recording with outta Click track

[Jayoel]

I got a band that wants to record with out click. any advice ?
and examples of albums with out clicks.
can it really sound good if they are out of time.

I'm bit worried as I'm the type that likes to record in time with click and spend hours making sure everything perfecting in time and quantized.

But this band wants a live sound.

[Craig F]

make them record to a click or at least loop beds

lots of big live acts play to click or beds live

[andydunham]

It really depends on what the artist wants. If they say they want a more live feel, tracking them all at once isn't a bad idea. Or at least tracking the drums and using amp simulators to play along to, then re-tracking the guitars/bass. I just recently talked with the head engineer for Jack White and he said the new Raconteurs album was tracked live and not to a click. Also, Jack's new band "The Dead Weather" tracked without a click as well. Typically to get a quality result recording without a click you're going to need very solid players. Hopefully they realize the end result of their project with you is directly related to how well they play!

[basslik]

Originally Posted by andydunham

It really depends on what the artist wants. If they say they want a more live feel, tracking them all at once isn't a bad idea. Or at least tracking the drums and using amp simulators to play along to, then re-tracking the guitars/bass. I just recently talked with the head engineer for Jack White and he said the new Raconteurs album was tracked live and not to a click. Also, Jack's new band "The Dead Weather" tracked without a click as well. Typically to get a quality result recording without a click you're going to need very solid players. Hopefully they realize the end result of their project with you is directly related to how well they play!

forget the band, other than the drummer, just send a click to the drummer, the rest will never know.

[Digitopian]

There are quite a few ways to deal with this scenario but rather then list them all, i'll just tell you how I went about it the last time this came up, and believe me it comes up a lot. Sometimes the drummer cant play to a click, or isn't used to it. sometimes there are so many tempo changes that an extensive tempo map has to be created, but sometimes budget won't allow for that much time to be spent simply building a click. Sometimes the band wants a live feel and have had their previous efforts beat detectived to the point of it sounding sterile to them. If you can set this up I would have the drummer play with the guitarist and or bassist coming in directly in one way or another. a D.I. for the bass, and a pod, or amp sim plugin, for the guitarist. anything that is good enough to keep the vibe going. If you have enough isolation to mic up an actual amp then go for it. You can even have the vocalist lay down a scratch track in an iso booth or the control room at the same time. It really doesnt matter because in the end these tracks will be replaced.

Ok, so now you have a performance recorded. Call it a day. once the band leaves use identify beat or beat detective to determine the average tempo. once you have that figured out, you'll have your grid. now take The first kick from the first Down beat and with all tracks grouped together and put that kick right at the start of the bar... say bar 5 for example. Now the idea isn't to take the drums and beat detective them into a dead on lock to the grid. Doing that will definately kill the live feel. instead use elastic audio and just go through and get the kicks and snares in on the grid. Particularly in problem areas. the idea is to kind of massage the drums a little as opposed to hard quantization. So you will be dropping the warp markers by hand as needed to get those kick and snare hits on or close to the grid. Not neccesarily all of them. Really it's the idea of less is more. Obviously you will have to observe all the normal rules for using EA. You're just not gonna use quantize. It may be best to determine the tempo for each section of the song and adjust each section accordingly. it really depends on how solid the drummer is to begin with, but again the idea is to adjust the timing just enough so that it feels in time, but doesn't lose the drummers original feel. The less you have to move around the better. There is actually a great video by kenny Giola on using elastic audio. and there is a specific section regarding working with drums that weren't cut to a click. I highly suggest checking this out. Anyway, thats the gist of it. When the musicians come back start tracking the rest of the parts to the slightly enhanced drums. I hope this helps. I know my explanation was probably a bit shaky but I hope you get the idea.

[robo6675]

Let them track without a click. If they aren't used to playing to a click, the whole session will go south FAST. If they can live with some tempo pushing and pulling, I say just let it go.

[The Dougfather]

If the band are good and they don't want a click then it shouldn't be a problem. If anything it will highlight just how tight a band they really are.......or are not????

Having said that i've recorded acoustic outfits before and then later on they've wanted to add percussion. Turned out to be impossible because of the tempo drift, although subtle just threw the drummer out every time, we ended up totally redoing some of the tracks. I would explain the pro and cons, it's the ability to add staff later on that makes the click so invaluable for me.

[Jamtime]

Playing without click should be preferable, that's what brings life to music. Musicians trying to catch up with the click is the worst thing that could happen!

As already said, they got to know how to play and to be tight. And if they don't sound tight together I would guess they are going to have some problem with the click as well.

Ofcourse the genre plays a role and the aspect mensioned of adding material later.

[rwhitney]

I prefer tracking rock music without click to avoid the mechanical sounding regularity that results. A good headphone mix is important, esp. for the drummer, and have the singer do a guide track along with the band for continuity.

If needed, you can create a click track, or grid, after tracking, using Beat Detective. That way you could align certain points with, say the drums, visually. I usually align only the worst spots and don't bother with creating a click unless the drummer's the one who's missing from the first tracking session. In such a case, I create a click based on something like guitar or keyboard for the drummer to play to (and align in PT) later.

[stainless]

With bands that have been together, if their preference is no click... then no click. I do reinforce that any changes that result in tracking the drums is where problems typically occur- If the drummer can play to a click, then i send it just to him/her.

If I'm working with a singer/songwriter who wants instruments added (but doesn't have a band, a click is a must, otherwise everyones guessing where the tempo leads and lags

In the band that I a member of- any song that has either a tendency to drag or run away, we'll start with a click, otherwise we'll record it "live", putting the guitar, bass, and keys in direct, isolate whoever is singing and get a couple of takes, unless everyone is happy with any specific one (first or otherwise.... it's usually obvious)

we will then retrack the vocals to get rid of drum bleed, and retrack any instruments that are felt to need that, rather than a amp sim

as mentioned above, if they've not played to a click it can be a disaster and waster a lot of time.

I was in a band that went into the studio and discovered that the drummer could not play to a click and he played behind the beat- the rest of us had learned to compensate....

he was shortly thereafter replaced