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.
It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Informative)
If I were to record garage rock album i would throw everyone in the same room and just play the songs. However to leverage much of the flexibility and power of a digital recording you need a click.
I record garage bands. You don't need a click track for multi-track recording. Take a demo tape and use it to get the drummer to play his track. Use the drummer as the click track for the rest of the sessions. A click track is not needed for multi-track digital recording. I add the wet tracks last after recording all the dry tracks for final mixdown.
The only click track used for this is just a tempo 1 measure lead in to get the drummer started on a new tempo.
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:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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From what I've studied about them...about the only 'tape' Queen used was during the Bohemian Rhapsody opera section.
They played pretty much everything else live. They used delays quite a bit, but, that's an effect...not a backing tape in the sense of what is done today.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Funny)
Even more distressing is the number of 'live' acts where everything is prerecorded except for the vocals.
More distressing is the number of 'live' acts where everything is pre-recorded INCLUDING the vocals!
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~
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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.
Even then, it's possible (though not often done, for myriad reasons) to have the click track follow the drummer, instead of vice versa. It's not that complicated to put microphones or contact triggers on the drums and feed them into a computer to generate MIDI or SMPTE clock pulses.
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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.
A click track is a metronome.
A click track is a series of audio cues used to synchronize sound recordings, often to a moving image.(1) [wikipedia.org]
A metronome is any device that produces a regulated aural, visual or tactile pulse to establish a steady tempo in the performance of music.(2) [wikipedia.org]
They're the same thing.
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"
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So in other words, it's required to cover up a lack of talent on the part of the performers.
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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.
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You can't expect a single instrumentalist to record a whole base track, on their own, without screwing up the tempo if they haven't got a reference in the first place. At least the first track benefits from the presence of a metronome.
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:4, Funny)
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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 you
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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.
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Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've never heard of this "click track" before. Actually it does make sense if you look at it from a purely technological point of view. Computers beat to a click, sort of, and everything in our society has become computerized. So why not music?
But as I've heard machines make good servants, but terrible masters. I'm going to throw my lot in with the group that thinks this is an abomination. I've always though that the drummer was supposed to be the bands "click track." When I played I took all my
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and if you get out of sync it must be disastrous!
If you are playing with competent musicians (and you are a competent drummer) then they'll know to adjust to the drums, since they are locked to the click. I played for three years to a click/sequencer, and the only "disaster" we ever experienced is when my ear piece fell out (sweaty) and my floor monitor wasn't loud enough for me to hear what was going on.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Informative)
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 can also go back and add new parts if you decide they're needed, or change a part, without re-recording the whole thing. And you can even rearrange portions of the song -- cutting a verse or chorus, moving sections around, etc.
In order to do all of this, you have to have all musicians performing to an absolutely constant tempo.
Also, much music now explicitly incorporates electronic sounds that are sequenced -- synth arpeggios, drum machine patterns, etc. These are always precisely timed. Everyone else needs to be able to match them.
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"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 l
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You mean the recording process is just like it was 40 years ago?
Yes. I feel a car analogy coming on. Any car from 1960 is conceptually the same as any car from 2009. Just fancier and more efficient.
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that is questionable actually - real progress exists but have been used up by additional energy sinks like: air condition, computers on board, electronic control systems, support for steering and breaking, the cars of today also carry much more of the (admittedly more modern) stuff than before - isolation etc. Not sure about 40years but if you take 10 or 20 years there may be a small decrease in fuel consumption but in general the cars use approx the same now and then.
Or maybe I am just buying the wrong car
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You didn't quite get my point. What I mean is that a car is still an engine + wheels + chassis. All improvements made since it was first invented is accessory to make you safer, more comfortable and spend less cash on keeping it running. Take it all away, you still got a car.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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.
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.
I know what you wanted to mean, but there is no "right" in arts. If you think the sound that your $5000 synth makes when it crashes on the floor after falling from a high-rise is the perfect sound, then so be it. ;) If you want to have a perfect, maybe even mechanical timing, then that is (well, at least it should be) a artist decision. Where you're definitely right (and what I think you wanted to say), is that it's not an artist decision, but a business one.
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It(music industry) may not survive p2p sharing or it may fail because if one can simply generate music automagically - software will generate stuff that makes you feel good etc - then why need big corporations to produce the stuff in 'old fashion' way???
What is also interesting or at least what I find it interesting - all the stuff that according to TFA is created with help of computers I considered to noisy. I did not know why but now I do.
OC they find out way to change and make it more sophisticated and y
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.
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>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
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I pretty much agree with you. Another aspect of this that I just feel like blathering about is that the process of developing/educating/training (especially rock/popular) musicians is a lot more methodical and business-like than it used to be, too.
The Beatles learned to play their instruments in their bedrooms, parlors and grungy little clubs in very dubious neighborhoods, fueled by adrenalin, speed and demanding crowds, in ten-or twelve-hour shifts. Everybody who bought that particular Velvet Underground
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"Practice, practice, practice!"
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Insightful)
Much music now is explicitly shit, and I'm not even 30.
I think you've just explained why.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Insightful)
Much music has always been explicitly shit, regardless of when it was made. Go back and take a look at the charts for any year you care to name, and probably 95% of the artists will be people you've never heard of...because they were shit, had their fifteen minutes, and are now long-forgotten.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you missed the article a month ago on Auto-Tune [slashdot.org] software, or you'd have already had an idea why most music today is bland shit.
That is because the money is not in the music, it is in the music video, accessories, and other bullshit. Just find some beautiful woman [dotancohen.com] to sync to a click track, the alter her voice to actually _sound_good_ and you've got a winner, with no accusations of lip syncing or whatnot.
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was because of songsmith.
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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 processi
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of bands that play poorly live sound great on their CD's, and vice-versa. I'd go as far as to say that *most* of the bands that I've liked listening to live have sounded terrible when laid down, and vice-versa.
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.
Of course, I'd guess that the major impetus for getting a click track to the drummer has not been the relentless march of soulless digitization, but simply ticked off guitarists. Sure, we might call it the natural ebb and flow of music, but on stage it is called the drummer screwing everyone else up.
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"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
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Bands that sound good live don't translate well to the overdub recording precisely because they are good bands.
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.
Back in the olden days.... (Score:2)
"Recording a band without multitrack is a nightmare (call it direct take)."
Call it "Live-to-2 track", instead.
Sheffield Labs used to do it wonderfully.
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Your reference a jazz album recorded in the 50s. Name the last #1 jazz album that was recorded in that manner.
Mutitrack is not clicktrack (Score:3, Interesting)
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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: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:4, Insightful)
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Yep, I was going to say the same thing, the parent said "In order to do all of this, you have to have all musicians performing to an absolutely constant tempo."
And its not true, all you need is to have all musicians performing to the _same_ tempo
Re:It's pretty standard these days (Score:4, Informative)
It's not just bands now, either. Modern film scores use a click track. Some of my friends play film scores as freelancers (they are professional, classically trained musicians) - and they've all reported having to use a click track.
The "conductor" is mostly used to notify them which section to play... as most of the music doesn't merit actual rehearsal time. The conductor does get to watch the film during the session, however.
It's pure torture for the musicians... to make it worse, the "conductors" will sometimes say, "Wow! I wish you guys could have seen that scene!"
With all the attention to digital synchronization, some people seem to have forgotten to write and play decent music on occasion. Most film scores these days seem to rip-offs of other film scores or semi-quotes from classical works (John Williams, I'm looking at you.) As great as the radio and recorded music has been, I sometimes feel that it has killed music.
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It's not just bands now, either. Modern film scores use a click track. Some of my friends play film scores as freelancers (they are professional, classically trained musicians) - and they've all reported having to use a click track.
The "conductor" is mostly used to notify them which section to play... as most of the music doesn't merit actual rehearsal time. The conductor does get to watch the film during the session, however.
It's pure torture for the musicians... to make it worse, the "conductors" will sometimes say, "Wow! I wish you guys could have seen that scene!"
Is the usage of the click track torture or the lack of rehearsal time? And how is it torture? (Not trolling, just curious since I'm not a musician)
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Also, much music now explicitly incorporates electronic sounds that are sequenced -- synth arpeggios, drum machine patterns, etc. These are always precisely timed. Everyone else needs to be able to match them.
Interestingly, I remember reading an interview with one band (perhaps The Pet Shop Boys?) where the artists were complaining about the inherent inaccuracy in MIDI control. Seems they were able to hear the few milliseconds uncertainty that the article claimed was due to limitations of the MIDI spec. The band went to great lengths to control and minimize this timing slop.
I guess this goes to show that one man's crystalline perfect timing is another man's ear bleeding horror.
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Yes, I have seen some kind of monster by Metallica, and you see exactly this, the problem with this is that like Led Zep in the day, when it comes time to play it live, the artists can't reproduce the track properly and end up disappointing their fans. I saw Metallica on the and justice for all tour, and the song dyer's eve, where the double bass drums are just amazing, does not get played the same live....trust me....makes a world of difference, especially if the cool thing about the song, was the double b
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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
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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.
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Well, I am not sure if this is specifically what spliffington was referring to, but one of the things that makes things like pro tools or sonar or reason or any of that stuff so powerful and innovative is the ability to work with individual tracks in a gui - cutting and pasting down to the millisecond level, taking sections and looping them or pasting them into several other areas within a song.
So for an example: Let's say you have a performance where the drummer isn't using any sort of metronome or click t
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AC is right. Beat maps are great and used everywhere. Beat detection algorithms in modern software work great; most of the time, detection is perfect and you don't even have to tweak it.
Then you have the best of both worlds: Editing and syncing sequences is easy, and you have a human feel.
The Crickets (Score:4, Insightful)
On a serious note, I do like the warmth of older music, and my listening tastes tend to meander around the times between 5 + 30 years before I was born. (Child of the 80's).
As much as a tech nut I am, I still believe there are certain area's in life where it should be left at the door.
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Around here... I wonder if they are using a click track?
No. The Crickets had Buddy Holly. They also had talent.
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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.
Sterile? As if it made a difference... (Score:2)
some say that songs recorded against a click track sound sterile
I'd say 90% of whatever is recorded nowadays already sound like crap, so at least it's rythmically correct crap.
Don't worry about click tracks, real musicians with real talent probably don't have any need for them.
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the drummer from linkin park spent 8hrs a day for 3 months practiciing to click track before the recording sessions started...and this was for their 2nd album...not the 1st...
what is making things sound sterile is simply crap pop music that is also waaaaay over produced. not being rhythmically correct.
Re:Sterile? As if it made a difference... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, yes, most musicians need some sort of "click track" if they're playing in any sort of ensemble. It's just that in an orchestra or band setting, they're called conductors. In modern rock/pop bands, they're called drummers.
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Actually, yes, most musicians need some sort of "click track" if they're playing in any sort of ensemble. It's just that in an orchestra or band setting, they're called conductors. In modern rock/pop bands, they're called drummers.
I see your philosophical angle. But what click track does the conductor or drummer use? That's what the article is about: detecting click tracks that the conductor or drummer uses.
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).
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In Steinberg's popular Cubase multitrack recording software, for example, you can use a pencil tool to draw a "tempo map" which is like a graph of the tempo of the song over time (similar to the graphs in TFA) and the click track will speed up and slow down as you reco
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Even in the 1970s, the producer could speed up and slow down the metronome manually as the song was recorded.
For an extreme example of this (admittedly from the late 80s), listen to Lil' Louis - "French Kiss" ;-)
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.
Re:You can also randomize a few % (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but "randomizing" is not really "humanizing". A good drummer doesn't vary the tempo randomly, tiny tempo changes would go with what feels right for the song. There are many reasons why a particular section of a song might feel better with a slight tempo change. There may be some randomizing going on as well, but that is certainly not the whole picture, or in my estimation the most important part.
Even if you program in slight tempo changes for different sections of the song (which I've done on occasion) there's still an interplay between the different performers trying to stay in sync that causes slight leads and hesitations between different instrument that add to the depth of the music. If everything is quantized that is lost too, and randomizing doesn't bring it back.
I've recorded with and without click tracks for various reasons, and quantized or not for various reasons. Neither is right or wrong, it just depends on what you're trying to create. But there is a lot of depth that comes out of having people playing live together that is nearly impossible to replicate when the recording is highly controlled.
Cheers.
Timing doesn't equal "feel" (Score:5, Informative)
There are at least two types of variation that matter in a drummer's performance: the overall sense of time and the moment by moment variations. The ability of a drummer to play a complete number and keep to a set tempo is really important, particularly in this day and age of digital editing. But it is a common feature of "click track performances" for the drummer to sway ahead of and fall behind of the beat (faster and slower). If done correctly this variance in tempo will add significant life to a performance and such a skill takes a lot of practice to perfect.
The subtle qualities of a drummer's performance go far beyond whether or not they stick to a given tempo for the duration of a number; this is just one variable that effects the quality of a performance. Some genres require a rigid sense (metal/electronica) of time whilst others benefit greatly from its absence (fusion/jazz).
Interesting software however
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: (Score:2)
It's just like pitch (Score:3, Insightful)
Different people hear pitch to different degrees. Some are tone deaf, things can be completely out of tune and they really don't notice, they can't hear it. Others have excellent relative pitch. They can hear if two instruments playing in unison or harmony are in or out of tune to a high degree of accuracy and what the interval is. However they can't tell the tuning of a single pitch on a single instrument played solo. Well there are still others with perfect pitch, that is the ability to tell tuning of a s
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:Consistent Tempo != Click Track (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess some drummers practise with metronomes too.
what about classical music (Score:2, Insightful)
I am just wondering... What would happen to classcal music if they started to use Auto-tune. the whole point of music and excellence would simply disappear on the first occasion of live performance.
What has already happened in case of "popular music". Decades ago.
Just imagine a opera singer going out of sync with others... but wait... that is what live performance is all about, to make avery performance a bit different but not wrong.
It has been proved that holding an beat perfectly makes a music boring, whi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd expect it would sound pretty horrid. The classical instruments have a much looser model of the individual notes' exact frequencies. This is essential to harmonic construction, which is all about ratios. I once read a very good article about this where the author went through a series of calculations for a C chord that produced four different frequencies for the E note above the root C.
Symphonic players have t
"can't do with a click track" (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
Um...really? You can't make a click track gradually change rate over time? Or follow whatever kind of variation you program it to? That's news to me. I thought computers wuz like all smart 'n' stuff.
Britney's Drummer (Score:2)
Funniest thing on the article is even wondering if there was ever a human drummer within a million miles of Britney's "Hit Me Baby", click track or not. Like a large percentage of recent pop music it's clearly 100% sequenced from the bottom up. Not so much recorded against a "click track", but is entirely "click track".
That's not a criticism by the way. Music has room for all methods of recording, and sequencing is a good a method as any. It's the end product that counts.
Not (really) tempo and not editing (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone try Carl Stalling (Looney Tunes) (Score:2)
Get the machine(s) to sync to the drummer ! (Score:2)
One approach I use quite a lot is to record the band live then produce a sync track by getting the drummer to overdub a click track using a MIDI drum pad (i.e. they just hit the pad on the start of each beat). Any half decent sequencer should then be able to use this track to create a "Tempo Map" so the timing will slightly fluctuate as required by the dictates of the song. (I use an old version of Logic on Windows and it works a treat)
You then get the best of both worlds as you can add your MIDI tracks w
Lamere's experiments can't be called "scientific" (Score:2)
Can't they? Why not? He starts out with the hypothesis that music recorded with a preset click track might give a flatter graph that one recorded without. He tests his theory with known examples. He tests his theory with unknown examples and notes that the graphs fall into two pretty distinct sets: ones with small deviations from a straight, flat line, and ones that wander about. There are some examples where a tune is flatlining, and then wanders off for a bit, then drops back again, suggesting that it is
For those who want to play around with this thing (Score:2)
Since the original page is slashdotted, here is the google code project page: http://code.google.com/p/echo-nest-remix/ [google.com].
After installing the proper libraries and tweaking the source code to get it to work, I had to discover that the 'api' sends the music *to the echonest server over http* to analyze the audio track. Which is unreachable, obviously.
not the problem of click tracks (Score:3, Insightful)
it's the recording engineers who drag notes around to fit against the rigid timeline, or else just cut and paste a good take of one verse and make it into all of the verses... The software they have now is just too powerful and they don't know when not to use a fancy feature like dragging individual notes around to "quantize" them
I've had it done to me... my bass notes were dragged around to make them exactly on the beat... and this sounded horrible... took all the feeling out of it... he might have well just used a disc of sampled bass notes and plonked them onto the track
Mark this day down! (Score:2)
Hey, finally, a conversation that I can feel truly involved in (other that the occasional arguments over tech in education).
I am a drummer and I've made TONS of money playing live gigs. I was in a band for three years that played to a click track, but not just for tempo--we played with a sequencer too. The click is practically required to ensure the entire band kicks off together.
The sterile argument is BS. Sterile drumming comes from sterile drummers--click or no. The click doesn't keep you constra
It's all about the organic... (Score:2)
While we're at it, I think the clock in a CPU is just a useless crutch too. A decent processor should be able to handle the subtle emotional variations in timing of a pissed-off windows user!
Q: How do you know there's a drummer at your door?
A: Because the knocking speeds up.
those who say drummers keeping time is sterile... (Score:2)
you're morons who have never played music in your life.
The drummer's job is to keep time. That's what he's there for. Not all drummers are good at it.
If they need a metronome to help keep time, let them. It's incredibly ignorant to say it sounds sterile.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
hehehe, I'm a drummer, but the joke I like the most is: how do you tell if the stage is even? The drummer drools out of both sides of his mouth.
The problem with most music when it comes to drummers is that it is inherently boring. There simply isn't much to do unless you lay down a fairly complicated beat in a strange time. Most musicians (these days) choke if they are presented with anything but 4/4's time. So the drummer, to not fall over with brain hemorrhages, starts to amuse him(her)self with fills and