As far as recording the actual tracks for this album, and the best means of getting a click track into Rick's brain (taking into account the present absence of Tim's vocal cues), we've finally managed to achieve satisfactory results by simply funneling a previous version of the song directly into some headphones.
This bypasses the need of a traditional click track, which we found to be wrought with problems during the making of the last album. This is because a few songs were found to have subtle, natural rhythm changes (one hellishly frustrating attempt to record over a flat-metronomed version of 'Shaken Partial' was enough to convince us to find another way) and attempting to remedy this within the click track itself seemed a little too mechanical.
A basic run-down of how the last album's drum track was achieved is as follows:
The drums were set up in one room of the house and connected to the PA system, which then gathered all five drum tracks simultaneously before spitting the result at the computer as one single (or mixed-down) track. This meant that it needed to be mixed on the way through of course, and little could be done with it after the fact. The rest of the band stood out in the hallway and played 'silently' into an old 10-track mixing desk which was wired through to the drummer's ears to allow him to play along with us; this is important, as the drummer needs to know where in the hell they are for various fills and changes and whatnot. This method also allowed the natural feel of the songs to be captured pretty convincingly (other issues sullied this a little, but that's a different story) ...
With such previous experience in mind however, this time around, a couple of quick attempts were made to bypass the click track issue by having both Rick and I hearing my guitar through two sets of headphones (the guitar was played into the old 10-Track with the signal being split at the phones jack). The results were mediocre at best due to lacking vocals and lacking volume in general.
Obviously the best click track to use would be a pre-recorded version of the song with all elements and all cues present - and with our penchant for recording each practice, there were plenty of options to choose from.
Once the track to be used had been decided upon (proper tempo, no major gaffs, etc.) the idea was to simply play this on the computer and via headphones have it pounding away in Rick's ears as he laid down the new track over it's old bones. Getting to that stage wasn't quite as straight-forward as envisioned, however, as the distance from PC to drum kit (and up to ear level) was approximately seven metres; a problem further complicated by every cable and patch-lead being mono when stereo was needed in the phones so as to properly block out unnecessary percussive distraction during the live take; nothing to throw you off a drum fill with two of them happening at once!
We eventually got there by temporarily re-arranging the practice space to have all leads stretched to their utmost, as documented by cellphone captures below:
This photo shows the rear of the PC, with the black cable headed to the lower-right being a headphone to RCA connector.
Shown here from the reverse-angle, the PC cable enters this old stereo from the right-hand side of the photo. An old set of 'closed' headphones then exits the front of the stereo and heads directly towards the drum kit.
With little room left to move, we had no option but to actually secure the headphone cord through one of Rick's belt loops so as to keep it away from the kit but
allow it to reach his ears.
Although seeming a little convoluted, the results were excellent and have since inspired us to continue using this method (at least in the short-term). Newer material will probably be recorded in a similar fashion to that of the first album, but for the time being this will more than suffice.
We've since lessened the ordeal somewhat by truncating the distance from PC to stereo to headphone too (though I've yet to take a photo of it) ...
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