It was just my voice, an acoustic guitar, and the song. I didn’t use a click track on one of my recent songs and I’m happy with how it turned out. It’s essentially a live performance, and people will connect with the realness of it. In this instance, not using a click can give the song a very human feel. Wait, didn’t I just go on and on about how you have to use a click track? How you’re failing if you don’t record with one?īut there’s one situation in which I think it’s actually okay to not use a metronome: if it’s just you and an instrument. The One Reason It’s Okay To Not Use A Click Track Like I said earlier, it’s natural to play a tad faster during an exciting or upbeat parts of a song. However, you’re a human, so it’s probably you speeding up or slowing down. You might insist that the metronome speeds up or slows down at points, but it’s a robot. That’s good - that means you have room to grow. If you’re not used to playing with a metronome, you may find it hard to do at first. Learning to play in time is a crucial part of being a great musician, and using a metronome is one of the best ways to do that. If you use a click track, you’ll get better at your instrument. If all these reasons aren’t enough to sway you, maybe this last reason will. Punching in at certain points to re-record something will be more difficult. So if you need to copy and paste a certain part or section from the first chorus into the second chorus, you’re out of luck.Ĭomping tracks (putting multiple different takes together as one take) won’t work either. The band (or you if you’re a solo artist) probably didn’t play the first chorus at the exact same BPM as the second chorus. But if you don’t have a clear way to do that, you’ll just be trusting your ears.Īnd forget about cutting and pasting. When you edit, you’ll be double-checking to make sure things are on time and snap items to the grid. No metronome means you’ll have a big headache during editing. You could spend time cutting and slicing until a sample or loop fits the song, but that would take forever. Loops and samples are recorded to a click, so they just won’t fit your track if you didn’t use one. If you didn’t use a click track, any samples or loops from your DAW won’t work. Looping Will Be PossibleĪnd if you don’t record with a click, forget about including loops in your song. Just make it easy on yourself and your effects - record with a click track. You can set a custom repeat frequency, but that’s tedious and time-consuming. But if your song doesn’t line up with the tempo of your project, that could really make the delay sound off. And if you didn’t use a metronome, the effects will be trying to go with whatever tempo your DAW is set to (usually defaults to 120), not the tempo your drummer played.įor example, delay will repeat based on the quarter note, eighth note, or whatever note you choose. Effects Will Be More CompatibleĪ lot of people don’t realize that effects are often based on a time signature. If the timing is perfect, the rest of the song will come together much more easily ( saving you time and money). We tend to speed up - even by minuscule amounts - when we play the exciting part of a song. This is especially true if you’re in a band - if everyone is just going along with the drummer, that’s putting a lot of pressure on the drummer to be perfect. The most obvious reason to use a click track is to help you keep better time. So here are five reasons I think you need to record with a metronome. But nowadays, pro-level music is set to a specific tempo that carries the whole way through the song. I know the greats like The Beatles and The Beach Boys sometimes didn’t use a metronome, instead opting for the live-band-in-the-studio setup. But, yes, you should record to a click track. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, or even write a post about it.
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