capslock - thanks for the information - i have tried to learn to engineer/master from info on the web, but your points about stereofying the vocal effects i will have to learn more about.

its recorded in a bedroom - and the songwriter asked for the guitar solo to be played randomly with feedback on the whammy bar! - thats why its out of tune:) and the intro guitar lead is the songwriter playing - i said to him "you are a good acoustic guitar player but you have never bent notes on an electric before, and your bends are painfull" but he insisted.

and the im guessing the drums are ahead of the beat because after the recording was finished it turned out that SONAR was adding 22ms of uncompensated lateness to the tracks, and it was drums first, everyting else to the drums.

issue fixed now - but i sure aint telling the songwriter!

ORIGINAL: mildew

capslock - thanks for the information - i have tried to learn to engineer/master from info on the web, but your points about stereofying the vocal effects i will have to learn more about.

its recorded in a bedroom - and the songwriter asked for the guitar solo to be played randomly with feedback on the whammy bar! - thats why its out of tune:) and the intro guitar lead is the songwriter playing - i said to him "you are a good acoustic guitar player but you have never bent notes on an electric before, and your bends are painfull" but he insisted.

and the im guessing the drums are ahead of the beat because after the recording was finished it turned out that SONAR was adding 22ms of uncompensated lateness to the tracks, and it was drums first, everyting else to the drums.

issue fixed now - but i sure aint telling the songwriter!

Well... you take my harsh treatment of you with grace... perhaps there is a human behind the drummer basher after all.

Thus I apologize for my rude treament and suggest a truce. I will be nice, if you will refrain from insulting my trade. ;)

Deal?

cAPS

I'm a guitarist, bassist, and drummer. I can play them all to a click. You either have good time or bad time, period. If you have good time, the click is almost irrelevant -- just signposts passing by while you drive, rather than pylons in the middle of the road that you have to swerve around.

Time and feel are totally different things. But while solid time can have a bad feel, really bad time can never feel good in a pop/rock context.

There's a lot of odd stuff being interjected around this thread. Playing in time with something else is a skill like any other, and for a lot of untrained drummers it's a skill they never have to learn because their band follows them. So, you put a click on (or a guitar part, or a sequence of percussion or anything else) and they can't play in time with it - they rush, drag and correct which results in an uneven time feel, or just just drift off entirely. Like any other instrument out there, the majority of drummers suck and haven't done the work. The same is true of guitarists, the same is true of singers.

Nearly any drummer who's even remotely what I'd describe as "good" has put in serious hours with a metronome learning to play in time. That's just part of learning to play, because it's very hard to actually develop any kind of consistent time feel on the drums without an external reference. The drums are a very physical instrument, and there are a lot more things in terms of co-ordination and balance that can affect your timing in a way that you won't experience as a guitarist or keyboard player. If you have to go from a cymbal on your left to a cymbal on your right in a certain amount of time it's a very different movement to moving from the snare to the high tom.

As an analogy, imagine driving to work. It's easy for you to do it in time because you do it every day and you have a clock that keeps you in time while you're doing it. Now imagine having a fixed amount of time to get from any point in your town or city to any other point, not being allowed to arrive early or late and having to pick your speed to make sure you arrive precisely on time. That's what drummers do every time they move around a drum kit, and if they practice that without external reference then they'll probably get it wrong sometimes - usually on fills, or when coming back from a fill to the groove.

The other aspect is that many drummers actually can't play in time with themselves. Drumming typically consists of playing ostinatos somewhere on the kit (usually right hand, for a right handed drummer) and then playing syncopated patterns against those ostinatos (bass drum and snare, in a pop/rock context). If you're not actually able to land your notes in precise unison with the ostinato then you have another problem, because most drummers tend to carry the time in their ostinato, but the rest of the band carry the time from their bass drum / snare pulse. So if a drummer doesn't have very good technique or precise co-ordination then you'll again have trouble landing notes precisely on the click when playing grooves.

It's all actually really quite hard. The physical and co-ordinational bar for playing the drums consistently is much higher than on the guitar or keyboard, while the requirement to play consistently is considerably higher-priority. Does it matter if your guitarist has slightly loose time? Not as much as it matters if your drummer does.

The reality of the matter here is that when guitarists suck it tends to be less obviously their time that is the problem. Crap guitarists play out of key, flub chord changes, have poor tone, get their volume wrong... all manner of stuff. If you find one who doesn't do all of that stuff but who has slightly loose timing you tend to give them a bit of a break. Drummers, on the other hand, have to get it perfect or be named-and-shamed, regardless of what else they do right.

I studied at music school with an engineer who used to run us through a test: He'd give us a click at 120bpm for sixteen bars, let us get comfortable, then drop it out of the cans for four bars. If we came out the end of that still in time with the click he'd bump that up to eight bars. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. The all-time record was held by a Korean guy who managed a massive SIXTY-FOUR bars of staying in perfect time with a click he couldn't hear. That's more than two minutes. I think my record was eight bars... But this stuff is something you can learn if you want to, and if you want to record regularly as a drummer you'd really be advised to put the time in. Go grab Gary Chaffee's book "Time functioning patterns" and George L. Stone's "Stick Control" and practice them front to back with a metronome, at every tempo from 30bpm up to your maximum. That ought to do it.

If you want to hear a very unique take of what Jose7822 is talking about, using polyrhythms, check out Vinnie Coliauta on Frank Zappa's "Tinseltown Rebellion" album. Vinnie was given complete freedom to play in in alternate time signatures that overlapped with the rest of the band on specific beats, or points.
I've always been intrigued by songs like "Packard Goose" by Zappa, or "Two Hands" by King Crimson, where the vocals and instruments are not in the same time signature, meaning in all probability the vocals were recorded to a click track rather than the actual instrumental tracks. Yet the vocalist had to learn to sing the songs for live performances to the instrumental tracks.
Another odd example of playing to a click (in a way) is Phil Collins and Chester Thompson on tour with Genesis. They obviously spent a LOT of time rehearsing together because they sounded like one mind controlling 2 bodies.
In my final comment, while I stated before that different situations may require different levels of rhythmic accuracy, I do agree that it IS a good thing to learn to play to a click.

deal cAPS :)


m

Yeah I use loops too, or just record a synthetic drumkit, play in the bits , remove the drums at one point, and do them in by hand if I want.

If I was to record live drums, I'd want a drummer who's good enough to be used as a clicktrack, and not 'correct' or quantize any beats later, because you then also screw with the recorded ambience, which is why a lot of people complain about 'phasey' noises I think.

ORIGINAL: Sid Viscous

Here's an example of how screwed up drummers are:
I write the vocals
I write the guitars
I write the bass
but if I even dare to make a suggestion about a drum part, the drummer freaks

Ha ha ha, this is absolutely true for me as well. And my drummer detests the thought of a metronome, but I make her do it anyway...ha ha ha. But the compromise ends there. I am not allowed to make a suggestion on how a drum part might go to the song I wrote!

IMHO it's best used as a tool... not a member of the band.

You are SO RIGHT on that. The last band I was in we also used a sampler/beat machine (Roland SPD-6) for a rap beat in the background. I got so pissed at the drummer that I kicked his symbol over~. I guess no on is perfect but it would only be a matter of time before the timing of the drummer got off.

Samplers / click-tracks - They Don't Screw Up and can be turned off/on

Drummers Do

I think there's an article I read awhile ago about tempo fluctuation and all that basically saying that every song has up's and down's

my drummer uses a click.

Really helps keep everything sounding tight.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

I do all the instruments, but I always use a click track. Even if I thought I didn't need it, I'd still use it. It doesn't make the music robotic or anything. Each instrument can be behind or ahead or on the beat as required, but the beat is still there and when it's accurate, the listener will hear it even if no one is actually playing it or playing on it.

EDIT: <old thread, irrelevant reply>

Bottom line is, if you can't play to a metronome then you just didn't practice enough with it and most likely suffer from bad timing (unless your a freak of nature). Flame ON (ala Fantastic 4--I gotta see that movie )

it seems that with years of playing live still applies for recording. it really takes a dominent person in the song that really really knows the tune inside & out & with the click to play along whith him. or in my most recent cases of trial & error im really starting to lean real heavy on laying down a dummy rythmn trk & give it to the drummer for at least a week to work on & still theres no guarantee for a great performance. iv found there is just those days when u land that ''one'' that magical take & there aint no damn man made quantinize,audiocrap, or any other device that takes its place...................guess thats why some of those classic tunes are still with us 30yrs later............................i feel ur pain im goin through a deal myself love the guys im workin with but the hole thing lacks the 1 thing seat time...............................................priceless

ORIGINAL: Ognis

Because drummers are the worst musicians in a band.

Let me explain something to you. Drummers have a NATURAL feel for rhythm. When you put a metrodome (I know I spelled that wrong) to us, you throw us off. Simple as that. .

Man, how things change !. Back in the "disco Era" of the 70's when 10 piece horn bands were the norm and the drummer played everything behind the beat except the kick, your method would have been a real hoot. I can see it right now. Horn section players falling all over each other and REAL dancers numbering on average, 200 - 400 people on the floor in the average beach club around here falling down on the floor trying to follow the drummer who is in his own little world. Yep, he wouln't have lasted 1 night.

Hate to burst your bubble but, even then, drummers worked to a in ear metronome with tempos predetermined by the bands arranger, not the drummer.

Playing to a click is difficult for some people BECAUSE they can't keep time, because, they haven't practiced it for years on end. To busy recording, I suppose.