use the click when I'm writing stuff, so I can edit/move stuff around easily... As far as "actual" recording, it's whatever the drummer wants. If he feels the click is helpful, then it's helpful. Sometimes he does, sometimes not. I play with the drummer, so I don't expect him to follow me... Either way, I listen to the drums, not the click, during any overdubs.

Live? I've seen bands pull it off. Would seem strange to me....

Yes, click can be misused, ill advised, etc. But I can not say it is always and everywhere crap either. So I says "Not Crap"

sometimes i want to record a song but it's too late at night to be loud and record drums, so i use a drum machine and then replace that with drums later. not crap for that.

when you are playing with a "rock band" , and you are "rocking out", CRAP.

but i´m pretty fond of electronic stuff, sequences, drum machines, so it´s a necessity there. so NOT CRAP.
unless they create a drum machine that can follow a drummer´s tempo... that would be a neat idea..

Saturday wrote:when you are playing with a "rock band" , and you are "rocking out", CRAP.

but i´m pretty fond of electronic stuff, sequences, drum machines, so it´s a necessity there. so NOT CRAP.
unless they create a drum machine that can follow a drummer´s tempo... that would be a neat idea..

i hate click trax but i don't hate drum machines

i like drum machines when they are well-used

and i like drummer w/drum machine or sequencing, when it's done well

but a drummer playing to a click track is the worst of both worlds

I think it all distracts from the natural rhythm of a few people who are "locked in" or whatever term you want to use for "that thing".

Like Steve's Sicilian hombre - the true rhythm, the rhythm of the heartbeat.

From experience, I'd strongly advise against using a click if the drummer doesnt practice with one, and didnt grow up playing drums to a metronome. I wasted a good half-a-day paying by the hour trying to track drums to a click when I played. This band I'm recording this weekend have some tempo issues, but I told them unless they want to spend 3 weekends trying to track drums, they should just deal with it.

Its not the engineer's responsibility to make up for your band's tempo problems.

tmidgett wrote:click tracks suck

fuck them

i hate them and they are crap

unless you are metallica and you program the click to vary the tempo of the song continually. like intro at 140bpm, verse at 136bpm, chorus at 138bpm, solo at 148bpm. this is so retarded that it becomes brilliant, and therefore not crap.

I have to agree here.

Having played with a drummer who insisted on using a click WHILE RECORDING a few songs, I have to say it's total fucking crap.

Unless, of course, you need to cut out the groove and/or feel of a song. It's great at doing that. Also great at creating tension amongst the band.

One of my band members had this conversation with someone who had just listened to our cd:
"Hey man, you guys play to a click track?"
"No."
"Yeah, I can tell."

wiggins wrote:Its not the engineer's responsibility to make up for your band's tempo problems.

To a certain extent, yes, I think it is. It's also not usually too difficult. If there's a late hit, I can edit-out a fraction of an inch of tape. If there is a problem in one section, you can re-play that section and edit it in. If a song speeds-up over time, I'm not usually bothered by it, but if It bothers the band on a level beyond theoretical, then they get to play it again. If it's just a theoretical "problem," then the best course of action is to relax for a few minutes and listen to it again, to see if it is really a problem.

i'm quite fond of this interview i read with bruce russell (of the dead c) were he taked about how he disliked the concept of editing a recorded live performance. i think his point was that collaborative music (to him) was about what's happening in a particular room between particular people at a particular point in time, and to edit something like that is to betray it. i agree. if you want to sound really tight, get there through practice. wire stick out to me as a particularly precise band, but i can always find a few hiccups here and there in gotobed's drumming and i appreciate them. fuck-ups can give character, they speak of life.

i do make recordings where i play all instruments myself though, and using a drum machine for reference can help in that situation.