How to Use a Click Track When Recording Music

A click track is an audible metronome that musicians can use to stay in sync with a multi-track recording. A studio's recording engineer generally controls the click track and plays it through the musician’s headphones, but you can also use click tracks for your home recording sessions.

Live bands also use click tracks when they perform live shows. Band members hear clicks through their in-ear monitors, which keep them in perfect time with the rest of the band, even if they are standing on opposite ends of the stage.

Click tracks exist to keep both recorded and live performances in perfect time so that all musicians sound synced-up throughout an entire song. Click tracks are used throughout the music industry to enable both precision and efficiency. Without either click tracks or a human conductor, time-keeping can be very tedious, and individual musicians' parts won't necessarily sync in perfect harmony. If all players—from drummers to guitarists to vocalists—record to the same click track, songs can quickly sync and a group can maximize its stage or studio time.

Recording studio click tracks usually sound like standard digital click sounds, snare drum beats, closed hi-hat sounds, beeps, or cowbell. Typically, the downbeat of a measure gets extra emphasis to help players keep track of the time signature.

However, click tracks on a digital audio workstation (DAW) are essentially samplers playing a selected sound at a consistent tempo. If you want, you can upload your own sounds (usually as a WAV or AIFF audio file) and have your DAW play them back at your desired tempo and time signature.

You can use click tracks in a variety of ways in both live settings and in-studio music production. Use a click track to:

• Keep a multi-piece band in sync over the course of an entire song.
• Help an individual lay down backing tracks that will be added to a song at a later date.
• Establish a tempo that will count in to the first beat of the song and then cut out.
• Create a tempo map for a song in which the tempo and time signature shift from section to section (if a player stays with the click, they'll remain in sync with the changing song).
• Keep a live band in sync while they're on a wide stage.
• Help a film scoring ensemble sync their musical performance to visual events in the picture they are underscoring.
• Help a player work through timing issues and improve musicianship when comping or playing melody lines.
• Maintain a steady tempo during solo songwriting sessions in which a pianist, bassist, or guitarist improvises riffs and melodies over a steady beat.

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