Detecting Click Tracks 329
jamie found a blog entry by Paul Lamere, working for audio company Echo Nest, in which he experiments with detecting which songs use a click track. Lamere gives this background: "Sometime in the last 10 or 20 years, rock drumming has changed. Many drummers will now don headphones in the studio (and sometimes even for live performances) and synchronize their playing to an electronic metronome — the click track. ...some say that songs recorded against a click track sound sterile, that the missing tempo deviations added life to a song." Lamere's experiments can't be called "scientific," but he does manage to tease out some interesting conclusions about songs and artists past and present using Echo Nest's developer API.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:1, Interesting)
However to leverage much of the flexibility and power of a digital recording you need a click.
Really? Why?
Well... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:2, Interesting)
"Because you're not throwing everyone in a room together. You're likely recording different parts separately, and doing multiple takes, then taking the best takes of each part -- or the ones that go together best -- and mixing them after the recording's done."
You mean the recording process is just like it was 40 years ago? Multitracking has been around and commong for at least that long, and splicing together the best bits from different takes to producer the final version has been around and common even longer.
I think the click track is an abomination, symptomatic of the general micro-managing, nit-picking, perfectionist trend that's been going around in business...it's not about doing it right (the organic flow of an unclicked drum track is "right"), it's about doing it how you're "supposed" to do it.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll have to respectfully disagree. The only reason most bands use a click track is if your drummer can't hold a tempo. There's nothing about digital recording that requires a click track, as evidenced by the enormous number of bands that popularized click tracks in the 70s and 80s.
All a click track does is remove the need for band to practice with metronomes, which unfortunately is one of the most important thing that any musician can do to improve their playing.
I'll admit, there is a case where using a click track is important, and that's if you have a sampler synchronized to it to play pre-recorded material that has to line up. You could consider this a form of 'multitrack syncing', if that's what you were referring to. This is quite common in live pop and hip hop concerts. Even more distressing is the number of 'live' acts where everything is prerecorded except for the vocals.
Re:The Crickets (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, although I mostly listen to recent rock, a lot of the stuff where I love the drumming in particular is older stuff. Mitch Mitchell for example, especially on "Are You Experienced?". I don't think it's just the use of click tracks, I have a suspicion that I just like the way drums sounded through the less sophisticated recording technology used back then, or maybe the drums themselves. But I bet Mitch would be turning in his grave at the thought of using a click track.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:2, Interesting)
The only thing this "digital revolution" has brought to music is sterile, over-compressed, lifeless, lowest common denominator elevator muzak.
Listen to a band playing live (and even then larger band have all sorts of electronic wizardry involved). Compare that to the CD. World of difference. No punch to the drummer, no life in the lead guitar.
And don't even get me started about the vocal processing these days. I'm pretty sure young people haven't heard straight-up singing in their lifes.
Generalizing is usually bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes there's an obvious speed up or slow down on a song, and in those cases you don't need software to figure out if there's a click track. A quick way to check is to compare the very end of the song and the very beginning. It's similar to acapella singing, sometimes there's a slight change in pitch. If it's not so much that you notice in the middle of the song, then it's not worth worrying about.
There are great albums that used click tracks, and great albums that didn't. Obviously a metronomic sense of tempo is a good asset for a drummer to have, especially if they're looking for session work. But a sense of dynamics and texture is, in my opinion, more important. I'd take an interesting drummer over one that just subdivides everything any day.
Then again, some songs benefit from the drum machine sound. It's all about the vision.
I don't consider a click track on a studio album to be cheating any more than a photographer using a light meter. In a live setting, however, it's a different matter. Not that I've seen anyone actually use a click track live (except for people attempting to sync up with some other prerecorded track and did it out of sheer necessity).
You can also randomize a few % (Score:4, Interesting)
I do some recording/mixing and have had the privilege of working under a Grammy winning recording engineer (and phenominal musician in his own right).
Great comments here- yes, click-tracks have been around since the 70s (maybe 60s). Tempo throughout a song can change too much without some kind of metronome. It doesn't have to be an actual click track, just something to guide the musician laying down the first tracks. Just because a drummer or other musician listens to a perfect tempo click track doesn't mean the timing will be "sterile". We're still human! However I know some drummers who are scarily close to perfect timing- without metronome.
Most better click track generators have the ability to randomize the timing a few percent (adjustable). One major midi-based recording program that I use (MOTU Digital Performer) calls it "humanize". You can "quantize" a track to get timing, then "humanize" it.
Consistent Tempo != Click Track (Score:5, Interesting)
I play keyboards for two different worship bands at my church, and I discovered a pretty amazing trait that our drummer/leader in the morning service has:
He doesn't change tempo unless he wants to.
At all.
To elaborate, as that sounds sketchy unless you know how I learned it:
I'm a pretty rhythmic keyboard player, and one of my favored techniques (especially if I need to fill in empty space from, say, a missing electric guitarist in addition to the other textural stuff I was doing) is to use multi-tap delay and really accurate timing to build rhythms and and evolving chords. It can be a really fun effect.
I don't use it much, though, because even with a tap-tempo delay, which I have in my rig, it's really awkward to stay synced up with the rest of the band. My delay is pretty accurate (built-in effect on the Nord Stage, which is rather high-end. I'm pretty confident it's got sub-millisecond accuracy), and I can stay tight with it, but even decent drummers can have a hard time with that (let's hear it for teachers that make you practice with metronomes, eh?), so I usually have to adjust the tempo a few times throughout a song, and that can make things get ugly fast. A less-than-decent drummer, which is all too common, can't stay consistent enough for me to even try it. Thus, I don't (or didn't, I should say) do this much at all, despite my fondness for it.
But, when I first tried it with Bob (the aforementioned drummer), I was shocked, because it just worked. I tapped in a tempo on his first measure or two, and it stayed tight the whole way through. I really hadn't expected that result - hadn't occurred to me humans could be that accurate.
Naturally, I started trying this in various places where it fit, and so far, I can't remember a single attempt where it didn't stay synced. Granted, I haven't tried it with really dragged out delay times (nothing above about two beats of delay at maybe 100 BPM), but even so...
This is the best of both worlds, because when you need him to be rock-solid, he is, but when the situation calls for it, he can (and does) manipulate tempo intentionally.
I've told him (and others) that playing with him is like having an expressive human metronome, and I mean it. It is amazingly blissful - I can wander out into strange netherworlds of syncopation and/or ethereal tempolessness (yay for pads!) and the foundation never wavers.
I'm sure that at times, he has small amounts of drift, but given that my delay stays tightly synced with him for whole songs at a single tempo, it can't get as large as even a single beat per minute very often.
We haven't tried it yet, but someday I'd like to try him out against some sequenced stuff - I'm pretty sure that if I could handle it (which I don't think I can, yet), he'd be unphased by it, even if it got pretty thick. Live band + sequenced riffs/textures/effects could result in some pretty cool stuff.
So, all that to say:
The guy who wrote TFA is actually just providing a measurement of how consistent the drummers for these bands are. Maybe they used a click track to achieve that consistency, but as a semi-pro living in central PA (not exactly renowned for its music scene), I've found one who doesn't need the click.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not just dance choreography. A lot of concerts have some sort of video display, which is synchronized to the music. Depending on the nature of the show, there may be some pre-recorded parts as well, mixed in with the live performance. Here's an example [youtube.com] of both: the lead vocal, keyboard and bass are live, but the drums aren't, the background vocals aren't, and there's a video on the screen.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
You could get the band to play a "master" track, then make a click track to follow that one. Then the orchestra, special effects, and other tracks follow the master track. This is just a case of human beings modifying their behaviour to make life easier for the computers. Sigh.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
The human ear is very quick to spot repetition resulting in a sound which can quickly become robotic sounding.
Even if a drum track sounds the same for say one section of a song there will be small variations in rhythm and volume over time that to human ears just sounds more natural.
It would also be not much fun for the drummer as he would just be laying down loops instead of an entire track.
Of course sometimes this is the effect which is desired so you might end up with a more processed sounding drum track. Think Fat Boy Slim et al.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
"It's the musician's dillema. Focus on the tricks that make a recording sound good, or focus on the aspects that make a live performance sound good. They're very different sounds."
Rubbish.
The reason a band that sounds good live might fail in a studio recording are...
1: The studio they used does not have the facilities to record live music. Most studios don't nowadays and it is rare to have the big good sounding live room you need for this kind of thing. One room, home or basement studios will not do! Bands try to economize on recording and then it sounds bad.
If a studio does not have the facilities, then they will often lay it down part by part, which loses all the feel.
2: The material is weak. It's exiting live, but does not cut it without that live presence.
There are not really any studio tricks you *have* to do. A good sounding band is a good sounding band, live or recorded.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:1, Interesting)
no, he is dead on - your comparing toy software to pro stuff. pro stuff does not need any click, but a lead in click helps the start of the song. after that it is often done, but NOT a requirement for multitrack digital editing / arranging / sweetening.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Interesting)
Been there, done that. Recording a band without multitrack is a nightmare (call it direct take). The slightest mistake that any musician may make, and there will be many, will force to re-record everything again. Small live mistakes are acceptable, in a record, they're not.
Even worse, you may record a song with the perfect groove because the band is full of feeling, and it's so perfect it hurts. But the vocalist got one note wrong. Then you stop and start over again and the groove is gone, because of a very subtle feeling of discomfort in the musicians. Maybe they're fed up with all the takes, etc. It's a lot easier to record multitracked and then ask the vocalist to correct only that note. Then you can use beautiful, great recording you couldn't repeat if you tried.
If you have a shitload of money you can simply hire the best musicians in the world and spend lots and lots of studio time to get the direct recording just perfect. But that is not viable for the most situations.
Multitracking is not only about error-correction. It's also about processing each instrument differently and keep the balance. A vocal phrase may be too loud and muffle the band, just drop the volume a little on that part or compress the vocal track. If the guitar solo is not standing out of the mix, equalise only that segment and raise the guitar track level only for the solo, etc. Also, you need to space the instruments across the whole stereo space and equalise them so they don't clutter together.
Great jazz recordings were performed direct in the studio. But that's collective improvisation, it depends heavily in the group dynamics. You can't record a jazz band instrument by instrument, it won't sound right. You can listen to "Kind Of Blue" of Miles Davis. There are small imperfections perfectly audible throughout the whole record. But it's an irrepeatable, beautiful piece of music. Would you throw it away because one sax spilled into the other sax's microphone or you can hear the musicians whisper in the studio? But we're talking about the best of the best musicians possible. And even jazz recordings are multitracked anyway, because the tracks need to be at the very least individually panned, equalised and compressed.
Don't get me wrong, I hate over-produced music. I think the role of production is to serve the music, not the other way around. I like recordings that sound a bit dirty and spontaneous, but you'd be surprised to know the amount of hard work the producer and technicians have to make it sound that way.
Re:It's just like pitch (Score:4, Interesting)
People do indeed have different skills... or are sensitive to different torture, that being a different way to put it. Like many thousands or tens of thousands of folks, I volunteer to run soundboards for various local organizations, but don't claim to be anywhere near pro, but perhaps because of the substandard equipment and layouts I've worked with over the years, I've apparently a rather developed sensitivity to overdrive/clipping, threshold feedback loops, and "tape on the dashboard" effect.
One that gets me regularly is overdriven/clipping distortion. The other nite, someone at work was playing "music" on their cellphone. "It's pretty loud for a cellphone" she said, while it was about all I could do to stop from running away yelling with my fingers in my ears. The poor 1/2 watt or whatever speaker was distorting so much it was worse than fingernails on a chalkboard! Momentarily I had the opportunity to reach for the thing and turn it down perhaps 30 percent or so, without much loss in volume, but a HUGE improvement in quality due to the fact that it wasn't over-driving/clip-distorting any more! MUCH better!
I used to work across from a church, with speakers shaped like bells hung in the "bell" tower. They'd play recorded bells. I guess they finally upgraded to CDs, but before that... Have you ever heard the effect of stretched tape on a bell recording? It was actually funny sometimes, watching people smile and turn to listen to the "bells"... then hear the draaagg and pitch-bend, and realize it was only a (very streeeaaaatttched) recording... or worse yet, not realize it, commenting how nice the bells were, while I and others stood there gritting our teeth.
Sitting in the audience at anything "live" can be most discomforting on occasion too, hearing the threshold telltales that say the system's /this/ close from going into the dreaded feedback squeal, yet being bound by politeness from jumping dozens of rows of chairs and half way across the hall to turn the thing down a notch NOW, then notch the resonating frequency out of the EQ after the immediate threat is passed. I end up just sitting there, ready for the fingers in the ears if the squeal actually does hit, but otherwise outwardly calm and of proper decorum, whatever internal struggle to resist that leap might be going on.
Yet most folks don't notice a thing. What's especially "interesting" is when the guys with the "phat" car stereos or the like ask what I think about their system... yeah, it's loud enough, but the bass is all rattling (apparently to some, this is the mark of "good bass" ) or the tweeters are whining in your ears.
But, like I said, I don't claim to be pro. I do like to think I at least know enough about it to recognize a decent one tho. I've always held that a great audio engineer can often make a bad performance at least tolerable, but one stroke of a fat finger at the sound board can well ruin the performance of the best, and a sound guy that doesn't know what to do to stop the squeal (or rolllingg bbooom), or knows what to do but has such underpowered equipment (and/or poor positioning) he must choose between lack of volume and constantly running at feedback threshold (maybe not even an EQ to notch out)... forget it.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Interesting)
I think I heard an interview with Pete, saying someone was asking him after listening to some recordings of a session or two of the Who, asking about overdubs, etc on the drumming, and when told it was just Keith, he said it was impossible for someone to hit the drums that fast.
Personally...I'd rather hear things a little more 'raw' than to have everything so 'perfect' so that the digital tools of today can work better.
I think in some ways, the modern recording tools, have helped kill good music in many ways, it can really mask the lack of talent in todays musicians. Some of those old classic albums were recorded practically live. There is very little in the way of overdubs on the studio version of "Since I've Been Loving You". That track was mostly recorded live in one take. Why can't the groups of today play together as a band live like that?
Regardless....I've rather FEEL the emotion in an imperfectly played tune, rather than hear a lifeless perfect rendition of a tune.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Interesting)
There's your problem. (Emphasis mine.) It's not "having fun, making music" anymore. It' "cold hard business". When I even hear stuff like "music managers" selecting "target groups" to "monetize" their "product/resource", I'm starting to feel sick. Not that It's not Ok to earn money with your music. But it should not be your dominating factor. By far. Luckily I'm pretty sure, this will not survive P2P file sharing. ;)
But it is a business. Music is as designed, packaged and sold as cosmetics are.
At the one end of the spectrum, you've got Muzak -- people who are specifically recording background music to achieve a physiologic response: calm, desire to buy, etc. They are under no pretense as to what they are doing. Artistic freedom is almost non-existent.
At the next level, you've got the Hannah Montanas. She was hired to perform exactly to specifications. She is doing a job, more like an actor playing a rock star. She is under no delusion that what she does is a business. She also has no freedoms.
At the next step it gets more interesting. You've got the Britney Spears type. She may think of herself as an "artist", but she was really just "sorted to the top". Lets say ten thousand artists sent in their music. The label says "I have a contract to deliver a band that will sell hair-care products. She fits best." So they hire the "artist," who is perfectly free to delude herself into thinking she's hot stuff, but in reality she just happened to be the best match to the goal of the label. It's no coincidence that pop stars sound similar. And despite her delusions, she really has very few freedoms.
Further along, you've got the smaller and independent labels. They're only listening for a particular "sound" that fits with their other sounds - electronica, ska, house, whatever. Their promotions, concerts, and all that other stuff align, which makes it easier to promote more of the same. But it's still business.
And at the other end, you have the self-produced or independent music. It can be any sound of any quality. Nobody promotes them, nobody works for them, and they do as they please. That doesn't mean they don't want to perform or to get paid for performing, just that they are on their own. But even they have limits. Picture some garage band at a local show deciding to play a bunch of Spice Girls covers -- they'd either get thrown off the stage, or they'd "readjust" their style back to the show. It's not total freedom at this level, either -- they have to play to their audience.
So I don't know why you "feel sick" about "music managers targeting groups to monetize their products." That's what they do at every level. Its just that some of these people have done it for a long time and are very good at it.
Mutitrack is not clicktrack (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Interesting)
I've toyed with the idea of creating a "whoosh" track, a less fucking annoying and more forgiving version of a click-track, to help my own occasionally shaky rhythm-keeping. Dig, with something like a white-noise swell whooshing in time instead of the click. I truly don't mind playing with headphones on, even if usually just to give me a mix of everyone else's monitors that can compete with my own volume, but, man, that unforgiving click is worse than having Roger Waters glaring at you balefully.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
In order to do all of this, you have to have all musicians performing to an absolutely constant tempo. ...OR have the ability to manipulate tempo via studio technology. Back in the days when time-stretching meant running the tape reel at a few inches per second below spec, then applying pitch correction, yes, it was not worth the effort.
But today, in the era of ProTools and audio manipulation entirely in the digital domain, it couldn't be easier to take a performance with bad tempo fluctuations and correct them. Heck, there's probably plugins to do it automatically for you.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
A drummer I used to work for, Tony Hernandez, was trying to improve his skills, and started practicing with a metronome. Art Najera and the rest of the band got pissed 'cause he got so solid that he sounded like a guy with a click track, and lost his dynamics. BTW, I pointed out how some of the good drummers, i.e. Prairie Prince, often pump the beat on the high hat- A big plus when he incorporated THAT.
I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
to leverage much of the flexibility and power of a digital recording you need a click
A "click track" is pretty much the same as a metronome. If you need a metronome IMO you're a poor musician indeed.
If the musicians are in different rooms, that is one reason for much of the sterility of today's music. Back in the analog days, they'd use carefully placed sound absorbtion sheets to get the exact sound (drummers were often in a different room, but everyone used headphones).
And as to the "flexibility and power" of digital, I don't see it. Digital has a wider dynamic range than analog, but the increased range is seldom used. It has no noise (another plus for digital), but OTOH analog has no aliasing, and digital aliasing is compounded when you digitally make the tracks louder, and compounded when mixing (rounding errors).
Actually, digital's biggest advantage is that with analog, the more you spend on your equipment, especially input devices for playback, the better the sound (and anyone can hear the difference). With digital there's comparitively not much difference between a cheap setup and an expensive one.
Also, mixing analog and digital gives you the worst of both worlds with the advantages of neither. A Beatles LP will sound much better than a Beatles CD, provided you have a high quality turntable. But a Nirvana CD will sound far better than a Nirvana LP, since their masters were digital.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not about NEEDING a click-track. I say again, good drummers can and do play to a click. Bad drummers simply can't play to a click track, so what's the point in trying to make them?
I see your point about popularist drummers (non-drummer drummers) and you've brought up the KING of them in Neil Peart. As a drummer, I like Rush's music and the drum parts, but I'm not particularly blown away. If you dissect what Peart plays, you'll see a definite repetition in his licks. Nothing wrong with having your own style, but I don't see much progress (even though he claims to be progressive) in his playing. Also, if I can play it, it isn't amazing ;-)
Stewart Copeland on the other hand...one of my inspirations and most influential guys ever.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
>Then for every guy slugging it out every night in small bars, there are millions more like me who play for beer at our local blues bar.
And that is the most hopeful thing about music there is these days. Growing up in the 60's, every junior high and high school dance had a live band. When I got into college in the late 60's almost every bar in town had a live band three nights a week. This continued through the 70's. You had your choice of 20 or more live bands on a weekend in what is essentially a small town.
Then it all changed in the 80's. All you could find was DJs playing canned music. No thank you. That seemed to last until the late 90's when it seemed to swing back the other way again. Now I have my choice of reggae, rock, swing, hip-hop, country, folk-rock, blues, bluegrass, and more. Get really, really lucky and someone like Waits or Charley Musselwhite might walk in. But the really good thing is that its all a bunch of folks making Real Music; maybe for beer or maybe for a little money that doesn't even cover the cost of their instruments. Great stuff!
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
Small live mistakes are acceptable, in a record, they're not.
Pretty much any band worth listening to is better live. I can pick pretty much any live recording off of bt.etree.org and the performance is better than any studio recording I've heard in recent years. Just fucking play, record it, and release it. If you need studio magic to make it sound good, I probably don't want to listen anyway.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:3, Interesting)
This really has nothing to do with drummers... (Score:3, Interesting)
It has to do with editing and modern-day DAW track editing. If all you're doing is laying down bass, guitar, drums and vocals in a garage or folk band, then you don't really need a click track. But if you're doing a high amount of production with multi-layered guitar tracks, synth lines, and orchestral mockups (midi), you HAVETO have a click track. Many times, recording a complex rock arrangement isn't that much different from doing a film score, you have to have events coming in and out along a very precise timeframe. You can pre-determine tempo variations, but they MUST be pre-determined.
This strikes me as not so much an arguement about drummer quality or production level, but an arguement about how much rock music should be pre-determined. I know folk and punk rockers will say that it is heretical to have too much determinism in rock music, but there's another side of things. I play in and produce a progressive rock band. I had over 12 years of training in piano and composition before I did 5 years of undergrad work in composition and studio production. For what I do, I want EVERYTHING to be planned out. Usually, the more planning that goes into a tune, the more unique it can be, because everyone knows what their roll is. That's why most folk and punk bands usually sound the same.
Basically, "the click track" is one of a number of tools offered by an institution of music construction that allows for a lot of flexibility and creativity within a certain framework. Click tracks free up producers, composers, and musicians to be able to have a lot more leeway in other areas. It's not a question of "my drummer can play without a click track". The reality is, no matter HOW good a drummer is, if they don't have a click, the music isn't going to line up on the grid in Pro Tools, Digital Performer, or whatever DAW your using. If that doesn't happen, then you've just killed about 50% of the production and creative possibilities you have at your disposal... including orchestra and midi (which is much more prevolent than most would like to admit) additions.
Orchestras have a click-track: it's called a conductor. They spend hours maticulously figuring out exactly how to control the tempo of the orchestra, to the point that when they finally do it live, it's going to be the same each time. When orchestras record for film scores, the conductor wears headphones and conducts to a click-track. Recording an epic-sounding rock track is pretty much the same deal.
Ask any metal or prog band to record without a click track, and they'll probably laugh in your face. Dream Theater (for instance) maps out their entire works out on Digital Performer before they even begin the recording process. Certain types of music just require it, others don't. You want detailed, highly-controlled sound the posibility of adding a lot of post-production stuff later... you HAVE TO use a click track.