Click tracks & slight tempo variations. How do you do it?

[nuclearass]

We're getting ready to record a couple of new songs with our band and I've been doing click tracks for the songs. Basically the tempo is about 185 for most of the song, but somehow it feels more natural to play it with guitar if some slower parts are a bit slower and the faster parts a bit higher.

Do you sometimes or always make slight tempo variations in the song and can they be heard in the end result? For example, if you play the riff with a faster drum beat first and then the same riff with a slower beat, do you keep the exactly same tempo all the way or is it ok to slow it down a couple of bpm (from 185 to 182). I tried this yesterday with only 1 guitar track and couldn't hear the tempo change when I played back the track without the click, but do these slight tempo changes become audible when there are drums, bass, more rhythm guitars etc...

.Antti

 

[kaomao]

no that's ok, I got a lotof songs with tempo variations and you won't notice the end result as long it's natural.

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Yeah it's common to do this

 

[nuclearass]

Ok. Thanks for the info guys. Have you noticed how big the changes can be until they are not clearly noticable if the tempo is around 180-190. Is there a general rule, like a certain percentage... The changes I currently have are around +/- 3 bpm, but I'm just afraid that the changes become too audible if I make them more drastic... I guess I could go +/- 5 bpm.

 

[greyskull]

2- 5 BPM.
its more of a 'feel thing really, for a bit of groove and behind the beat lazyness slow it down,
for more energy and excitment, speed it up

 

[sparkyness]

I always pump my choruses up about 2 or 3 bpm, and vary speeds slighty (0.5 to 1 bpm) every few bars from the base tempo depending on the feel needed.

It can create problems if you copy & paste guitar parts from one verse or chorus to another, but I don't do this for my stuff.

 

[Daunt]

We write our songs without a click track. When we start to program the click, there's usually shitloads of tempo changes. Not always, but some songs can have like six different tempos. Our producer was pretty amazed, because he haven't had noticed these tempo changes from our demos