To click or not to click....

[Horse Opera]

That is my question. How many of you play/record to a click? While it makes moving things around easier (not to mention keeps everything on time) it also loses the very subtle human side of playing off tempo. I've tried both ways, and I like the freedom of being able to hold a note a little longer than expected, or to speed up just a hair here and there.

I suppose a supplemental question would be, if you write a part that two instruments play, do you always just cut and paste, or do you play it once for each instrument so as to get some variance? Or do you just cut and paste and edit the midi itself?

-BW

[cmpsr2000]

I hate click tracks with a passion.

Of course, that probably stems from hours and hours practicing drums with a metronome when I was a kid.

[dackl]

According to Hollywood lore, the click track was invented by Max Steiner in the early 30's, so this is not a question unique to sequencers. The click has great advantages in film scoring in terms of sync points, but none with regard to expressiveness. Clicks tend to make pop music recording much slicker and easier. The key is to use whatever is best for a given situation.

I had been very frustrated by the inability to generate streamers easily. I have since figured out a work around using Final Cut and LiveType. If anyone is interested, send me a PM and I'll email you the streamers. They must be rendered into the Quicktime file, and they can't be moved during a session -- however, they are basically free while the hardware version is hugely expensive ($8K-$10K). With streamers you can hit sync points without a steady tempo. You can even have a streamer that leads into a click for the best of both in the same cue.

JD

P.S. According to recent Hollywood lore, Howard Shore always uses clicks while John Williams never does. Can you hear the difference?

[PolarBear]

Using clicks can have advantages and disadvantages. Somehow you can circumvent the problem with expressive tempos and record a click for yourself in a seperate channel with a hihat or smth. As far as other instruments, if time is short just copy and paste and adjust major flaws, if you got more time play it in again with the instrument specific controller data, that can sometimes make a big difference than if you just copy and pasted.

PolarBear

[Horse Opera]

I am not a fan of the click as I am a drummer as well, and it's just plain annoying! Hence my disdain for it lives on when I use VSL.

[Peter Brown]

But then again, it's a necessary evil if you have to hit a mark - you either need a click track, or a projected streamer (that Williams uses) during the session. Otherwise, the anvil-hit just won't happen as intended.

if you're not hitting any marks, then don't worry about it. Have your friend stand behind the computer with a baton, and conduct you at the keyboard...

... dackl - are you using a basic alpha-masked 'dot-dot-dot-dot-Flash' as your quicktime overlay? interesting idea ...


[:O]

[dackl]

Dear Mr. Brown,

It's actually a transparent vertical line that travels from left to right and meets up with a stationary vertical line on the right of the screen. When the two lines touch there is a large, transparent circle that fills the frame. The whole effect lasts exactly two seconds, and the circle is on the last frame. I have a green one to start a cue, yellow for internal hits and red to end. They have an alpha channel just like a title, and you put them on a second video track over the picture.

Again, I'd be glad to send them to you if you PM me your email. As an archive the three little movies are only 36KB.