Click Track | How To Prepare For A Recording Session | Studio 101

Use A Click Track. How to prepare for a recording session. Are you going into a recording studio or need help at home? A click track is your solution. Most musicians entering a recording studio request not to have a click track. However, they still want their song edited. These do not go together. The problem is simple. No lines on graph paper.

Take yourself back to middle school math. The teacher asks you to plot the coordinates (5,12). Easy, count over on the X-axis 5 graph lines and up the Y-axis 12 graph lines. Now do the same thing with no lines on the graph paper. That task is impossible. There is no reference to making a graph. Yet, that is what you are asking an audio engineer to try to do. They cannot move the already tracked instruments forward or backward in time with no reference point to guide them. We are here to help you solve that problem.

Solution To The Dreaded Click Track Problem

Get an app for your smartphone that has a click track function. Play your song to beats per minute set on the app. The beats per minute are also known as BPM. Keep changing the BPM on the app until it feels comfortable to stay with while you are playing. Practice to that BPM until it is down pat. If you are in a band, give that BPM tempo to everyone else to practice on their own. Now get together and keep time with that BPM during practice. Keep making adjustments until everyone is comfortable. When you follow that pace repeatedly without fail, you are ready to go in and record.

Go to the studio session and tell the engineer to set the click track to your specific BPM. Watch their face light up. Ah, lines on the graph paper!