SYNC : Why templates should have a count in clic

I’ve red this thread a few times and I’m completely missing the point here.
I agree on some kind of count in on a template, it is convenient, but what’s this nonsense about milliseconds?
In classical music the conductor gives a few silent gestures, and the 64 piece orchestra starts to play, you can bet on it that there are a few who start before the bar and certainly a few who start behind the bar, but what’s the fuzz….,that’s when notes becomes music! We’re not perfect… why should our music be?
We’re human not machines and that the strength of music: its imperfectness .It gives life to music.
Jazz musicians just make a few finger snaps and that’s it. Even a drum intro of a rock band isn’t much of an accurate sync click.
Music is not mathematics, its emotion and emotion can’t be poured in BPM.

Can’t help saying a word ‘bout click tracks.
Playing with a click track is indeed an easy way to go, but NEVER the good one, if you wanne beat all life out of a song, that’s the way to go.
When making an ad to a template, everyone should listen to what’s already there and respect the inaccurate timing ,crescendo’s ,diminuendo’s and all emotion of the uploader, in other words :follow the leader.
When you’re listening to your click track while playing, one should never think “he, he ….they are going out of tempo..”no ..it’s you who’s out of tempo!
Chick Corea once said “when you play, listen to the other musicians, and if you don’t hear what they are doing…..stop playing until you do!
The problem is that there are more musicians then there should be, who seems to hear only themselves when playing, it’s so much easier to follow a steady click track, then the emotions of other musicians.

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everything you say is perfectly true, especially for live events, and also in the studio. At a time when we want to start a recording, we have to create a time line. The click will never be constant for example at 60bpm unless you want it so, are records defined all quantized (do not like), but usually the click is variable from 59 567 to 60 659 bpm or more, depending on the direction we want to give the song. The problem is that in all the analogue digital conversion and digital analog trigger errors, this also due to our domestic and not highly professional means. The first to suffer from the mistakes is the time line in a MP3 conversion will notice that the track will be shorter than the audio track "original", because the compression spectrum is very invasive. This creates huge discrepancies in users, many do not create problems or do not know about it. That's why in the recording studio of a certain level or profile, there are these machines ..... used to synchronize each effect each puff every beat of any instrument ..... primarily use midi protocol to avoid latency problems .. clock machine and see the price.........http://antelopeaudio.com/pro-audio-devices/master-clocks/

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i'm affraid the initial idea got lost at some point ! i suggest to read back the original post : the idea is to respect the playing of somebody contributing to a template using the count-in clic as a time sync !

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I read and I confirm that when we create a click as the time line, when we convert this file, or the import in a new project, we will get more time errors, these errors occur, clearly more than a minute of running , more than two minutes the click is totally out of time, beyond the three minutes of music or click unsustainable. This creates enormous problems both of execution timing of the effects particularly the environment of reverbs delay effects, but there is also great suffering on wha wha the rotary etc. etc. I've hear so many times in Wikiloop. This is mainly due to the much different means that all we usually use. So it is advisable to Wikiloop: A ) use a single standard format for recording, as Aif 48000Hz 24bit or other B ) avoid all forms of conversion, before import and after recording C ) Equip yourself with a good import program audio tracks D ) Uploading Time Line in a stand alone way in Wikiloop with precount....The majority of users do not use Time Line , 'cause this work done manually , is very time consuming , unless you have a very good clock machine . Without Time Line recordings are always very poor , or causal ,
maybe excellent but without getting the sophistication that can only donate synchronization. The studios recording use sync by time clock machine, you can do that work by your hands but it requests so many time, 'cause nobody plays from the start to the end at 90Bpm . Sure it's simple but often is very bad to hear, all artists work with variable clock in studios their get clock machine that recording every drummer microbeat ...... so what are we talking ??? Best Regards OlivBee

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Man, when anybody clicks on adding an HD track when uploading, there should be immediately a pop up asking: "Have you put in a reference point at the beginning?? If not go back and do it please"

If you ever tried to place a vocal track on a fairly busy backing track, you'll know how frustrating it can be. What people have to realize, you can't always count on the beginning of a track being always at the same bar - sometimes people move it. It really only takes a few bars of drums, bass or anything really, copied and paste at the beginning to help align it...it literally can save you hours of fiddling :)

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:o Im so confused now!

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sorry to read you're confused ! it is right simple in fact : anybody posting a template (initial jam) should start with a count in clic that can be used at any later point as a time ref ... members adding to the template can post a HD file (solo track of their take) with the same count in clic so when imported into the project of whoever is mixing the aligning is right easy when it can just be a nightmare if the time ref is not in the stem ...

don't be side tracked by ppl developing about playing to a clic or the inability to keep a clic in sync : it's not relevant ! the initial point is just the time ref issue ;)

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In simple terms, the 4(or 3,2) count drummers do to start a song! Always our moment of glory....

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Whilst i have a pretty good sense of time and don’t often use click tracks and the like, i know how hard it can be when working with large numbers of tracks that have no sync/count to reference and use as a datum point to align on. So…as one of the worst offenders of not filling in stuff and not putting a “count” at the start of my uploads, I thought it about time i worked out exactly how to add click to my tracks.
Now logic pro x is a great program, almost anything can be achieved, but my tiny brain simply could not see it, thinking it would be obvious as there’s even a count in parameter in the preferences. But no, the count is only for my recording convenience and is never output to the main mix.
……Anyhow i squeezed my few brain cells into action and came up with this solution:
Now, i work with templates, i have a few basic guitar sounds, fx patches and a couple of tracks ready to import audio stored on a template which i open fresh every time to either start a new jam, use as a portal to jam over wikiloops, or import downloads to.
What i have done now is add a Midi instrument track and used the environment keyboard to add four notes to that track. then i stretched it to two measures and re saved the template.
So when i open the template, I’m asked what tempo and key the new song should be in, so i set the tempo and open the template……..WOW! I’ve now got two measures of count in in the correct tempo.
I can do the same for any time signature, which would obviously require separate templates…..but never again will you hear one of mine tracks sans count in!

sorry if this seems basic information to most of you...but it's taken me ages to work out how to do this, so i thought it worth sharing for the few like me with limited brain power...i guess it should be pretty similar for most DAW's. happy jamming and mixing y'all. :)

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Bick...Bock...Bock...Bock...

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once you have exported your template, double check it re-importing into your project and see what the export does ;)
Glad you're taking things the right way buddy ! You'll find out it's a breeze importing and positioning vocals if it has whatever time ref to help :D

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Thanks for this! Good info stretched over some time.

One more place the milliseconds of "error" can come from is the >mp3 encoding process. Mp3 files will (often) have about 15 MS of "dead" space at the beginning of the track compared to the lossless file they are created from. If you work say in wav format and convert or save to mp3 format, then place the files alongside one another in your DAW you will see the delay. Try it! Then be aware if you mix formats in your multitrack software.


I am running into this alignment issue, and sometimes creating it, particularly on HD solo tracks. What is being described here is much like how video/film is synched to audio using a clap board. The Audio of the snap is lined up with the visual cue of the clapper. But, instead of synching audio to video we are aligning all of the audio files in a song for mixdown.



You could get away with a single "click", and it could be anywhere in the track, though at the beginning is certainly convenient. When posting a solo track to a template (along with a mixed track), I typically leave the intro "count in" from the main track loud when creating the solo track, OR insert a copy of the count section in a new track and mix that into the (beginning) of the solo track. This count in gets muted when mixing several tracks together.

It can be very difficult to align tracks with out these registration marks, A lot of musician's performance relies on "playing around" the beat at least occasionally, making the original track alignment critical, with few obvious points of alignment.

When making an "add" the registration "click" should come from the original template file if possible. (example: #146030 HD file contains count in from original file and Guitar track).

When creating a NEW template this could be the click or "drum" track you play with, if you are playing along with one (i put the "metronome" in my DAW on a track, played with that, then I volumed down the click at mix time example #134459 - then we used this to do some adds, just like above). If playing organically (without a beat or clicker)as described by GemmyF above, one could knock on an acoustic guitar, or otherwise create registration marks before starting to play, then this sound would also be "left on" every subsequent track, merely for alignment. The registration mark does not actually have to be in time with the music, it just helps line up the tracks.

Did I get it right? let me know if this not correct or does not make sense...

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Thanks for this! Good info stretched over some time.

One more place the milliseconds of "error" can come from is the >mp3 encoding process. Mp3 files will (often) have about 15 MS of "dead" space at the beginning of the track compared to the lossless file they are created from. If you work say in wav format and convert or save to mp3 format, then place the files alongside one another in your DAW you will see the delay. Try it! Then be aware if you mix formats in your multitrack software.


I am running into this alignment issue, and sometimes creating it, particularly on HD solo tracks. What is being described here is much like how video/film is synched to audio using a clap board. The Audio of the snap is lined up with the visual cue of the clapper. But, instead of synching audio to video we are aligning all of the audio files in a song for mixdown.



You could get away with a single "click", and it could be anywhere in the track, though at the beginning is certainly convenient. When posting a solo track to a template (along with a mixed track), I typically leave the intro "count in" from the main track loud when creating the solo track, OR insert a copy of the count section in a new track and mix that into the (beginning) of the solo track. This count in gets muted when mixing several tracks together.

It can be very difficult to align tracks with out these registration marks, A lot of musician's performance relies on "playing around" the beat at least occasionally, making the original track alignment critical, with few obvious points of alignment.

When making an "add" the registration "click" should come from the original template file if possible. (example: #146030 HD file contains count in from original file and Guitar track).

When creating a NEW template this could be the click or "drum" track you play with, if you are playing along with one (i put the "metronome" in my DAW on a track, played with that, then I volumed down the click at mix time example #134459 - then we used this to do some adds, just like above). If playing organically (without a beat or clicker)as described by GemmyF above, one could knock on an acoustic guitar, or otherwise create registration marks before starting to play, then this sound would also be "left on" every subsequent track, merely for alignment. The registration mark does not actually have to be in time with the music, it just helps line up the tracks.

Did I get it right? let me know if this not correct or does not make sense...

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well said and informative....exactly what I learned to do...at first I didn't.....it definitely saves time for other collaborators...Not having a count in can often discourage folks from adding...

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This is great advice; thanks! I will add a clicktrack count-in to my templates from now on.

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