A first for me

Scorpio, I totally understand your feelings. I would've done the same. You handled it nicely though.

I did a demo for a friend of mine, just for fun. I'd got some new AKG mics to try out on drums (c214 and the D40)and they wanted three songs recorded. We just did it in one day, for the heck of it.

The drummer played really well, but he lost the click immediately so I said, "fuck it, go old school, let it fluctuate". We only had one day, remember? I liked it, because the drummer was the click. When he didn't play, we made a click in the tempo they played the song. It took an extra minute, but sounded really natural.

What I really want to say with this is that I really disagree with the "if you can't play with a click, I'm not touching it" - philosophy. Not that I'm dissing any of you, 'cause I'm not.

I forgot: The new AKG's sounded really good btw. ;)
 
i agree with thedude here.. but really only when the band is good enough and the looser feel is best for the band's style... i'd still RATHER have them play to a click... a good drummer knows how to groove around a click... but i wouldn't just turn down say, a good stoner rock band that just can't play to a click if they play damned fine without one. in my example above, tracking to a click was necessary and was agreed upon by everyone... and the drummer had more than ample time to prepare.
 
One thing I've found helps but isn't an option all the time... If the band you are recording are remotely recording savvy and have made preproduction demos and stuff with programmed drums, try getting the drummer to play along with that instead of a click+scratch guitars. The drummer in the metalcore band I was in had a really hard time playing to a click. We recorded the whole album to a click except for one song. That song took like 10 tries with a click before we decided to try without it and guess what? That was the only song that he nailed first try with no mistakes. A few months after that I started buying up recording gear and we were trying it out at the rehearsal space and he had NO problems whatsoever playing along to our preproduction demos that had programmed drums and it made us wish we had done that for the album. The one song on the album that was done without a click sounds tighter and more natural than the rest because our drummer was concentrating on trying to follow the click and it was messing with his feel. So, don't necessarily automatically discredit a drummer if playing to a click is a bit foreign to them!

In the OPs situation though, fuck those guys haha... Sounds like you were dealing with some real winners there, feel sorry for you dude!
 
OzNimbus said:
On the issue of click:

I've certainly taken some flak over the years for insisting on a click. But, every band that's given me a hard time has always thanked me in the end, saying something like "wow, that made us waaaay tighter."
Click to expand...
yeah, that's the norm for me as well.... i find that drummers that have never done it are afraid of trying... so they come up with every excuse in the book.... but if it's decided by everyone that click is the way to go, and the drummer has to play to the click, they end up loving it and thanking me... that is, if they don't get their pink slip, ;)

playing to a click doesn't make a drummer play "stiff" or "without feel".... not knowing how to play to a click and trying without enough practice, half-heartedly, fearfully, and/or with a bad attitude for it is what makes drummers play stiff and without feeling to click tracks. most any decent drummer though, with anywhere from one week to one month to practice (depending on the individual and the demands of the music style), will learn how to play well and naturally and with great feel to a click, and will embrace it as an anchor for their playing, and not a cage.
 
people you`re hiting a sore spot here.a friend of mine who owns a small studio asked me to record a guitars for a band i played in 12 years ago."Why not?"i said,i usually do not have an oportunity to record metal(i work on state tv station so my focus has been mostly on pop,folk,classical and choir music),it will be good and i hoped at the time pleasant experience,i will help a friend of mine and gain some experience.He recorded drums and bass.drums were recorded mostly without click
bass followed the drums somehow but when guitars came into picture to be recorded oh dear mother of God what a mess.:yell:
the guy who is shall i say alfa and omega of the band(bass player)told me a few days before we started recording that he rehearsed with the band for a year and that they were kicking ass.i believed him although i knew him from the time we used to play together,and he always had strange standards regarding rhythm(he manges while playing to tap his feet in one ,swing his head in second and play bass in third tempo???),tightness in playing,and concept more is less was realy strangely interpretaded by him.so alfa and omega was really pleased how the drums turned out so i had to leave them as they were.Next problem i`ve had was the guitar sound.We had Marshall JCM 2000 and some suspicious looking Gibson Les Paul Studio with EMG`s but the sound just wasn`t right.it was too boomy my guess is that room was just too small
and not well treated acoustically + that same room is used as a practice place for a lot of bands,so there was no way to keep that box in same place.i have tried to make markers on floor where the box used to be but next day they would not be there.i suggested them to try some other options like POD,VOX Tonelab or VAMP(i actually got a decent tone out of the last one and they said that its perfect,but they said it now but not then)but i shall quote guitarist"common man you want me to record my guitar through some plastic boxes,that is so not metal."i agreed with him and then tried to explain to him that we`ll probably end up with diffrent sound on every song and that in this situation is better to record this way.no he wouldnt listen(he guessed that he will look bad in front of his friends if he recorded a single note through some amp modeler).i hoped that he was so stuborn `cause he is good player but hell no.i will post some screenshots later to see the agony of mine.there was no way to do a punch in because drums were not played to click,and i would get a glitch everytime i did it so i had to do a mute automation.anyway a year later and we managed to record one rhythm guitar and most of the solos and i`m not even thinking of recording second one,i will take a di track through some amp modeling software and fake the second rhythm guitar(i guess that you dont normaly do this but any suugestions on this one?)i know that i will look bad and probably be the scape goat at the end but i started to eat this shit and i will finish it to the end.the situation now is that i`m recording two solos because the second guitarist is too busy.i should have done this much later.
 
thanks for your replies and support....i guess there's no getting to guys who refuse to use hi hats or even stick taps or a click track for timing. I will call my friend in a day or two to find out how the session finally finished....if finished.
 
Why couldn't you match the click to the drums afterwards? I've done this loads of times.

To be honest as far as clicks are concerned I don't really care one way or the other. A band that can't play tight will never sound good click or no click. Nowadays I just adopt a policy of "no recording experience? Then we're tracking this all live" which tends to remove the problem somewhat as the band should at least be accustomed to playing together. Of course you do still get bands made up of kids that don't know or understand anything other than what THEY play individually... And bassists that don't even learn the songs before recording....

Anyways. There's a time and a place for learning to play to a click and seperating up the recording process and that really isn't in your first and only day in the studio.
 
I agree with Oz on this one.
Insisting on a click will quickly weed out people that are not serious and will waste time.

Another idea is to get them to record pre-production demos on a cheap cassette or something and then build your click or midi drum track based on that stuff. Then have the drummer come in and track along with the click/midi. When you have tight drum tracks, bass and guitar tracks are easy!
 
James Murphy said:
playing to a click doesn't make a drummer play "stiff" or "without feel".... not knowing how to play to a click and trying without enough practice, half-heartedly, fearfully, and/or with a bad attitude for it is what makes drummers play stiff and without feeling to click tracks. most any decent drummer though, with anywhere from one week to one month to practice (depending on the individual and the demands of the music style), will learn how to play well and naturally and with great feel to a click, and will embrace it as an anchor for their playing, and not a cage.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%, sorry if I came across otherwise in my post. My drummer had little to no experience playing along with just a click and he had a hard time playing along with it because he was too busy concentrating on trying to follow the click that he couldn't focus on his playing. A bit of practice with it though and a click track is definitely the best solution for anyone, playing any type of music.
 
PhilR said:
Why couldn't you match the click to the drums afterwards? I've done this loads of times.

.
Click to expand...
you're a better man than me. if the drummers timing is off then i dont see how doing it without chopping the drums up would work. and if you chop acoustic drums it sounds unnatural after awhile.
 
Not to mention drummers that don't play to a click usually are all over the place tempo-wise, so have fun inserting like 30 tempo changes per song! :ill:
 
Well, matching the click to a track is fairly easy, if that's the problem. DOwnload Drumagog demo, use it to create a midi track, then make your daw use this midi track as a tempo track. Cubendo has such function and i think every daw may have it too. Or just tap something with a keyboard if you can't get drumagog. (make sure to charge for the extra work!)

I didnt read the original post with much attention, but if the the problem was areas with no drums, nothing as a tempo guide, just let the guitarist record the part, them slide the drums to the exact area they start playing with the guitars. Done that a million of times to bad bands.
 
Plenty of music has been made without clicks too, I think the problem lies in substandard musicians. My drummer can play as tight as cubendo's gui can show to the click, but when he goes off of it, I'll turn it off and just play to his feel of the song. It's never a clusterfuck or way out of time, its just non-finite push-pull to flow with the changes in the song. Good musicians should be able to do either, I mean we've done non click stop starts for years in rehersals, you gotta be able to lock in with each other though. Musicianship and chemistry I think are far more important.

Unfortunately for studio producers/recorders/engineers that means more work ;) But I record him through midi anyways.
 
Scorpio, you did the right thing in my opinion.

Also, on a slightly related note, do you guys tell the band to create the click-tracks themselves or do you sit down with them and create it with them?
 
interesting story,

once when i was recording my brother (drummer in my band), i had prepared guitar tracks and a click track at my house before we went into the studio to record his drums. we had a song that was about an 8:30 instrumental with multiple tempo changes. as we're recording, he tells me that he can't tell whats going on in his headphones and tells me to turn off the guitar tracks so he can ONLY hear to the click track! i was pretty reluctant because i was sure he'd get lost in the song.

so i take out everything except the click and hit record. we of course in the control room were listening to the full mix with guitars bass and drums, and from start to finish he pretty much nailed every part and it was surprisingly tight! i really couldn't believe it, i had to keep checking back to his headphone mix making sure he was only hearing the click! now i'm not saying they were the greatest drums ever played, and we did overdub a few tom fills here and there, but i was pretty impressed.
 
Next time, give me a call and tell them I'm Metal Jesus. Even if nothing else, having someone else take the flak and look like an asshole by saying the not-so-nice things that need to be said might help.

Jeff
 
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