Not everyone uses a click track.

Good, bad, or indifferent, this can sometimes make overdubs tedious-especially for any type of music that isn't in a straight ahead time signature. However, this doesn't mean the click isn't usable as a cue or point of reference.

Let's say you have a song that wasn't recorded with a click track and it's very "free form" in nature (jazz, worship music, etc.). Let's also pretend that there's a verse section of the song that continues to vamp on one chord until the full band comes in at the chorus. Potentially, a vocalist could have a hard time knowing where to start each phrase and might not be able to easily duplicate what was recorded during the tracking session on the scratch vocal track.

It's really irrelevant whether or not the band was actually playing to a click because we can help Pro Tools determine the tempo that they're playing at. Now, I know what you're thinking: "That doesn't mean they consistently played at the same tempo throughout the entire song". You're right. But, that doesn't matter if we're just trying to give the singer an audible cue. The trick is to only determine the tempo at the sections the singer needs. Here's how we can use the click track as a cue:

Open the transport window. Turn off conductor mode. Highlight the tempo value. Play back the section of the song in question. Tap the "T" key to the beat of the song (quarter notes) to establish the tempo of that section. Create a click track. Choose a click sound. Play back the section again and see if the click lines up with the performance.

Now, the point of doing this is to create a cue, so the click should really only be needed to signal the singer as to when to start singing-either at the beginning of the section or for each vocal line. The next thing we need to do is make sure the click only plays back during this section. Remember, we only identified the tempo of one section of the song, if the click keeps playing, it could get distracting as the the tempo of the band shifts.

In the edit window, open up the volume view of the click track. By using the trim tool in grid mode, we can have the click only play back for a desired number of bars before the singer is supposed to start singing. In the example below, one bar of quarter notes play back before the down beat of each vocal line.

Remember, if this needs to be done at more than one place in the song, you should go ahead and write the tempo values into the tempo ruler for each section.