Recording - October 2014 - 26

it, and no amount of "bearing down" or "focusing" will keep them in good
time. Sometimes, you just have to let them play in free time (rubato), and then
match their performance to the Session Tempo after the fact. This is done
either with beat-mapping (creating a changing tempo map to match their
timing), or by forcing their timing to match the (fixed) Session Tempo through
quantizing or time-stretching tools. These capabilities are fantastic, but
they're not as quick and easy to implement as we'd like to believe. If you
elect to use them, you'll need to factor in extra time in the session to do so.
Click tricks
That said, there are a few tricks to try when it comes to the click. In a live
ensemble, try feeding the click track to only the drummer and letting everybody else follow his timing. This can often work-many drummers can stay
with a click reasonably well, and the other players are used to following
the drums as a timing reference. However, if it's one of those bands where
some other player-bandleader, bass player, rhythm guitarist-is really the
one driving the ensemble's timing, then you'll have to adapt.
If a player is having trouble playing to a click while putting down the
first track, and it's not a drum part (maybe a rhythm guitar or keyboard),
it can be very helpful to substitute a simple quantized drum pattern. An
actual backbeat seems to be easier for many musicians to follow, even ones who have inordinate trouble with the steady clicking of a simple metronome sound. Just make sure that the
pattern is not at odds with whatever the real drum part will be doing when it's eventually
added, otherwise you may end up with some clashing rhythms.

When laying down overdubs, as
soon as a suitable rhythm part has been
recorded, get the click out of there! Let
everyone play against a real performance-it's still not a lock, but they'll do
much better, guaranteed. Just make
sure that if there are pauses in the track
that's serving as the timing reference,
you ensure that something comes in to
provide time in those sections.
Leakage
Now we can turn to the procedural
aspects of tracking. With any approach,
there are a variety of issues that must be
dealt with when tracking parts.
Setting up for tracking a live ensemble, assuming there's an adequate
space, can range from fairly straightforward to dauntingly complicated.
One key consideration is avoiding
leakage-unwanted sound from one
or more instruments leaking into other
instruments' mics. The solutions for this

In a live ensemble, try feeding the click track to only the drummer
and having everybody else follow his timing. This can often work-
many drummers can stay with a click reasonably well, and the other
players are used to following the drums.

Fig. 3: A DAW mixer set up for 4 monitor mixes: 4 pre-fader sends through 4 stereo
buses feeding 4 Auxes routed to separate DAW outputs, which are wired to the headphone amps.
26

RECORDING October 2014

will depend on the configuration of
the available space. For the most
effective isolation, if the space offers
extra small booths, the players and
their instruments can be physically isolated from each other. Just make sure
they can see one another, or you'll
lose half the benefit of recording
everyone together!
Sometimes, either the loudest or the
softest instrument of the group is the
only one that needs isolation. Drums,
for example, will leak into everybody
else's mics, and piano mics will pick
up everything else in the room.
Isolating either, when possible, will
help to avoid the worst of the leakage.
Since loud guitar amp cabinets can be
physically separated from the performers, they can be placed in iso
booths, purpose-built amp isolation
enclosures, or even just in closets, to
control their sound. Since scratch
vocals are often replaced with different performances later, the singer
should track in an iso booth if feasible.
Short of complete isolation, instruments in a room can be partially

Recording - October 2014

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