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A More Organic Click

It's kind of lazy to set up a click in Pro Tools and then feed that to a drummer.

There's nothing wrong with this, but in my opinion, its a really impersonal element added to the recording process.

When recording, the aim is to make the performer comftorable (when necessary) so they can deliver a great performance.

A cool trick worth trying is send that click to their headphones for the bpm of the song. Now, have the drummer track a few bars of straight 'pocket', so just a straight groove for time. I'd recommend sticking to only kick, snare and hi-hat.

Make sure they really lock in to the click. If needed, time align the kick and snare in Pro Tools, but be sure not to edit it to the point where they lose their 'feel' on the drums.

Make that drum section a four or eight bar phrase and duplicate it across the session for the length of the song.

Now, turn off the click and send that recording to the band and drummer for the click.

It's my experience the drummer will lock-in much tighter and everything will track more naturally and keep the human element within the tracking session.

If you don't have time to do this, due to time constraints, take the time during some off time to get some loops for your sessions and keep those on a hard drive (you take with you). When it's session time, place them in the Pro Tools session and voila!...instant drummer happiness.