Organising click track tempos and calculating BPM

[As always, the disclaimer: The techniques described here are merely those employed by four musicians in a band attempting to record their album from within an abandoned garage. We have limited experience, a limited amount of equipment, and a budget of precisely zero - none of which we see as a barrier. Whilst strictly amateur in our approach, however, this is a serious attempt at recording ... ]

One of the earliest considerations was how to best achieve a workable click track for each song that we intended to record, as in the past we'd forgone the nuisance of these entirely in preference for simply laying down the drums as a separate take whose only reference to tempo happened to be what the rest of the band was 'silently' playing into some headphones worn by the drummer. This allowed for a certain charm perhaps, although wasn't particularly satisfying to the ear and didn't leave us with a universal track that utilised further along the recording process as our techniques (hopefully) improved.

So this time around we've decided to try and develop a rather more mathematical approach to things and are currently in the process of organising proper click tracks for each song.

Calculating the right tempo was a relatively straightforward process, although there were a few considerations that needed to be taken into account which didn't initially register as being crucially important until issues announced themselves later on, during the recording of guide vocals for instance.

The main problem was that the tempo needed to be one that was agreeable for each instrument recording to it, as depending on who'd be laying the initial click tracks down there'd likely be differences of opinion with regards various complexities: perhaps the drums would lose certain fills if the track was too fast, maybe the vocalist would struggle for air between certain notes if the spacing was too short, if fingerpicking was present, the natural rhythm of the guitarist's fingers had to be taken into consideration ... all issues which had to be addressed prior to finalising any tempo decisions.

The manner in which we've approached these various discrepancies, and in order to get a decent cross-reference of tempos, was to collect all of the various live garage recordings we'd captured of each track over the past few months, and from amongst these we then collectively selected one that met everybody's needs simultaneously; on some practice nights the takes we'd managed to harvest had been rushed, on others the songs seemed to drag along at a leisurely, sometimes painful pace, and on yet others (thanks to a combination of correct playing speed and the fortunate pressing of the record button) a take that was good on all counts was captured. 

As with most (and hopefully all) live bands, the tempo throughout each of these live takes was naturally pretty fluid as well (ebbing and flowing with the band's temperament etc.), so we then each listened to the track separately (at home) whilst using this webpage to ascertain what BPM settings were involved. Basically, the live track was played in the background whilst the tempo was tapped out onto the keyboard and noted down.

All of the individual sections - intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro etc. - were calculated and from there a concensus upon the correct tempos was reached.

[Note: Some tracks had multiple speeds within them (verses might be 117bpm and choruses might be 122bpm, say) and I'll be writing up how we developed the click tracks for those (using Cool Edit) in a future post.]

The final list, with some tracks still to be finalised, looks like this:

With the tempo for each song now agreed upon, the next post will detail how we went about recording the most basic click track (the example being a song which has just one speed maintained throughout) ...

Ageing rocker replaced

UPDATE: The faulty rocker switch on the Wharfedale PM600 was prised open (by depressing two lugs either side of the cover the top came of it) and the cause proper was found; one of the two sprung contacts inside had become misshapen over time and that pole was no longer connecting when the switch was in the 'ON' position.

It had been temporarily lighting up the power LED in the mid-range of its switching motion as that was when the contact was pressed fully home, but as soon as this pressure lessened (or was finally removed) the contact failed.

The separated components of the dismantled rocker switch

The rocker section itself - note the lug on the outer right

The removed spring contacts. Problem: different angles

The main body of the switch into which the spring contacts were fitted. The circular pads on all surfaces were still in good condition - not that it mattered, as the entire switch was replaced anyway (a perfect match was conveniently found in the workshop)

This side profile shot shows how the connections at the rear are actually lugs which are principally designed to be plugged into connectors. This is no major problem, although some care had to be taken whilst re-soldering the wires onto them because (if too much heat gets transferred to the spring contacts inside the switch) this can cause warping - and would've effectively put us right back at the start!

Anyway, the new switch is now fully installed and operation has been returned to normal ...

Gratuitous pounding

Ricky laying down the drums for Changeling

A funked-out EF86

For the past several weeks it's been obvious that one of the valves in my cloned VOX AC30 amplifier had gone microphonic; the tell-tale sound (even before tapping them for confirmation) can be heard in the short video clip just below when the amp is first powered up:

Several other problems also began to occur at practice a couple of weeks ago, involving a 'tinkling' sound and general feedback wails which weren't being caused by interference from the guitar's pickups (or at least not by its usual means anyway). Thankfully both of these issues seemed to have been remedied by simply removing the valves and refitting them, so I'm assuming they stemmed from poor socket connections (?) ... You can see in the following photograph how the valves appear to be sitting slightly uneven, indicating likely bad connections with their associated sockets. I'm guessing vibration can cause them to shake loose over time.

The next photo shows the wonky 12AX7's all nicely re-aligned.

The microphonic valve was verified as being the EF86 at the front end of the amp (sitting far right in the above photograph). A simple test to find the valve responsible is to simply tap the valves individually (using a drum stick or similar implement) whilst the amp is on. The normal result of doing this should just be a gentle tapping sound on the glass of the valve itself. However, if a valve has gone microphonic you'll hear the tapping amplified through the speakers. This is demonstrated in the following clip:

The faulty valve has now been removed and I await in the post a pair of Telefunken EF86's (new old stock) which were purchased through an online auction last weekend, and only now beginning to learn about the inner workings of my amplifier, knowledge is minimal and therefore ongoing, my approach simply being to trial various components to see what works and what doesn't.

If nothing else, the old Telefunken tubes at least look the part ...

Rocker switch very much not so ...

With our Wharfedale PM600 powered mixer now into its sixth year, the rocker switch on the front panel has finally started to cause problems and over the last couple of practices we've had trouble powering it up due to the switch's connection intermittently failing. Or rather intermittently being maintained ...

With a little experience in electronics, I decided to open it up to check for any obvious issues with regards the wires leading away from the switch itself. Eight screws (four top and four bottom) that held the PM600 together were undone and the inside electronics and casing simply pulled completely out as a convenient single unit.

I then carefully stripped back the necessary heat-shrink with a scapel to get a better look at the wires inside. Of course, there's no particular concern with these connections breaking because there is only ever minimal stress placed upon them.

Which leads us to the conclusion, namely that everything (somewhat unfortunately!) appeared to be in good order, confirming that the fault itself appears to be within the plastic-encased rocker switch itself. And due to the sheer number of times it's been operated over the years, it would make sense for the failure to relate to this component.

How exactly I get inside this I have no idea though, and I'm guessing that the best solution will actually involve replacing it completely anyway. A brand new component would certainly increase it's reliability at any rate ...

Click Click Click CLUNK ...

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) ...

Panned by the critics of knowledge

My initial idea with regards the panning of each individual drum section (all recorded into the desk straight down the centre and panned afterwards during the mixing stage) was characteristically an amateurish approach and documentation has since been found that produces a far better initial result and, by extrapolating the scenario further, a superior end-result also.

Rick's research into this (which actually stemmed from an altogether different issue that'll be discussed in a future post) discovered that one should set the correct panning during the recording process itself, which of course seems obvious when faced with hard copy detailing of such simplicity.

Beginning from zero knowledge though, below were my original ideas of how we'd (eventually) pan the various drum kit components (the information gathered from my best interpretation of a track from The Deftones' album Diamond Eyes whilst sitting with my face buried between two speakers):

My terminology with regards the toms exposes me as no drummer,

but you get the idea.

And above/below are the settings we now have on the desk with all components panned accordingly as they go in: hard left (HL), hard right (HR), or centre. So far we've kept these settings in the final mix too (by effectively re-panning them in the editing software), with the exception of the hi-hat going to 50% left.