[rossanne]

Bit of a controversial one. I've really annoyed sound engineering friends who swear by it. But i hate them and think they make me play like a robot. Maybe i could learn to use them, and maybe my timing is sometimes off. But does that matter?

Please discuss

[Schavuitje]

Hi
Personally I always use one. Ableton Live 8 has one built in. You can turn it off if you want to but when laying down the initial tracks I always use it. After that I tend to turn it off and use the drums and so on as my guide to keeping in time.
I suppose it depends on the type of music you are recording. Some music can really suit sounding free and some not. I guess it's a matter of feel.

[tone]

I don't like to use a click track because like Ross, I feel that it makes me play too mechanically.

Also, the kind of music I write lends itself quite well to a human pace. I only ever use a click if I need to sequence drums or percussion for a recording. The rest of the time I think my sense of timing is good enough to get by, allowing for a nice human feel to the music.

[Dutchbeat]

i always use it.

but only because of my, almost worrying, eighties syntesizer music preference
(I am stuck in Yazoo, even today  )

so, needless to say click track is mandatory for me

but a click track can also be so extremely annoying
when trying to capture feelings
dutchbeat

 

[Nathan1709]

I hate playing to a click and usually fail spectacularly.  What I tend to do is have the guy recording me make a drum beat in the right time signature and tempo, even if the finished track doesn't need drums.  Just something simple and I find that so much easier to follow. 

As a solo performer, keeping perfect time is not something I generally worry about.  I like it to be tight and appear in time but when you are accompanying yourself, it's easy to compensate for minor errors.

[mihkay]

NEVER EVER, NEVER, NO NOT EVER.!  Well hardly ever.

It depends how you classify a click track. If you mean a metronome "Beep ding ding ding" then I never use a click track. I have found that I can't get any expression into my playing. But as I am not a drummer or keyboard player, I use midi for drums, piano, horns, woodwind etc... so I do need to sync my guitar / vocal work to a pulse.

I have found, with a little trial and error, that writing a simple drum pattern (the full pattern is done later) of just hi-hat and snare or kick, to highlight the dynamics of the tune allows me to play in sync but not be mechanical.
1. I play along with the simple pattern and note where it is knocking me out of my groove.
2. I adjust the pattern until it is just enough to groove to, but simple enough as to not distract me. After all it's only there to allow me sync midi stuff to recorded audio.
With practice it normally only takes a couple of times round the loop to get to a point where the "click" track is felt and not heard. But it is worth spending some time doing this. It lets the song define the beat, not the other way around.

Of course this is for recording purposes. To get to this point I really need to have a good feel for the song.

Hope this helps.

Mihkay

[massa]

Dutchbeat: Yazoo are amazing!

Rossanne: I know what you mean, I really feel that for many songs playing to a click track takes away the feeling from a song. I do use it for some songs, but for ones with a lot of emotion I don't use it.

[Sonic-r]

The click track in Logic distracts me, but I find it useful to count me in to the point where I'm going to start recording. Then I try to ignore it.

[seans]

I never use click tracks, but then again I'm not trying to keep in time with anyone/thing else, as I'm just playing solo guitar. If I need to practice a song more and it's particularly fast - I like to practice with a metronome to get it right. But when I'm satisfied with my own timing whilst playing the song, the metronome goes away and I start to work on the feeling in the song and note ornamentation, etc. There's no reason for you to use a click track if you don't want to! For a lot of people it does totally kill the feel.

[The Corsair]

One of the advantages of being in a 4 piece band is that during rehearsal there's 4 peopleto point out when we've gone put of time. For us, after a few practice sessions on a group of songs we stop screwing up the timing. It makes the music decently organic which I think is pretty important...
We also have a drummer and haven't rally worked on any proper acoustic tracks yet so we have solid things going to keep us in time and have no need for a click track...

[Good.Times.Studio.Lincoln]

yes.  I use a click track when I record my music, but I've had to learn how to be really comfortable with a metronome w/o sounding mechanical.  The plus to playing with a click track is that it makes ANYTHING midi and sample related so much easier to work with when it comes time for production and post-production!