Recording to Click (Noob Question)

[digitalmikey]

Alright, so I've been recording for over a year now, mostly without a click. The songs I have written before were quite simple and using a click never came to mind. Maybe because I was just jamming along to drum tracks. Now that I am getting in to some more advanced riffing I want to make sure when I record everything is tight. However, I do not know the first thing of inputting the proper "BPM" for a click.

My question to you fine gentlemen is how would I go about accurately getting a BPM from a riff to adjust my click track?

I'm sure it's quite simple and even more feel like an idiot for asking but oh well. You never learn if you don't ask questions, right?

Any wisdom into the matter will be greatly appreciated.

 

[colynomial]

Play the riff while nodding your head along to it or tapping your foot. Stop playing but keep the pulse going in your brain or keep nodding your head or tapping your foot. Set an arbitrary BPM in your DAW- if it's faster than your head bob/foot tap, decrease the BPM until it matches your bob/foot tap, if it's slower than your head bob/foot tap, increase the BPM until it matches your bob/foot tap. Then play the riff again with the click running just to make sure it feels right. If so, hit record and never record without a click again.

 

[digitalmikey]

Thanks for the tip colynomial!

Any other suggestions guys or did he just pretty much sum it up with how everyone goes about doing this? lol

 

[Nectar-and-Fuel]

Use a tap tempo delay and hit the tap button in time to your playing. It will automatically calculate the tempo.

 

[Everybody]

I have a TAMA metrenome and it has a tap setting, and when you tap the tempo out it tells you what the BPM is....I think they may have something like that for the computer that you can download where you tap the spacebar or something!

 

[DestroyTheColossus]

Just get a metronome. They aren't that expensive. I find it alot easier to figure out the tempo on the metronome and then input it into the DAW. It wouldn't be much of a problem to just use the DAW if the entire song was 1 tempo, but when you start getting into mapping out tempo tracks with multiple changes, it's much easier to have it separate.

 

[JGolden]

If you're on a mac, there is a dashboard widget that I like to use that calculates BPM. You just tap the space bar to the tempo.

 

[Chryst Krispies]

Cubase has a tap tempo calculator built in, I assume some other DAWS have something similar?

 

[digitalmikey]

Yeah, I'm on a Mac.

 

[StoneLord]

here's an online tempo tapper thingie:
http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm

 

[JGolden]

Yeah, I'm on a Mac.

Cool. Here's the link if you're interested.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/music/bpmcounterwidget.html

 

[alan1990]

http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm

 

[chdrummer]

if you use pro tools you can just tap t on the keyboard while your setting the tempo

 

[zackpennington]

Logic has detect tempo features.