Using a Click
One of the biggest benefits of using loops is that your band will develop the skill of playing to a click. Convincing your band to play with a click may be one of the biggest struggles involved with using loops. If you are about to start using loops and click then check out our previous article on getting your band on board with loops, it will provide you with some ideas to help smooth out that transition.
In this article we will be focusing on what it takes to get your band effectively playing with a click.
1) Give the band time to practice with a click by themselves
Possibly the biggest hurdle to overcome when playing with a click is the self esteem issue. When you play with a click there is an absolute. There is a Rhythmic standard by which all band members can be judged by. No longer is it an issue of..who’s playing the correct tempo. It is now..this is the tempo we are playing the song, can you cut it? The fact of the matter is that if your band members have never played with a click before they will struggle with playing in time. If their first time playing with a click is in private and they have some time to rehearse with it, they will appear much more confident in front of the rest of the band members, and will do a better job playing with a click with the band. It would be a worthy investment to purchase personal metronomes for each band member so they can have something to practice with. You can pick up cheap metronomes online for less than $20 a piece. Here are a few, #1, #2… Another option is to simply provide each Band member with an Mp3 of a click sound that they can practice with from their computer. You could have a mp3 of each song for Sunday and shoot them to them in an email for them to work with. This may be the easiest way to get clicks to the band.
2) Introduce Clicks on Songs your band is familiar with
Start out using clicks with songs your band already knows. If your band doesn’t know the song they have more to think of mentally. Not only do they have to think of the chords, they now have to also make sure they are playing in time with the click. If they are singing, or leading a song, they have to think of even more, so introduce it in a song that they don’t have to think a lot on. The more familiar they are with the tune the better the introduction to click will be.
3) Teach your band where “1″ is always
Knowing where “1″ is at all times helps make sure that your band comprehends where they are in the measure at all times. Once you start using loops it is crucial that you all are on the same page. If your loop is set to come in at measure 32 and you are treating beat 3 as beat 1 then when measure 32 hits, the loop will come in 2 beats early. disaster… To help your band know where one is at all times use a click sound that accents beat “1″. It may also be useful to record a vocal count-in so that everyone starts together i.e. “1..2..3.4..”
4) Learn the secret of subdivisions
Most people don’t realize why, but it is harder to keep a song that is at 65bpm in time then it is to keep a song at 120 bpm together. The slower the song, the further apart each quarter note click is. The faster it is the closer together they are, so at lower tempos you may want to implement some sort of subdivision. You may find that you always want to use a click with a subdivision. This may help to lock it all in. This will take a little bit of experimenting to find what suits your band and drummer best.
This is where having an accented click will help. Some band members may have trouble finding the beat if each click has lots of subdivisions in it. Take 6/8 for example. If you are doing a slower song, you may want to bring in the 16th’s. Some people count 6/8 with the 8′ths. (1,2,3,4,5,6), some people count it with dotted quarter notes (1..4..). The people that count dotted quarters may have trouble deciphering the 8ths and 16ths to find “1″. This may be a good point to have a quick discussion on the basics of time also!
Using a click can seem like a impossible task to achieve sometimes but the end result is a much tighter/confident band. View the improvement of your band as horizontal and not vertical. Don’t think we can’t ever achieve this goal so I need to lower my expectations, but chart out your expectations, and dream big and “elongate” the time period in which you expect to see those expectations met. The difference between professionals and volunteers isn’t what they can do, or the results you can see from them, but rather the amount of time it takes to see results. So be patient and constantly encourage your group to progress in skill and talent.. You will love the results you see!
Looking for a good Click sound for Garageband or Live? Check out Foundations for Garageband and Foundations for Live . Dual-Sound, Click Solutions that you can Subdivide
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I really appreciate the end of this post about keeping high expectations but stretching them over a longer time frame. Reading this post and rethinking my approach, led to a breakthrough in introducing clicks and loops with our band last night. After several weeks of trying out clicks and loops for all the songs we were doing in a set, I decided we would just focus on one song. We rehearsed all 4 songs for the night with no clicks or loops first. They were all familiar tunes so this only took about 30 minutes. With the remainder of our rehearsal time, we focused on playing a fully sequenced loop with a click on just one song. It took a few tries but they finally got it. For many of the musicians, it was their first time experiencing really locking in with the click. It’s exciting to see our band start to play at this level. I’m looking forward to where our band will be in a few months if we just get confident playing one song per week with a click/loop. This new approach definitely made practice less stressful and a lot more fun!
For the full story check out my post at http://www.jakesumner.com
Thanks again for the challenge, encouragement and resources!
I think that using a click for rehearsal and live performance is one of those things that is way underrated. When I first went on staff at my current church, I immediately made it a primary goal of mine to get all of the bands on click. My approach was to use it in rehearsal, but not in live performance until everyone was comfortable with it. Here are a few reasons why click can be so beneficial:
1. The identity of music is greatly influenced by the tempo it is performed at (imagine Cannon in D performed at 180). My church performs “How Great Is Our God” at 76 – that song gets it’s feel from that tempo. The lyrics and melody were written with that tempo in mind. If you started that song around 76, but by the last choruses, were at 60 or 95, the song no longer is able to impact the way it was written to. In fact, it will distract from the worship experience. Keeping a song at it’s appropriate tempo allows it to sound the way it is supposed to.
2. “The proof is in the pudding” No matter how accomplished the band is, unless you are able to play along with click, the timing needs work. The typical first reaction to click is that it just makes things more difficult, but really, it’s the lack of internal timing that makes it difficult for the player to play along. With the click playing out the tempo perfectly, you can call out rhythm cues and the band can hear exactly where the beat is. For example, if a song has a push on the “and of 4″, the whole band can listen for that beat in the measure to come, and then nail it. There is no estimating or guessing where the drummer or the piano player is going to play it at and then trying to follow. Describing where a series of “hits” are to the band will make sense when you say “and of 3, and of 4, then back in on beat 1″ and they can place those hits in the appropriate place as the click keeps the time going. One last example, let’s say you really want to drive that last chorus and make it big, so you tell the band to do a two measure build into it. The problem is that it can be difficult to do a two measure, 8th note build, and not speed up. I have literally heard a band pick up 10-15 bpm of speed in just two measures of build! Yikes.
Also, no one has to try to start the song at the right tempo from memory – just fire the click and go.
3. Having the band on click provides the frame work to incorporate any pre-recorded or pre-sequenced material into a live performance. Once the band is comfortable with the click running while they play, you can program loops or record supplementive instrument parts and no one has anything time-wise to adjust to. They just notice that all kinds of cool stuff is playing along with the band. Then, you can take it a step further with Loops in Worship to be able to interact with loops like another instrument on the stage.