Five Unarguable Reasons to Use Click Tracks
Click aka metronome is a tool that gives you a tempo. It can play half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes etc. for you to keep a certain tempo. It is designed to be a helpful tool, but some people don’t like it. They simply don’t like playing with it. They say it kills the mood and the creativity. Click makes everything lifeless and there’s no room for grooving, right? Well, not quite. Here are five reasons you should use click tracks.
- Recording multiple instruments one at a time becomes much easier. Compared to not using a click, it’s effortless to record multitrack songs when the song is locked to the grid. You don’t have to guess what the timing of the first instrument was. Of course there is the other possibility to record all at once. Unfortunately, for that you’ll need a bigger space, more mics, cables and preamps, and players to play everything at the same time. I have to record my own music one instrument at a time since it’s me alone. I’m guessing that might be the case for you too.
- Editing and arranging goes much more smoothly. Editing is a breeze as you can visually see where the waveforms “should be”. In every DAW, the bars and beats are marked so it’s easier to perceive everything (grid). For example you can cut a track in half straight from bar two, beat three if you want to. Playing around with the arrangement afterwards is a possibility, even though everything is already recorded. Suddenly changing the whole arrangement is no problem at all. Again, this is because everything is locked to the grid.
- Metronome reveals timing problems in your tracks. It prevents you from playing badly. You will notice instantly if the timing of a track is off. This makes you save some serious time as you don’t have to record same instruments all over again when you notice they’re played a bit off time. All in all, playing to click makes your tracks sound more professional.
- Click track provides you a groove to play to. Unlike commonly thought, a click track gives you the space to actually be creative. Since the click is beating down quarter notes, you’ll know exactly where they are. You don’t have to spend any energy to think about the timing. Instead, the click track frees you to play in between the quarter note hits more freely and therefore create the groove you want.
- Click makes it possible to use backing tracks on live shows. Whether you’re playing by yourself or with a band, you can use backing tracks as long as they are played to the click. When playing with a band, at least a drummer needs to hear the click. This way the backing tracks and the players stay in sync. It’s something that has to be practiced beforehand, but there’s another surprising upside: the next time you’ll start recording, the drummer already knows how to play to the click!
There you have it, the five reasons why click is your good friend. Click track makes your songs sound more professional and you can exploit the benefits in live shows too. After all the praise and hype, I must say that click is a good slave, but a bad master: it’s just a tool.
Download my complimentary guides 5 Steps to Create Music Faster and 6 Step Guide to Realistic Midi Drums to get more amazing free and helpful content.
