I saw a comedian once--I think it was Jerry Van Dyke, Dick's brother--who played his banjo in perfect time while his leg keep going off in completely messed up timing. It doesn't sound funny but it was. Try it--to do it at all is nuts; to do it on national TV must have been a challenge!
Tom
Playing to a click track
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- KVRian
- 1112 posts since 17 Jul, 2003 from Kauai, HI
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- KVRAF
- 8076 posts since 9 Jan, 2003 from Saint Louis MO
In high school when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I had both Jazz Ensemble (Rhodes played half-assed but no worse than the rest of the band) and Chamber Orchestra (I used to kick moderate amounts of ass with a violin). The conductor swore that jazz ruined my rhythm and I couldn't play without a little bit of swing 
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- KVRist
- 478 posts since 18 Mar, 2003 from Champaign, Illinois
One thing I've tried (with reasonably good results) is to chart out tempo changes in advance, and use the Tempo Map feature of my sequencer to create a more human click track.
Record your tune with no click track.. then listen back to it, and take notes. Try to figure out the base tempo, the points where you like to speed up and slow down, and how fast and how slow you go.
Then, set up a new project in your sequencer, with the base tempo set. Record your tune start to finish, playing along with a steady click. It won't sound very natural, but that's okay because you're just going to use this time through to set markers at structural points in the song. (Like intro, verse1, verse2, bridge, etc.).
Then open up the tempo map editor, take a look at your notes, and put in some tempo drift to match. In my host (Cakewalk Home Studio), you can draw lines to have slow drifts in tempo...
Rewind, and play or record along with the drifty click. See if you like it, and keep tweaking the tempo map until you like the feel of it.
It works relatively well... The only MAJOR drawback is that you can't do lazy copy/paste editing of audio later. You can copy/paste midi and tempo-matching audio loops, but regular audio won't match up. So no more fixing the flub in the first verse by copying what you played in the third.
-Garret
Record your tune with no click track.. then listen back to it, and take notes. Try to figure out the base tempo, the points where you like to speed up and slow down, and how fast and how slow you go.
Then, set up a new project in your sequencer, with the base tempo set. Record your tune start to finish, playing along with a steady click. It won't sound very natural, but that's okay because you're just going to use this time through to set markers at structural points in the song. (Like intro, verse1, verse2, bridge, etc.).
Then open up the tempo map editor, take a look at your notes, and put in some tempo drift to match. In my host (Cakewalk Home Studio), you can draw lines to have slow drifts in tempo...
Rewind, and play or record along with the drifty click. See if you like it, and keep tweaking the tempo map until you like the feel of it.
It works relatively well... The only MAJOR drawback is that you can't do lazy copy/paste editing of audio later. You can copy/paste midi and tempo-matching audio loops, but regular audio won't match up. So no more fixing the flub in the first verse by copying what you played in the third.
-Garret
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- KVRAF
- 4683 posts since 6 Jan, 2003
i suck with click tracks. i seem to loose focus very easilly. however, im far more solid with a drum beat...even if its nothing more than a basic 4 count alternating kick and snare. im not sure why that is but i think i've always been this way.Caleb wrote:Does anyone else have these problems at all?
Just wanted to share my pain I guess.
my timing is worse these days than it used to be though. back when i played bass all the time, my timing was good; but then i got into sequencing and got spoiled by quantizing. now im out of practice and my internal sync has atrophied.
-ugo
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- KVRAF
- 1618 posts since 15 Aug, 2001 from montreal, canada
I like that exercise, I do it all the time playing drums to a clap on 2 and 4. It's especially cool when ya do a fill cuz that where a lot of drummers tend to rush the beat more. Good practice.Try this exercise. Play at a slow tempo that is comfortable with clicks on 2 + 4 for example, then play at increasing tempos in increments of 10 bpm. Playing each tempo untill you are comfortable. Continue to the limit of your abilities.
I also like to play with a click on the upbeats (every second 8th notes), very good stuff and it gets funky very fast.
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 4143 posts since 7 Sep, 2001 from Melbourne, Australia
Well I can say that playing to a drum beat worked alot better than to a click track.
The beat itself sucked and the music I'm playing should not be heard with a boring 4/4 drum beat, but it's easier to feel the rythm and be able to keep most of the dynamics of the performance.
Therefore, there's likely to be alot less hazardous midi editing going on afterwards.
This was not just about having difficulty playing to a click track per se, this was about composing something completely without steady rythm reference and playing it over and over again in the way that suited me and then trying to record that being constrained to a non-variable click track.
I think because the click track is so naked I had to pay attention to it and therefore lost the dynamics of my playing leading to a very robotic performance.
A complete drum beat allows me to focus much more on the dynamics keeping in time with the more rigid rythm a little more naturally.
It's still problematic when you were normally intending to slow down or speed up quite a bit, but generally it's better.
Caleb
The beat itself sucked and the music I'm playing should not be heard with a boring 4/4 drum beat, but it's easier to feel the rythm and be able to keep most of the dynamics of the performance.
Therefore, there's likely to be alot less hazardous midi editing going on afterwards.
This was not just about having difficulty playing to a click track per se, this was about composing something completely without steady rythm reference and playing it over and over again in the way that suited me and then trying to record that being constrained to a non-variable click track.
I think because the click track is so naked I had to pay attention to it and therefore lost the dynamics of my playing leading to a very robotic performance.
A complete drum beat allows me to focus much more on the dynamics keeping in time with the more rigid rythm a little more naturally.
It's still problematic when you were normally intending to slow down or speed up quite a bit, but generally it's better.
Caleb
Happiness is the hidden behind the obvious.
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- KVRist
- 495 posts since 5 Sep, 2002 from Boston, Mass
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but sometimes the sequencer is the problem as well..
Until I worked the kinks out of Sonar, I thought I had lost 14 years of live playing in 2 weeks, because the crap I was recording would have ensured no percussionist would have ever allowed me in their groups
Once I tightened the sequencer up, my stuff became much more 'tight'
Until I worked the kinks out of Sonar, I thought I had lost 14 years of live playing in 2 weeks, because the crap I was recording would have ensured no percussionist would have ever allowed me in their groups
Once I tightened the sequencer up, my stuff became much more 'tight'
If it sounds good it is good.