Detecting Click Tracks

jamie found a blog entry by Paul Lamere, working for audio company Echo Nest, in which he experiments with detecting which songs use a click track. Lamere gives this background: "Sometime in the last 10 or 20 years, rock drumming has changed. Many drummers will now don headphones in the studio (and sometimes even for live performances) and synchronize their playing to an electronic metronome — the click track. ...some say that songs recorded against a click track sound sterile, that the missing tempo deviations added life to a song." Lamere's experiments can't be called "scientific," but he does manage to tease out some interesting conclusions about songs and artists past and present using Echo Nest's developer API.

Comments

It's pretty standard these days

[spliffington]

It's required to make use of drum editing and multitrack syncing. If I were to record garage rock album i would throw everyone in the same room and just play the songs. However to leverage much of the flexibility and power of a digital recording you need a click.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[Technician]

If I were to record garage rock album i would throw everyone in the same room and just play the songs. However to leverage much of the flexibility and power of a digital recording you need a click.

I record garage bands. You don't need a click track for multi-track recording. Take a demo tape and use it to get the drummer to play his track. Use the drummer as the click track for the rest of the sessions. A click track is not needed for multi-track digital recording. I add the wet tracks last after recording all the dry tracks for final mixdown.

The only click track used for this is just a tempo 1 measure lead in to get the drummer started on a new tempo.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[Artifice_Eternity]

Because you're not throwing everyone in a room together. You're likely recording different parts separately, and doing multiple takes, then taking the best takes of each part -- or the ones that go together best -- and mixing them after the recording's done. You can also go back and add new parts if you decide they're needed, or change a part, without re-recording the whole thing. And you can even rearrange portions of the song -- cutting a verse or chorus, moving sections around, etc.

In order to do all of this, you have to have all musicians performing to an absolutely constant tempo.

Also, much music now explicitly incorporates electronic sounds that are sequenced -- synth arpeggios, drum machine patterns, etc. These are always precisely timed. Everyone else needs to be able to match them.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[jrumney]

I guess you missed the article a month ago on Auto-Tune software, or you'd have already had an idea why most music today is bland shit.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[rivaldufus]

It's not just bands now, either. Modern film scores use a click track. Some of my friends play film scores as freelancers (they are professional, classically trained musicians) - and they've all reported having to use a click track.

The "conductor" is mostly used to notify them which section to play... as most of the music doesn't merit actual rehearsal time. The conductor does get to watch the film during the session, however.

It's pure torture for the musicians... to make it worse, the "conductors" will sometimes say, "Wow! I wish you guys could have seen that scene!"

With all the attention to digital synchronization, some people seem to have forgotten to write and play decent music on occasion. Most film scores these days seem to rip-offs of other film scores or semi-quotes from classical works (John Williams, I'm looking at you.) As great as the radio and recorded music has been, I sometimes feel that it has killed music.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[Anonymous Coward]

That might have been true a decade ago. I went to a Pro Tools seminar a couple of years back, and one of the very first things the guy showed us how to do was to set up a tempo map to match the subtle shifts in tempo on music recorded without a click track. Once that is done, music recorded without a click track can be edited just as easily as music done to a click track.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[Dr. Smoove]

rofl, no shit... moon was a hack. I haven't played in years but every drummer i knew usually made fun of keith moon for sounding like a drunken ape. My favorite modern drummer is probably adam deitch. That's just cause I like funk and jazz, but if you're interested, check out N'Yack off "Live in Tokyo" by Lettuce. Not only is the drum track superb, but every other track is sick, and it's live.

Timing doesn't equal "feel"

[whichpaul]

I'm an experienced drummer and I play regularly with, and without, click tracks; I can tell you that the assumption that "feel" or "groove" is only present when a drummer's time varies is not accurate.

There are at least two types of variation that matter in a drummer's performance: the overall sense of time and the moment by moment variations. The ability of a drummer to play a complete number and keep to a set tempo is really important, particularly in this day and age of digital editing. But it is a common feature of "click track performances" for the drummer to sway ahead of and fall behind of the beat (faster and slower). If done correctly this variance in tempo will add significant life to a performance and such a skill takes a lot of practice to perfect.

The subtle qualities of a drummer's performance go far beyond whether or not they stick to a given tempo for the duration of a number; this is just one variable that effects the quality of a performance. Some genres require a rigid sense (metal/electronica) of time whilst others benefit greatly from its absence (fusion/jazz).

Interesting software however ... I'm tempted to have a play with it.

Re:Consistent Tempo != Click Track

[Paul Lamere]

Nate4D - I'd love to run the analysis on your church band to see if we tell the difference from your drummer and a click track. Send me a URL to a recording and I'll generate the plot. Paul at echonest.com.

Re:what about classical music

[87C751]

I am just wondering... What would happen to classcal music if they started to use Auto-tune.

I'd expect it would sound pretty horrid. The classical instruments have a much looser model of the individual notes' exact frequencies. This is essential to harmonic construction, which is all about ratios. I once read a very good article about this where the author went through a series of calculations for a C chord that produced four different frequencies for the E note above the root C.

Symphonic players have the ability to "bend toward consonance". Auto-tuning these notes to their absolute frequency would introduce a dissonance that would sound at least different, and at worst awful.