When tracking your band or project in Pro Tools, often times youʼll be using a click track to help keep the tempo of the music consistent. This also allows you to easily edit on a grid while working in your production. This is great in a hypothetical world, but in the real world there will be times when you encounter bands or artists where a click track just wonʼt cut it. And as an engineer or producer our job is to make it work and get the best possible performance out of our musicians.

The first thing you donʼt want to do is tell the drummer he needs to practice or make then play with a click anyway with the intention of coming back later to fix.  This will be a real vibe killer and  most likely will cause some problems down the road leaving you with lack luster tracks that they will be unhappy with.

For some young indie bands, click tracks can often be difficult at times if the drummer is not experienced in the studio And most likely the band is used to playing and rehearsing the songs without it. Remember, It is our job as the engineer to adapt to the music to get the best performance rather then having performers adapt to the engineering task at hand so were going to need to know some work around option.

The first way were going to explore is having the drummer create his own click on the fly. This will allow you to still record on the grid and help with the bands timing yet give the drummer a chance to establish a click track that has the feel of the tune.  For this youʼll be recording through the drum over heads and the drummer will make his own custom drum loop with a shaker, sticks or other percussion. Go ahead and drop Pro Tools in record and have him do a few bars. Then after a little editing, simply copy and paste the region down the timeline. You may find that your drummer that was having issues before may be right on point and youʼll want to repeat this process for each song.

Letʼs say the first way didnʼt work, rather then criticize the drummer or band and blow the gig were going to track without a click track. Keep in mind were trying to get the best possible performance with what and who were working with. Youʼll want to stay cool and be positive with the band and possibly reassure them that this is normal and sometimes not using a click is the right vibe for the song. Later on you can use the Identify beat to map it out on a grid. A helpful hint when using Identify beat is spread out your beat markers at least 8 bars when using this feature otherwise the Pro Tools tempo grid can become a little erratic. This will take some practice but after a few times youʼll get the hang of it. Happy tracking and remember one size in music rarely fits all.