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

The Crickets

[Techman83]

Around here... I wonder if they are using a click track?

On a serious note, I do like the warmth of older music, and my listening tastes tend to meander around the times between 5 + 30 years before I was born. (Child of the 80's).

As much as a tech nut I am, I still believe there are certain area's in life where it should be left at the door.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[MrMista_B]

Much music now is explicitly shit, and I'm not even 30.

I think you've just explained why.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[Anonymous Coward]

Much music has always been explicitly shit, regardless of when it was made. Go back and take a look at the charts for any year you care to name, and probably 95% of the artists will be people you've never heard of...because they were shit, had their fifteen minutes, and are now long-forgotten.

Re:Sterile? As if it made a difference...

[Anonymous Coward]

the drummer from linkin park spent 8hrs a day for 3 months practiciing to click track before the recording sessions started...and this was for their 2nd album...not the 1st...

what is making things sound sterile is simply crap pop music that is also waaaaay over produced. not being rhythmically correct.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[lkeagle]

I also forgot one other reason click tracks are popular in today's live pop and hip-hop concerts. Turns out it screws up the choreography if you have even minor tempo fluctuations. A slight shift in tempo can make already difficult dance moves even more so.

Re:Sterile? As if it made a difference...

[IANAAC]

Don't worry about click tracks, real musicians with real talent probably don't have any need for them.

Actually, yes, most musicians need some sort of "click track" if they're playing in any sort of ensemble. It's just that in an orchestra or band setting, they're called conductors. In modern rock/pop bands, they're called drummers.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[HonIsCool]

If you start with the drum track then everybody can play along with that recording and there's no need for any click track to keep everything in synch. It can even be the same individual playing all the instruments...

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[cgenman]

Lots of bands that play poorly live sound great on their CD's, and vice-versa. I'd go as far as to say that *most* of the bands that I've liked listening to live have sounded terrible when laid down, and vice-versa.

It's the musician's dillema. Focus on the tricks that make a recording sound good, or focus on the aspects that make a live performance sound good. They're very different sounds.

Of course, I'd guess that the major impetus for getting a click track to the drummer has not been the relentless march of soulless digitization, but simply ticked off guitarists. Sure, we might call it the natural ebb and flow of music, but on stage it is called the drummer screwing everyone else up.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[dotancohen]

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.

That is because the money is not in the music, it is in the music video, accessories, and other bullshit. Just find some beautiful woman to sync to a click track, the alter her voice to actually _sound_good_ and you've got a winner, with no accusations of lip syncing or whatnot.

"can't do with a click track"

[Atario]

From TFA:

One final plot ... the venerable stairway to heaven is noted for its gradual increase in intensity - part of that is from the volume and part comes from in increase in tempo. Jimmy Page stated that the song "speeds up like an adrenaline flow". Let's see if we can see this:

[graph]

The steady downward slope shows shorter beat durations over the course of the song (meaning a faster song). That's something you just can't do with a click track.

Um...really? You can't make a click track gradually change rate over time? Or follow whatever kind of variation you program it to? That's news to me. I thought computers wuz like all smart 'n' stuff.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[Hurricane78]

I think the click track is an abomination, symptomatic of the general micro-managing, nit-picking, perfectionist trend that's been going around in business...

There's your problem. (Emphasis mine.)
It's not "having fun, making music" anymore. It' "cold hard business". When I even hear stuff like "music managers" selecting "target groups" to "monetize" their "product/resource", I'm starting to feel sick. Not that It's not Ok to earn money with your music. But it should not be your dominating factor. By far. Luckily I'm pretty sure, this will not survive P2P file sharing. ;)

it's not about doing it right (the organic flow of an unclicked drum track is "right"), it's about doing it how you're "supposed" to do it.

I know what you wanted to mean, but there is no "right" in arts. If you think the sound that your $5000 synth makes when it crashes on the floor after falling from a high-rise is the perfect sound, then so be it. ;) If you want to have a perfect, maybe even mechanical timing, then that is (well, at least it should be) a artist decision. Where you're definitely right (and what I think you wanted to say), is that it's not an artist decision, but a business one.

Re:You can also randomize a few %

[localman]

Yeah, but "randomizing" is not really "humanizing". A good drummer doesn't vary the tempo randomly, tiny tempo changes would go with what feels right for the song. There are many reasons why a particular section of a song might feel better with a slight tempo change. There may be some randomizing going on as well, but that is certainly not the whole picture, or in my estimation the most important part.

Even if you program in slight tempo changes for different sections of the song (which I've done on occasion) there's still an interplay between the different performers trying to stay in sync that causes slight leads and hesitations between different instrument that add to the depth of the music. If everything is quantized that is lost too, and randomizing doesn't bring it back.

I've recorded with and without click tracks for various reasons, and quantized or not for various reasons. Neither is right or wrong, it just depends on what you're trying to create. But there is a lot of depth that comes out of having people playing live together that is nearly impossible to replicate when the recording is highly controlled.

Cheers.

Re:It's pretty standard these days

[sleigher]

I played in a band and put out 6 albums. We did exactly what you said instead of using a click track. We isolated all instruments in sound proof chambers and just recorded the drums. The drum tracks became that reference. The advantage of this was that the whole band played the song together and the drum tracks reflected that. Then the other instruments laid their parts over top after the fact. We could do punch ins and make good use of digital editing equipment and software. Worked out rather well in my opinion.