Scoring Session 101 - Part 3: Click Tracks

One of the most important factors to make a sure a scoring session runs smoothly is a proper preparation of click tracks. These are usually necessary to sync up the music with the images that you are scoring and also allow things like layering musicians on top of each other.

The most common way these days to generate click tracks on a session is to let the recording software (in most cases Protools) handle that. This means that the Protools Session (or Project) that you record your music in has a properly programmed tempo track with all bar and tempo changes and generates the click track from this.

Doing it this way has a few striking advantages:

• The bar numbers in Protools will match the bar numbers in the score sheet, so you could easily request to record for instance only a part of the cue that had a problem in an otherwise perfect take. These "pick ups" or "punch ins" or "drop ins" can easily be crossfaded into the other take. The bar numbers often are even displayed on an extra screen in the recording room so the musicians can see which bar they're in and can find their entrance easier
• You can alter the count in length. On slower tempi, a count in of one bar is sufficient while very fast tempi could even require four bars of count in. Sometimes depending on the cue, it might be necessary to chance the count-in in order to make it easier for the musicians
• You can automate the click volume: In very soft passages, the click needs to be very soft as well in order to not bleed on the microphones while on louder passages the click needs to be louder as well. It can be easily automated in Protools in order to accomodate for these changes
• You can change the subdivisions. In some meters, or heavy tempo ramps, it might be necessary to change the click to click on every eighth note while in other tempi or meters it might even be sufficient to only click every downbeat (for instance in a quick 3/4 waltz). If you have the tempo map available in Protools, this can be adjusted on the fly and depending on what the musicians prefer
• You can provide additional elements like synths/sampled percussion with this that could be also fed to the headphones of the musicians to give them more guidance

Generally, changes to the click track are quite easy if you have a properly perpared ProTools Session so this should always be the prefered way to go.

A viable alternative might be to provide a midi file that contains the tempo map. This could easily be imported into Protools and have the same advantages as mentioned above.

However, in some cases, you might be required to provide an audio click which means to generate an audio file that only has the click track on it and that is used to sync up the musicians.

If this is the case (but also in general) you should know the basic core properties a click track should have:

1. Proper Count-in

As mentioned above, depending on tempo the musicians should have a long enough count in to prepare for the beginning of the cue. If this is a fixed length, you should mark in the score sheet how many count in clicks will be heard before the first downbeat. Usually we might see tempo marks at the beginning of scores that look something like Quarter Note = 100 [4 clicks in] or something like that.

An alternative to that procedure is to write one or two empty bars at the beginning of the score sheet to clarify the "count in". This usually means "Click will start in bar 1 and orchestra starts to play in bar 2 or 3". I personally don't like this procedure as it is not as flexible and always looks like a badly edited score sheet

2. Click sounds

The choice of click sounds is essential. DO NOT EVER use any click sounds that have a noticeable pitch (like for instance a cow bell sound) as they will be massively distracting for the players and have a high tendency to bleed on the microphones. Generally a lot of potential click sounds are problematic with microphone bleed. There are some click sounds however that are specifically designed to have little bleed to microphones like for instance the UREI click. You should prefer using such sounds.

3. Accents

There are different preferences on these but in 80% of the cases, musicians prefer to have an accent on the click of the downbeat in each bar rather than having a steady click. I also had cases where the orchestra specifically requested an even click all the way through so it would be advisable to ask what they want. Generally, you should however presume to have a preference for accented downbeats.

4. Special Meters

Especially in eighth note based meters, you usually avoid having a click on every eighth note. Instead for instance on a medium fast 6/8  you would click every dotted quarter (so only twice a bar). In odd meters like 7/8, you would click according to the subdivision of the bar (2+2+3 or 3+2+2 or 2+3+2) so in the first case you would only click quarter note, quarter note, dotted quarter note. But again this is depending on tempo. On very slow tempi you again might want to click every eighth note. In special cases, it might be advisable to notate the click pattern in the score sheet.

5. Ritardandi/Accelerandi

Special care should be taken with tempo ramps that you should click in the easiest understandable way and in very complex cases again notate the click pattern. Generally, it might be advisable to switch to eighth note clicks to give more tempo indications in more complex tempo ramps.

In general, it takes some experience to decide what works best with the last two mentioned  examples.

In general, try to avoid only working with audio clicks as it really makes things way more complicated than necessary. Things like sample frequency difference might even lead to your audio click being played back too quickly or too slowly which might be cause for complete chaos.