Live tracking and click?

[kevin206]

I'm looking for ideas and suggestions regarding clicks and live bands.

Years ago a local studio offered a weekend package where you came in and recorded a 3 or 4 song demo for a low price. You generally setup on Saturday, got levels, tracked your basics live, and started with overdubs. Sunday you would finish up any overdubs, mix, and make any extra copies you needed. At this pace, you didn't really bother with a click. Also, this was on tape, so editing could be a time killer.

I liked doing things this way, but in today's would of DAW, I would like to take advantage of editing. Is there a simple way to track a live band fast? Are most people a slave to the click? How much editing is possible with no grid?

Two real world examples...
1) A friend's band play out a lot and they are pretty tight. I would like to record them doing a few songs, but I would need to get all the tracking done in one session. I could mix at leisure, but getting them all together again would be tough.

2)A band I played in a couple of years ago would like to record. The drummer and myself, bass, could get together without much problem. The singer/guitar player now lives two hours away and his time would be limited. We would be rusty, but could get it together in a few takes...but probably not perfect.

[cgarges]

I've never actually edited anything on a grid. The last time I watched it done, I was amazed at how A) long it took and B) inaccurate it was.

Maybe half my sessions are done with a click track, but if you know what you're doing editing-wise, then editing with or without a click shouldn't matter. Certain things might be a little more consistent with a click track, but any deviation from the click means that edits need to be done with flexibility outside of the grid anyway. I suppose if you're trying to splice between takes or something, the click is helpful for insuring consistent tempos, but I can think of more times than not where splicing between takes wasn't a problem, even without a click.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[vvv]

... if you know what you're doing editing-wise, then editing with or without a click shouldn't matter.

+1

And FWIW, personally, I hate playing to a click.

[Gregg Juke]

Yeah, what those guys said. I just did a live jazz session, but I did a few edits. I defy you to tell me where they are.

Also, speaking of the tape days, I used to be pretty good with a blade, man (spoken with best Robbie Benson voice), but I used to watch this great AE named Mike Brydalski. I would scrub back and forth, slave over edits; this guy would edit drum tracks and full takes by letting tape roll at full speed, holding a grease pencil just over the playback head, and quickly dotting the tape as the section he wanted to cut passed by. He would immediately cut it, and it would be seamless. Pissed me off, but yes, obviously it is quite possible to do without a grid!

If the playing is really loose, click or no, your edit will not work as well as if the groove is tight and on the money. That's just part of the deal. But you can do it by ear (and now, by eye) and you don't need to grid anything.

GJ

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I still do allot of sessions just like the one you described. Sometimes you can run a click but more often than not the band/drummer aren't used to working with one and it will cause more trouble than it's worth. What i find works well is giving them a tempo reference before they start playing and then killing it after the count in. They'll always speed up and slow down in the same spots but a tempo reference will put all the takes in the same ballpark and allow you to edit multiple takes into one final performance.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

P.S. When checking edits of full takes make sure you turn of the screen. It's amazing how seeing the edit will fool you into thinking you can hear it.

[chris harris]

Yeah, the choice of whether or not to use a click track has much more to do with whether or not the band is comfortable playing to a click track than it does with your intentions of editing.

Editing across all tracks is pretty easy, even without a click track. You've typically got drum tracks, and the drum transients give you a good visual indicator for where to make cuts.

But, editing a project that's recorded to the grid is waaaay easier. I don't know what's wrong with the guy that Chris Garges was watching. But, having the cursor snap to the bar or the beats really makes edits go quickly. You obviously have to take it out of grid mode and clean up your edits before crossfading. But, having cuts and moves snap to the grid definitely makes things easier.

I occasionally get jobs where all I'm asked to do is edit drum tracks for an album. The projects that are tracked to a click/grid take about half as long to edit.

[chris harris]

A lot of people avoid edits altogether because of some lame dogma about how music is "supposed to be" recorded. I chose instead to become really fast and good at it. Pardon my immodesty, but I'm really, really fucking good at edits. And, if you're running a commercial recording studio in 2013, where the goal is to pay the bills, and make the clients happy, rather than teaching them how things were done "in the old days", then being great at digital editing is a valuable skill to have.

[cgarges]

But, editing a project that's recorded to the grid is waaaay easier. I don't know what's wrong with the guy that Chris Garges was watching. But, having the cursor snap to the bar or the beats really makes edits go quickly. You obviously have to take it out of grid mode and clean up your edits before crossfading. But, having cuts and moves snap to the grid definitely makes things easier.

I think people often rely on the grid instead of using their ears. In this instance, the take would have been completely fine with a few things bumped around here and there, but the engineer chose to watch the grid and line up anything that wasn't snapped to it. He was also doing things like moving one kick drum hit without the rest of the drum kit, which I find is often WAY more noticeable than actually editing the kit as a whole.

I don't think the choice of whether or not to edit anything specific has to do with the year 2013 or some old method. I think it has to do with aesthetic choices, regardless of time period. At least the people I know who make records like that do it for those reasons. Personally, I prefer not to edit most stuff as I like things to feel natural and organic and part of the reason I don't buy many new records nowadays is because there's a lack of that stuff, which is what excites me. But running a commercial studio, I certainly know how to edit and have done some pretty miraculous things over the years, with a razor blade, a hole puncher, a yard stick, a keyboard, AND a mouse.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[losthighway]

I tend to record people to a click about 15% of the time. For some bands (especially their drummers) it's a big part of their process, and really it's a part of their sound. Just like how for some bands no click is a part of their sound.

Same deal with editing. I tend to favor more organic live takes, but sometimes the magic is grabbing the breakdown from the second take and the outro from the fifth. Sometimes bands finish their songwriting process by doubling or cutting the amount of repetitions in a chord cycle in a digital environment. Better not to have rules.

I can usually cut and paste a dozen or two tracks in the digital by tapping my foot, zooming in on the kick drum (which so often is hit on the 'one'), and cross fading anything that has a lot of sustain. Usually if it's going to work it happens in about 3 minutes, if you're massaging it for 10 minutes and it sounds lame you have to figure out if it's the wrong spot for the cut, or if there is some intense mismatch in tempo.

As with so many things, a well rehearsed band and a really good drummer enables you to do a lot more without it sounding disjointed or phony. It's kind of a paradox that it's often harder to fix things on bands that play poorly together even though they need it (or want it) more.

[Gregg Juke]

The yard stick and the hole puncher I want to hear about!

GJ

[cgarges]

The yard stick and the hole puncher I want to hear about

At 15 or 30 ips, you can figure out how much tape you need to cut kind of quickly or at least find your marking points if you're making a splice a few seconds apart. (With edit points five second apart at 30ips, you're looking for a point that's 150 inches from your start. A half-second edit is fifteen inches, etc.) With a hole puncher, you can SOMETIMES take out clicks and pops on specific tracks IF you're extremely careful.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[losthighway]

With a hole puncher, you can SOMETIMES take out clicks and pops on specific tracks IF you're extremely careful.

That's terrifying.

[kevin206]

Thanks for all the replies! You guys have got my gears turning. I've been listening to some of the local bands that I would like to work with...help...and I'm hearing metal with sloppy drums, drifting tempos in rock, the usual stuff. Of course, I would want to make the best recording I could, and so many people think that a rock steady tempo is a sign of "good" and anything that's not locked in is a fault of the recording.

I hadn't really considered taking "sections" of songs and matching up the best performances. At the most, I've recorded two takes (on tape) and just picked the best drum performance and built up from there. A couple of times I've punched in at a mistake and recorded out the rest of the track. I suppose a cut 'n paste would be a lot easier in a DAW. I'll have to try it. I still tend to think linear!

Most of my editing involves replacing a missed snare hit (rim shot) or something simple, but I'd really like to tighten things up a bit sometimes.

[kevin206]

So, just a recap...maybe use a click as a reference for a lead in, let the band do what a band do, turn off the grid, edit by ear...with a few visual markers, and let it roll...just like tape.

Should I even bother with setting a BPM in my project settings? Not that I work much with keyboards, but can you make this work with MIDI?