Drums: Click- Grid Timing and. Groove

This is one of the great mysteries of life. And I'm not sure it can be taught. 

My drummer plays well to click. However, we made the decision a long time ago to judiciously align to the grid. I edit manually after we are satisfied with the performance itself and don't overdo it to keep the "vibe" intact. Whatever that means. We lay down the basic track as a three piece and replace bass and guitar, which are both scratch recorded as DIs. A pretty standard approach.

Of course, Pro Tools has beat detective and tempo mapping, but I haven't really gotten into using these features. We just talked about it though, so our next round of songs will likely see their use.

Human beings are not perfect metronomes and different people are imperfect in different ways. All drummers tend to play in patterns around the beat (like, in front, in front, in front, behind on a 4 beat pattern). This can feel on beat even if they're not, as long as the pattern is consistent. This deviation is "groove".

Good drummers know what they need to work with the click and make it work for them. I had a project recently where we were going to a click and the drummer stopped and called out the need for whole notes, not quarter notes on the click (160BPM track). That gave him all the ability to set the groove while keeping in tempo. Worked brilliantly. Sometimes you have to give drummers the space between the clicks to groove to. Try half notes if you're not feeling the groove. Sometimes the click becomes a part of the groove so much to the music that you'll end up adding a tambourine part in there in the end to have the same affect.

This kind of surprises me since you're in a bigger market recording musicians who can rehearse a lot. Correct? I understand it in my small market where the bands work full time jobs and rehearse maybe once a week. The drummer and the band simply can't practice enough to be really tight. Of course, in both your market and mine bands know they can play sloppy and get it fixed. So, I wonder how much that has to do with the problem.

It's entirely possible to groove to a click. The click will just prevent pushing or pulling the tempo itself, making the groove metronomic and static. Pop and dance consumers like that, look how many records Fleetwood Mac sold using tape loops of the main groove. But within the click, all kinds of feels exist. 

I like to play to eighth note clicks, it's liberating to me, rather than further confining compared to a quarter note. 

Aligning all drum hits to a grid, even if they don't sound out of time, makes music sound sterile and less interesting, (less funky) like much of today's pop is, even as other aspects of modern production can be spectacular. 

I think rock music has suffered especially in the Beat Detective era. You expect grid locked grooves with pop or dance music. What passes for rock recorded that way has most of the soul ironed out of it.

Someone with ProTools should take a John Bonham groove and Beat Detect it. 

Here's some Bonham:
www.openculture.com/2013/04/john_bonhams_isolated_drum_track_for_led_zeppelins_fool_in_the_rain.html

Post the results. I can't wait to hear how lame it is.

Worth noting that with electronic/midi music these days timing is often only partially quantized (like a percentage) after being live recorded. Likewise some of the most interesting music is modular where a sequencer clock itself can be influenced by random control voltages or other modulations.

Personally I hate click tracks, they are just boring.
No one really gives a shit if the drummer is losing control on any 70s glam or 80s punk rock record, people like it. For that matter some of those records would sound worse if the toms didn’t sound like cardboard.

I’d rather one song or section sound a little off than sap the life of the rhythm section.

Listen to Furtwängler, Jesus the beat is all over the place, very expressive. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but if you play it safe you never are in the running.

Playing to a click is different than snapping to a grid after the fact. Things "can" still have a groove when played to a click. It depends on the song and the players involved. There will still be human timing inaccuracies when played to a click, at least to a point. If a song has periods where the drums aren't playing, sometimes it's necessary to have a click just to keep everything moving along.

Playing to a click can still kill a groove too though. I don't see Led Zeppelin sounding the same if they tracked to a click. As a drummer, I prefer to track without a click unless there is a good reason to do so.

Snapping to a grid after the fact? Gross....

Very interesting topic. Below are a few of my observations using Cubase (which has a killer beat detection feature), to discern a few truths.

- Brad Paisley... NEVER records anything to a click or grid. His recordings start out and get faster or visa versa. Doesn't matter. His recordings are still my benchmark.

- John Mayer... Records to a click yet ignores it in places. Leans toward the feel of a groove. Always more than listenable.

- Timberlake... Of coarse always to a grid yet still manages a sense of musicianship somehow.

And on and on. I've noticed one constant from all the music I've analyzed... Great music is great music. Something happens in a recording, or in a lyric, or in a lick that I MUST listen to over and over that captures my attention, grid or no grid.

Now I will say that I lean toward loving human feel, but I've also loved music made on a grid. I play to a click myself because I'm mostly a one man deal. But I never go back and nudge things unnessesarily. I like variation in a song. I like mistakes made in the moment, sometimes "happy mistakes". It's all good.

I can agree with that, especially if visual cues associated with watching a metronome add in extra "slop". "Slop" being a good thing.

There is groove, and then there is tempo. A rock solid tempo does not inform the groove. I have played with groovy groove monsters that were eerily uncanny about hitting the timing dead on when listening back and superimposing a click over their work.

Yes, I think you’re on to something! I’ve had the experience of printing drum machines to Pro Tools and then trying to align w/ the grid. Doesn’t quite line up.

This was the classic mechanical metronome you might see at a piano teacher’s.