Band Rehearsal Hack

[ricksterphil]

Here's a suggestion from a sound engineer/studio type dude.

 

" 

Hacks for musicians.

Have the whole band practice to a click track.

Get used to a click track at rehearsals.

It will help you notice if you are speeding up or slowing down in songs.

The final result will be a much more polished performance, both live and when in the studio.

"

 

Anyone tried this?   I'm thinking of suggesting it to my band but wanted to get some input and thoughts from the BC parish first.

 

Link to the author's FB page for reference...https://www.facebook.com/psyrexsoundlab

 

I did some studio work with Mark and he seems to know his stuff

[BigRedX]

Not always. Some songs need the push and pull of variable tempo.

 

Whenever The Terrortones were due to do some recording we would run through all the songs with a click to work out which benefitted from a steady tempo and which didn't. Generally it ended up being about 50/50. We did try programming a variable tempo click to cover the changes, but could never get the transitions to feel right and TBH it was more trouble than it was worth.

 

What we did find very useful was every so often playing all the songs at a much slower speed - usually around 75% tempo, which worked wonders for generally tightening up the playing as a band, and particularly effective when your slowest song was around the 140BPM mark.

 

Also I currently play in two bands that use backing tracks live; one with a drummer playing to a click, the other with programmed drums on the backing. The one with programmed drums has several tempo changes within the course of the songs. This is down to the way we write, as I tend to work out most of the song just by playing the bass line, and therefore I'll unconsciously introduce tempo changes between sections because that's what feels right.

[LeftyJ]

My previous band used to do this, but not for the reason you state. We played pop metal with female vocals, and our album prominently featured a lot of synths and a Hammond organ - but we didn't play with a live keyboardist, so we had a backing track with all the keys and some backing vocals. We rehearsed either with a clicktrack (which only our drummer would hear through his headphones) or to the drum tracks from our album recordings if our drummer couldn't make it to our rehearsals.

 

We sounded tight as f*ck! 

 

We often played live with in-ear monitoring, and would have the click track in all our personal mixes (which added a funny bonus: we replaced our drummer's count off with four clicks up front on our in-ears, so we would all start our songs perfectly in sync and our audience would have no idea how we did it). 

[odysseus]

Tried it in my first originals band. The drummer was at the initial stages of a bunch of mental issues and would completely lose his rag if he came out of a fill slightly off time, lay the boot into his kit, and storm off to his bedroom. The band imploded shortly after.

 

Rehearsed to clicks with other bands and that worked well in that it made people aware of looseness of certain parts and changes. Worth doing IMO, but not to the extent of being a slave to it. Music has its ebbs and flows.

[Dad3353]

Orchestra have conductors; they don't have a 'click'. Modern music has drummers; good drummers don't need a click. Exceptions for passages with synch'ed samples and the like. Drummers have been playing for rehearsals, 'live', and studio work for generations without aid. Yes, of course it can work, but it's far from being essential. All musicians should play in time, anyway. 

[acidbass]

33 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Some songs need the push and pull of variable tempo

 

Most touring live bands now have variable speed click where the track will speed up for the chorus and slow down for heavy breakdowns etc.  Pretty easy to program on Ableton and also allows you to timecode lights and visuals to specific parts of the song too.

Edited October 9, 2023 by acidbass

[Muzz]

In the covers band, our (very very good and reading) drummer has a visual tempo 'click' on his iPad around his dots, so we're always in time. I've found that it's best if the whole band doesn't get the click, even with backing tracks; it's more natural to play to the drummer, and a really good drummer will also push and pull around the click, so you can even get the more natural variance in there, too...

[Supernaut]

The problem is live. So many bands I've seen play much faster live than on their recording. 

[ricksterphil]

14 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

The problem is live. So many bands I've seen play much faster live than on their recording. 

 

Very true

[ricksterphil]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

What we did find very useful was every so often playing all the songs at a much slower speed - usually around 75% tempo, which worked wonders for generally tightening up the playing as a band, and particularly effective when your slowest song was around the 140BPM mark.

 

worth a try this, thanks. I'm not sure many of ours are 140bpm tho...

[Doctor J]

30 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

The problem is live. So many bands I've seen play much faster live than on their recording. 

It can be a truly beautiful thing. The greatest example being, in my humble opinion, when Metallica took all the cocaine and averaged about 20-25bpm faster for every song 😂

 

Just fantastic.

[odysseus]

1 hour ago, Supernaut said:

The problem is live. So many bands I've seen play much faster live than on their recording. 

 

Amen. This is why I always make sure I can play a fast song at least 10% faster than the normal speed. Thank goodness for Guitar Pro! 

[TimR]

Everyone should have some element of practice at home individually with a metronome. I'm not sure there's any benefit to rehearsing as a band to one if everyone is working on their timing during practice. 

[BigRedX]

Playing faster live can also work against you. A friend's band had finally found what they thought was a suitable replacement drummer fro their previous very excellent one. Unfortunately at his first gig they discovered that he suffered terribly from nerves and played MUCH faster than he had in rehearsal. What should have been a 45 minute set was completed in a little over half an hour. The venue wanted to dock their fee because they didn't play for long enough.

[BigRedX]

2 hours ago, Muzz said:

In the covers band, our (very very good and reading) drummer has a visual tempo 'click' on his iPad around his dots, so we're always in time. I've found that it's best if the whole band doesn't get the click, even with backing tracks; it's more natural to play to the drummer, and a really good drummer will also push and pull around the click, so you can even get the more natural variance in there, too...

 

This is always the way I've done it with backing an live drums. Only the drummer has the click. The rest of the band plays to the drummer. However, this has caused problems in the past when I used to be in a band with a drummer who was to all intents and purposes a human metronome, and had to be reminded that not everyone had is perfect sense of tempo and would need counting through the parts with no drums. i.e. four stick clicks count in wasn't sufficient for me to be able to play 8 bars of guitar intro with no drums (or anything else) and still be in the right place at the start of bar 9!

[TimR]

It's "The disease of the amateur"

 

Don't worry about working on internal dynamics, note placement, note length. Just play it faster. 

[scalpy]

We use click for the function band. We nearly always have a dep of some description, so if it’s keys or guitar the intros are always the correct tempo and it’s a plus one for everyone starting together instantly (if the song demands it) I was sick of videos of gigs having someone shout the count too. It also lays the law down- we’ve had drummers where you’d count the tune off and they’d be under tempo and some would be over, so you’d have to compensate and guess how much extra you’d have to add to or subtract from the tempo. With the click- it’s right, no argument, I love it.

 

An added bonus is syncing videos for social media. We can take one song, cut from gig to gig and the tempo is exactly the same, meaning we have much more useable footage. Everyone has their own personal mix for their in-ears, they can dial however much or little click they want. Next up is programming lights to it, it’s an arms race out there and that’s another avenue that we need to catch up on.
 

 

 

[WinterMute]

59 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

This is always the way I've done it with backing an live drums. Only the drummer has the click. The rest of the band plays to the drummer. However, this has caused problems in the past when I used to be in a band with a drummer who was to all intents and purposes a human metronome, and had to be reminded that not everyone had is perfect sense of tempo and would need counting through the parts with no drums. i.e. four stick clicks count in wasn't sufficient for me to be able to play 8 bars of guitar intro with no drums (or anything else) and still be in the right place at the start of bar 9!

 

I've tried dynamic clicks in the past, as you note, often more trouble than they're worth, however, the last few years I've been using Beat Detective in Protools to analyse the drummers performance, this works best if you bounce a stereo track into an empty session, then extract a tempo map of the performance and import the component audio into that.

 

This gives you a properly conformed timeline for everyone else to work with and keeps loops and samples honest too, without sacrificing the drummer original feel. Even quantising MIDI performance work to the groove.

Edited October 9, 2023 by WinterMute
typo

[Downunderwonder]

7 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

musicians should play in time, anyway

And 'specially those guys that hang around with musicians, hitting things in time with the music.

 

I am trying to get folks to practice with a metronome so they aren't pushing me around while our drummer is unavailable.

[Richard R]

It drives me mad!

But i- t does show up where my timing is sloppy and I need to lock better with the drummer. I have it in the IEM for rehearsal,  but more kick/snare for the service.

 

[chris_b]

In certain styles of music time can drift a little. A few bpm here and there. That's not the same as speeding up or slowing down! But while the drummer usually gets the job. . . . It's actually everyone's  responsibility to be playing in time.

[diskwave]

Back in ye days of olde we would sack the offending musician who couldn't keep time......That way the band can play any time, anyway, anywhere and still be tight as a ducks whatsit.  Oh and time shifts in a tune is good. Ha.. the modern world and its technical perfection....its all a flippin mystery to me.

[wateroftyne]

I can't imagine anything more depressing than rehearsing to a click.

[LukeFRC]

41 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

I can't imagine anything more depressing than rehearsing to a click.

I can.
"Hey, you know the click you suggested really works out, key player programmed the bass lines too and will just send that to the FOH, so erm we don't really need you."

[Dad3353]

4 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

I can.
"Hey, you know the click you suggested really works out, key player programmed the bass lines too and will just send that to the FOH, so erm we don't really need you."

 

... which simply frees the fellow up to join a band wanting musicians, and not robots or machines..! 

 

...