same wrote: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 like that character to recordings too, and I feel the same way about getting there with practice. BUT I realize that you and I, same, we aren't everybody.

Its just too easy nowadays for bands to expect to have all their problems fixed in the studio when they can't pull it off live. That is the "certain extent" Steve spoke of where I would draw the line.

But, shit, if folks were shellin' out $650/day for me, I'd do my best to give them their money's worth, whatever they feel that is.

Hello, this subject is a bit old but did you have some examples of famous songs with or without click ? I hope that I could understand the sound more than the theory
R/.

Most early Black Sabbath stuff is recorded without a click and you can hear how the tempo drifts a little thoughout the song. As they're all playing in time with each other though, it's not really that noticable.

If you want to hear it for yourself I suggest you make a click track yourself. You can do this with a simple drum machine, just put beats on the 1, 2,3 4(these are your clicks). Now try to match the tempo to the song. Once you got that you can hear if the song lines up or not. Kelly Clarkson songs will always stay with that machine beat while Black Sabbath songs will not, even those without tempo changes.

Fuck all y'all click haters.

IN THE STUDIO: fuck yes. especially for bands that aren't proficient. practice it a lot before going in, then you get the rythm and it doesn't sound forced. saves you a ton of time in the studio and a lot of embarassement and headache later.

if your band is pretty proficient aand you're not going to put any time-specific stuff in later (a loop or whatnot), then i'd say stick with the band's energy.

LIVE: if you're using prerecorded material, i can understand. generally, i hate using prerecorded material and would rather just go with the adrenaline factor. i've seen bands play live with clicks and do phemoninal jobs (i.e. not making it look/feel like they're playing a long with a click). (now, your asking, "well, if they're so good by hiding it, then how did you know?" because i asked!).

ZZ Top: No click (NB: later, shitty material: Click)
Loverboy: Click
Black Sabbath: No click
Metallica: Click
Led Zeppelin: No click
Winger: Click

You get it, don't you? It is impossible to make technically adequate shitty music without a click, but quite possible to make incredible, awesome music without a click. In fact, the click is probably an impediment to awesome, but a necessary element of shitty.

You may draw your own conclusions, as have I myself.

I did. False dichotomy. And Loverboy has always sucked.

My band uses a click extensively, because vockins the drummer and vockins the guitar player can't fucking agree on a tempo 99% of the time, and vockins the bass player is such a fucking hack that everything would be at 30 bpm if he had his way. Vockins on keys has the finger dexterity of a tapir. He's so bad it's not even a problem.

I'm amused at how often vockins the drummer and vockins the guitar player are pissed off at each other. It's almost come to blows a couple of times. I think vockins the guitar player might be seeing vockins the drummer's wife.

sndo wrote:

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.

they really do that? it's not such a bad idea, that is, if you've already resigned yourself to playing to a click in the first place.

I do that all the time. I use a pc to record and use Battery to sequence drums. It helps to make it sound more "real" as opposed to sequenced. It also helps choruses if you turn the tempo up a few notches. Most bands do this instinctively anyway.

Lazybones wrote:Fuck all y'all click haters.

Carl would be happy to know that Foreigner and Boston probably used clicks..