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How to introduce click tracks to your band

March 6, 2009 by 14 Comments

nude_tempomapWhy use a click?

I don’t want to assume we all know and appreciate the benefits of a click so I figured I’d start here. A click insures your band plays a song in the correct time and keeps your band in the correct time through the duration of the song.

Without using a click it’s very easy to mess up both, either you start the song too slow or fast or you speed up and slow down in the middle of the song. Additionally, now that your band is all synced to perfect time you can use loops or visual effects like a timed lyric presentation.

How do you start using a click?

1. Your Drummer must get comfortable

If your drummer has never played with a click or a metronome before this can be a difficult transition. You’ll quickly discover how good or bad your time is. Some drummers have a great internal clock and are just naturally able to keep great time. Others it takes a lot of practice with a click to stay in time. So the first step would be some individual work with the drummer to make sure he’s comfortable and able to play with a click.

2. Monitoring setup

Monitoring requirements will vary greatly depending on factors like if you’re going to use loops, use timed visual effects, use click cued intros, etc… Some bands use in ears for all musicians so they can hear clicks and cues, others only have some players/singers with in ears. Quite simply the goal is to send the click to isolated(in ears or headphone) monitors for whichever players/singers need it and keeping it out of the main house mix so the congregation doesn’t hear it.

At the very minimum the drummer obviously needs the click in their in ears/headphones. The rest of the band would just have to follow the drummer closely and stay on his time because he can’t come off the click. This may be a major adjustment for bands that are used to speeding up(unknowingly) and the drummer typically sped up with them, but that wouldn’t be the case anymore.

For that reason I would strongly suggest the drummer and band leader have the click in their monitor. That will really help stabilize the band time wise. Even in this case you still would have musicians and singers with no click which can get tricky if that musician or singer is performing without any drum/band leader accompaniment. They could easily get off time, so what ends up happening is your drummer has to keep time on stage with the sticks and that just stinks and could ruin the vibe.

So we’re left with the optimal solution which is everyone in the band use in-ears, everyone who needs the click has the option to have it sent to their monitor mix. This is the setup my band uses and it’s fantastic. We have quite a few songs where we all come in on 1, vocals and band. We’re able to hit these intros with no problem and without stick hits or other distracting cues. All our cues are isolated from the congregation and we know just where we are in a song.

3. Phase in

Start simply and slowly. Getting comfortable playing to a click takes some time and depending on the skill level of the drummer can take a looong time. Use a click in practice for a while before you start using it live.

Does your band play to a click? If not, is that intentional or are there some barriers preventing you?

Copyright 2009 @ Our Rising Sound

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Related posts:

  1. Transitioning your Band to Using Loops: “Using a Click”
  2. 8 Steps to Configure Ableton With Loop and Vocal Cue Tracks
  3. Transitioning Your Band To Using Loops
  4. Video Tutorial: Using Ableton Live to Run Click/Loops in your Worship Service
  5. Properly Subdividing the Click in Ableton Live

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  • Mike Browning

    What is the most practical way to run a click track when playing on the road. I.E., no in-ear monitors and just Logic on a MBP? I’m guessing send the click to it’s own channel and put it only in the drummer’s monitor? And what do you do if you’re already running something out of the laptop? Split the channels L/R or is there a better way?

    Thanks.

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  • http://www.ourrisingsound.com Kyle

    Hopefully your drummer has headphones, if not in-ears :-) If you send the click through a wedge then you’ll get bleed through either from stage volume or through the drum mics.

    As far as running stuff out of a laptop it depends on your audio interface, or if you’re using one at all. Depending on the audio interface it can have several audio outs which you can route signal to(send click to channel A, loop to B, etc..). If you aren’t using any usb/firewire audio interface with your laptop or if your interface only has 1 out channel, then ya, you’ll have to pan.

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  • http://day229.net Lee Hoffman

    I totally agree. I have a few questions. How did you deal with the human side of the change? What program are you using to generate the click track?
    thanks

  • http://www.doyousmellthat.com b davis

    At our church, when we’re not using sequencing or loops, we use a Tama Rhythm Watch. It’s programmable, super-easy to use, and has a jack for a foot switch (so your drummer can switch programs during a rumble fade). When we’re using sequencing or loops, we use Reason, Digital Performer, or Logic through a firewire audio interface (Outputs 1 & 2 stereo to FOH & monitors, Output 3 to monitors ONLY for click).

    The “human side” was a little rough at first, but was well worth the headache. We started doing 2 songs a weekend to the click, sent just to the drummer and worship leader (the rest of our backline was on wedges). This helped us get used to it. Slowly but surely, we started using it for every song and eventually got our entire team on IEM’s and locked in to the click (yes, even vocalists – you’d be surprised how much singers drag).

    From a personality standpoint, it was a little more difficult. Every drummer thinks they’re rock-solid and doesn’t need a click. All of our drummers hated it at first. Now, if we tell them we’re doing a song without they’re the first to ask “Are you sure?” If you couch it as a vision thing (i.e. “We’re doing this to be a better team, better musicians, and create fewer distractions for our congregation”) it will give you lot of leverage – who doesn’t want to become a better musician, gel more as a team, and create a better worship environment?

    Hope that helps, Lee!

  • http://www.ourrisingsound.com Kyle

    The human side for us wasn’t that big of a deal. The rest of the team is aligned vision wise on where we want to go creatively so it made sense for everyone and really got our creative juices flowing.

    We use Abelton Live so it generates the click for us. I have a post on how to create your own click track in Garage Band that you may find useful if you’re a Garage Band user.

  • http://joshcollesano.wordpress.com josh collesano

    great article, something every musician in every church needs to read in order to understand the importance of it. We stress excellence a lot at my church and we use a click track to almost every song (98% of em) and now when we don’t have it my players say they “feel musically naked” without it… which goes to show that a little struggle at first can produce some amazing results…

    an encouragement: It’s going to be tough at first, but after a few weeks they payoff is worth it…

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  • John

    The worship leader at my last church used clicks extensively. I only played occasionally since I was the tech director. Now that I’m a worship arts pastor and worship leader at another church, I just started introducing click tracks in the last several months. Only one drummer was offended – he thought I didn’t trust his meter – but when he made it through a whole song to the click for the first time, his face lit up and his whole demeanor changed. We still are only using them occasionally but I hope to use them for every song. Praise Charts now offers clicks WITH loops to many of there songs…very cool!

  • http://InHeinSite.blogspot.com Aaron Hein

    What a great article! I am the worship pastor of a small church and I use loops and lots of synths with pulsing things (or at least I try to) but the band just doesn’t know how to hear some of the complicated poly-rythms I create. I’ve known for awhile I needed to introduce a click because I’ve really been limited with what I can pull off without them. I appreciated the insight to how the band could potential react and how to sell it. I use Mainstage with a MIDI controller and love it so when I get my click track integrated into the software I’ll post a How To on my blog. :-)

  • Bryan Nelson

    Aaron…one way to introduce click/loop tracks is to use it during sound check. There’s a 7-Minute Sound Check process setup by mymusicwriter.com that streamlines the process, guides both FOH and musicians using an IEM (in-ear-monitor system), but it also can be a starting point to getting bands to learn how to play with a click and also allows the FOH to get used to mixing in a loop track. Best of all, it boils down any sound check process to seven minutes. The trick is to use the sound check process on a weekly basis (with rotating musicians and FOH operators). Hope this helps.

  • Lutus8

    We use a Tama Rhythm Watch that I modified. Rather than having the footswitch change to the ‘next’ pattern, I opened it up, soldered some jumpers and now it is an on/off footswitch. Big deal I hear some say. Well, now we can ritard for big keychanges by turning off the click with the footswitch and then turning the click back on when the music director hits the downbeat. Our bass player (me) controls the click, but the music director could just as easily control it.

    No matter how good a musician your guys think they are, a click will make EVERY band sound better. Why else do the super giant bands ALL use them when playing live and 99% of what you hear on radio now a days was recorded to a click. And those studio musicians actually are the best in the world…..