The humble click track is an element of the recording process that largely exists as a purely functional tool, without ever getting much in the way of creative attention. However, by generating your own click using virtual instruments, rather than relying on your DAW’s rudimentary metronome, you can give yourself or the musicians you’re recording a far more productive rhythmic guide on which to base their performances. Here are some pointers to help you do just that.
Choose Inspiring Sounds
First things first: a click track isn’t – or, rather, doesn’t have to be – a metronome. As we just said, a properly set up click track generated by a MIDI-triggered drum machine or sampler is vastly preferable to the simple two-tone equivalent offered by your DAW’s transport section. A well designed click track can genuinely get the musical juices flowing, and central to that design is the selection of sounds used to mark out the beat.
Obviously, percussion sounds are the go-tos here, from cowbells, triangles, bells and shakers to congas, bongos, toms and tablas, and it’s always a good idea to put one distinctive (whether because of its transient/tonal weight or pitch) instrument on the downbeat, nailing the start of each bar, then use lighter sounds for the rest. There really are no rules here, though, so if you find that a piano or synth note on the downbeat with three ascending guitar chops or brass stabs through the rest of the bar hits the spot, who are we to tell you otherwise?
Go Beyond Quarter-Notes
As well as the ability to totally customise the sounds involved, the other big advantage of a proper click track over its unadventurous in-DAW equivalent is the ability to freely program the rhythm it plays. While many musicians will just want a regular four-square beat in their cans, others – particularly drummers – prefer eighth- or even 16th-notes, or something less overtly mechanical, such as a clave or other musical pattern. When it comes to writing such ‘parts’, consider MIDI velocity as well as note placement: for eighths and 16ths, make the on-beat hits much louder than the rest; and for non-regular patterns, use dynamic variation to emphasise subdivisions as befits the groove. And speaking of groove, nowhere is it written that a click track has to be locked to the grid – if the project has a swung feel or particular rhythmic shape, swing the click track too, apply a groove template to it, or manually adjust note positions as required.
Apply EQ And Other Processing
Since you’re working with a virtual instrument track for the creation of your click, you have full control over its sonic properties, which means you can get it sounding exactly how you or your musicians want it. Depending on their proclivities and the instrument they’re playing, some will demand that the low frequencies be rolled off, while others will ask for the highs to be dialled down; a singer will probably want the click relatively quiet in the headphones, while a drummer will need it much louder; and a touch of reverb might even be requested. Whatever the artist wants, your click track should make it a snap to provide.
Practise Makes Perfect
As any drummer will tell you, playing to a click track isn’t as easy as it might at first appear, so it behooves every musician to accustom themselves to the technicalities and nuances of the art by actively practising it away from the stress of the red recording light. Lining up with a click at slow tempos can be particularly tricky for the neophyte, so focus your attention in that area (from 60-90bpm) and faster tempos will become easier as well.
If Your MIDI Click Isn’t Working, Use A Loop Instead
A good number of musicians just don’t click, so to speak, with click tracks, whether through the psychological pressure of locking to such a cleanly defined pattern or a perceived lack of ’vibe’. In those cases, it’s perfectly reasonable to spin up a drum, percussion or other sampled loop instead, thereby providing a more natural sounding groove and alleviating the sense of ‘formality’ that a click can bring to a session. Do make sure the timing, dynamics and styling of the loop are appropriate to the track, and use a gate or volume automation to thin it out if the rhythm is right but the ambience and energy are too distracting.
Try A Visual Or Haptic Click
Finally, and diverting from our main brief somewhat, there are many recording situations in which the presence of an audible click track, metronome or guide loop can actually pull the musician out of the headspace they need to be in to capture the desired feel. We’re talking solo acoustic parts, mostly – guitar, violin, flute… er, harp, etc. Happily, there are a few clever alternatives out there that can keep your player on the clock via other parts of their nervous system.
A visual metronome app substitutes or partners the audio click for/with a graphical timing reference, which might be anything from a basic flashing screen to a more elaborate scheme of some sort, and there are numerous great examples available for iOS and Android devices, including Flash Metronome, 7Metronome and Soundbrenner’s all-singing, all-dancing The Metronome. If you’re not equipped for those, there are a few web-hosted solutions that can get the job done in any browser, including Flutettunes.com and – for that once-in-a-career session when you find yourself needing multiple synced metronomes for a polyrhythmic ensemble piece – the brilliant Bounce Metronome.
Moving on from the eyes, if you have access to an Apple Watch, you can serve your click up as a haptic tap on the wrist using the Pulse or Haptik apps. Such tactile novelty certainly takes some getting used to in practise, but if your performer demands the least mentally intrusive option available, this is very much it.
Of course, with no ability to sync to your DAW (apart from The Metronome, which supports MIDI and Ableton Link), using any of these multi-sensory wonders in the studio will require the resulting recordings to be nudged into place up on the timeline in the arrange page. That should be easy enough, though, given that 120bpm is 120bpm, no matter what the timing reference source.
How do you go about setting up your click track? Let us know in the comments.