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The usual timing variations that exist in most music (the guitarist is a little ahead of the bass player who's a little behind the drummer) works well enough in live situations when everyone can be in contact with each other (that contact should keep each other from running too far away from one another). This doesn't fly in a studio situation.
Recording in a studio is far more stressful than playing out live. If you screw up (okay, to be a bit more accurate, when you screw up), no one else other than the people in the audience might be aware of it, and then only if they are paying attention. Even if they are paying attention, they can't go back and try to catch the boo-boo again. Making an album changes that; everyone who listens will be able to catch every mistake made, no matter how large or small. And not only will they hear it, they'll get the golden opportunity to hear it again and again. And since the cliché is true -- no one is a harsher critic than yourself -- when recording, there is an acute awareness of any error whatsoever.
So, in a studio situation, there's lots of stress and pressure and emotions tend to run high (particularly after re-recording the same f-in' song for the seventeenth time). Any natural meter variations that might have already existed between the members of the band will only be exacerbated. Couple that with isolation rooms and the odds of the band staying together quickly decrease. And if the music lines are rhythmically complex in anyway, then things fall apart in very short order.
As a quick digression, when playing in a studio, it's common to have the different members of the band in completely separate rooms (to isolate one person's sound from anothers'). All in all a good thing, as it allows one musician to go back and clean up a flubbed note without affecting any other instruments in the song.
As you might guess, keeping everyone together during a recording can be a challenge. One of the most common ways to do this is to pump a click track into everyone's headphones so they can hear a clear deliniation as to where the beats are at any given time. Most click tracks are produced by an electronic metronome that has some kind of output that can be processed as a signal.
Two primary purposes are met with a click track. Everyone stays together (or close to being together) and a consistent meter allows for a musician to revisit a part and be able to pick up the beat very quickly.
The first time a musician plays with a click track can be rather embarassing. No matter how good someone's internal metronome is, a machine never fails. If there's anything I can suggest to people who are preparing to enter the studio, if you are planning on using a click track, practice with a loud metronome a few times before you walk in the door. It's much cheaper to be flustered at home than at fifty dollars an hour (if not much more).
However, click tracks are far more useful than they are annoying. If you do any kind of studio work for any length of time, you will almost certainly encounter the track fairly quickly. Should the recording project be using any kind of sequencer, click tracks are required (to keep everyone in sync with the machine).
Posted by Casper at February 20, 2004 01:41 AMGreat Advance!
Posted by: rich at March 21, 2004 01:24 PM