Hiding Your Click Track

May 21, 2009

By nickwan

Wtf, no video on the front page?

wittner_metronome

Sometimes, and I don’t know why this is, you can completely tell when a band has used a click track or not. Some bands are completely for it. Umbrellas use a click track and it doesn’t seem to bother them. Their click track actually is hidden under this whimsical backtracks. Some bands need them. Minus the Bear plays to a click track when you see Erin (the drummer) wearing those headphones. No, it’s not a fashion statement like the ever-so-popular Linkin Park guitarist. But timing those beepboop sounds that Minus the Bear uses to their musical splash is necessary, especially when two guys are playing their samples with their feet and the other one, Alex, is trying to coordinate the back track with all of it.

And then there are bands that use it horribly and don’t use it. At a show, a new local band was playing their highly technical songs, much akin to the Russian Circles type music (another click track loving band). Of course, without the track behind you, you have to rely on your drummer’s internal metronome. Some drummers are just machines. Some jazz bands that I’ve witnessed have no click track and yet their drummer is able to stay at a solid tempo while doing all this work about his drums. Back to this local band… mediocre music mixed with a poor timing live creates a show of disaster. Stopping too late or too early, missing cues, being a beat behind… it’s all miss and not a lot of hit.

Before I talk about hiding the click track, I might have lost a few people so I’ll try to get them back now. We’ve talked about a metronome and how a metronome is a machine that sets a specific beat per minute (bpm) and sticks with it for however long you want to play to it. It’s useful for solo artists who start getting really into their solo but lose interest in the time they are playing in. The head bobbing idea of music is that you’re getting into a predictable groove that makes you wonder what’s next. If you’re speed of playing, your bpm, is inconsistent it becomes harder to get into the groove mindset and throws the music possibly off-balance if your transition was not smooth enough. In an example, think of someone playing the piano and randomly speeding up their piece in the middle. It might be more interesting for the player, but it’s not ideal for the listener. Now extrapolate that to a 5 piece rock band. The music might not be as intricate but now you have to rely on everyone to play in sync. The drummer usually keeps a constant beat, but who keeps the drummer in check when the song is a little more complicated? A click track helps.

Now, back to how to cover a click track in a song. The common way to do it now in the digital world is have a click track and then just delete the track before the sum. Some times, however, the clicking noise adds something to the song. It’s like a song with handclaps… why are they there? Why are they so catchy? Think of Kevin Devine’s “Ballgame” without the hand clapping… you would definitely lose the groovy feel of the song, even if the song itself hasn’t been altered by much if the claps were removed. The idea behind keeping things like hand claps in is definitely to add that other layer of sound to the song, but some songs hide this even deeper. Using Umbrellas’ song “Boston White” you can clearly hear the oscillating hum of a keyboard or a synth in the intro of the song. Although faint, this synth sound actually resonates throughout the entire song. What it’s adding to the song is a really faint oscillating hum that you recognize throughout the entire song. It doesn’t really hit you until you realize that a lot of songs lately have been produced to include these hybrid backtracks.

A way that many DJs actually have been using these hybrid backtracks have been pretty innovative in what can be done in the not-so-electronical world. The idea of breaking the wall of the backtrack, as in messing with it in some ploy to focus the listener back into the song, is something that is rising in popularity. DJs have been mixing and breaking beats down since their inception, but not until recently have they been attacking the records that have been always spinning, proverbially. Hearing little murmurs and breaking beats, completely muting the track for a split second, or abruptly stopping and continuing with something very similar but removed somehow is becoming something that will soon be implemented into some production techniques in sheds around the world. To hone this technique, I will try to play around with some remix-sounding stops and starts for the new stealth project Ryan Tamborski and I have begun. Maybe it’ll see the light of day… maybe not.

Tags: bear, circles, claps, click, devine, hand, kevin, last, minus, Record Reviews, russian, shed, shedaluma, studiotalk, the, track, umbrellas, unicorn