Click/Guide Track Workflow [REAPER]

[Sloan]

I've been working with a band lately and it's been absolute hell getting clicks and guides together for the drummer. I don't think they have ever taken the time to do this on previous recording efforts and even though I keep stressing the importance of having solid guides, they still seem to be frustrated as it 'feels' like we are wasting a bunch of time.

I have been working with the guitar player and drummer - they are the core songwriters. I had them run through the songs live, then went through each part, laid a new tempo marker at every section/time change, then slip edited both drums and guitar to fit the guides. I then had the guitar player re-track each section to verify it 'felt' correct. Of course when the drummer played along he found sections that were too short/long. So I had to go back in, chop up the NEW guitar track and modify the tempo etc...

Eventually tracked some drums and now i'm going back through editing and it still feels all over the place - I believe because the guitar playing is pushing/pulling against the click quite a bit. So I'm now chopping up the guitar track and ensuring it hits exactly on the click, then editing drums to the click and playing back to ensure the proper groove and tightness is there.

Needless to say, I feel we have not been using our time efficiently and would like some input on building better/faster clicks and guides.

 

[luismars]

It's the playing tight enough to record without a click?

In theory you want to extract the mean time of the section so the begining and the end it's the same, so number of beats/length of the section. If their tempo fluctuates too much it's not your fault, they suck.

I hope I understood your problem right

 

[infectdsniper]

i just tap tempo each new part with the guitarist while doing guitar scratches. it takes me around 10 min longer than the song is typically and the drums always go smooth as long as hes in the room air drumming while we do guitar scratches to verify tempo.

 

[FarBeyondMetal]

My suggestion is to program the tempo and tempo changes before recording scratch tracks. Then record the scratch tracks to a click and slip edit them to be dead motherfucking on. Then track the drummer to the click and inhumanly tight scratch tracks.

Seems to work well for me, maybe that helps.

 

[Sloan]

I think the primary issue was not editing the scratch guitar to the click. It 'sounded' tight, but there were little slides or long notes that threw me off when creating the original click. I'm into editing drums on a few songs and it's definitely bringing to light the sloppy parts of the guitar track, but at least it's workable. The drumming is actually really really tight (thank the lawd!), it's just the guitar was kind of throwing him off it seems

There are a lot of tempo changes in all of these songs, it's been four days and we only just have gotten the drums tracked on 7 of 8 songs. I'm looking for ways to speed this up as it totally sucks having the musicians wait around while i look like a dumbass adjust the click all week.

 

[FarBeyondMetal]

Haha I feel your pain I've been there with so many similar situations.

One thing that I have found that helps is to have the drummer present when the tempos and scratch tracks are being recorded. That way there are no tempo change requests later on(hopefully). Then edit the fuck out of the scratch track so if the drummer can't nail his shit there is no excuse other than he sucks a big donkey schlong.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Latest Version (released today) has major improvements to tempo and time signature functions.

http://reaperblog.net/reaper-4-25-update

 

[Sloan]

^great, i'll def check that out...

 

[ZanetheVocalist]

One thing that I have found that helps is to have the drummer present when the tempos and scratch tracks are being recorded.

I learned this the hard way. Had just 1 guitarist come in to do scratch guitar tracks and ending up having to double the tempo by drummer's request.

 

[Pickasso]

This might seem off topic a bit, but you should also verify that there are no problems with latency, either playback or monitoring latency in Reaper. If the player plays the parts perfectly precise to the clicks, and the playback latency is off, it will never sound on time when played back unless by just sheer luck. As you add tracks the off time effect gets worse,
Everything becomes so much easier to track and much more precise if you have the latency sorted out in Reaper.

Check out this interface latency page:
http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/How_to_Compensate_for_Interface_Latency

Read it very thoroughly and do the adjustments (if you haven't already)
The other side of the coin, if you're not micing real amps, figure out how to get the player a Zero latency monitoring feed. Many interfaces have this feature.

 

[Sloan]

^this is a very good thing to remember anytime timing is discussed. I actually went through a few months back to check up on everything and have noted different settings for when i am using either headphones or monitors. It's pretty tight now. I haven't had any trouble with the drummer, he's doing really good as far as nailing the click. We just finished tracking all drums yesterday which is a big relief.