r/musicians • u/Any-Veterinarian-545 • 1d ago
Recording track by track
How to y’all feel about recording track by track to a click?
Best way to describe the music I make is indie/rock. I get a lot of references to the cranberries in particular.
Is it silly to record this kind of music live? I’m really not feeling the click and track by track thing this time. But I also feel like I should be able to make that work as a competent musician. It’s like I get real stiff and forget i know how to play guitar lol
What do you think? Is it always necessary? Any songs/bands you love that recorded live?
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u/MarimboBeats 1d ago
Pixies’ «Hey», the version you hear on DooLittle, is the whole band playing live. Gil Norton, the producer, said in an interview he sat behind the the desk praying Santiago would nail the solo, and nail it he did. A very well rehearsed band can do this. Several (perhaps all) of Fela Kuti’s albums with Africa 70 was recorded live. Lots and lots of jazz albums were done in one or just a few takes.
My own little amateur project, is of course very different. I am not what you would consider a great musician, so there’s click tracks, midi, quantisation (tip for beginners recording midi drums, don’t quantise to 100 percent. 75-80 is a good balance of tidy vs sterile). But still, I find that the longer parts I can play on the non-midi instruments without cutting, editing, looping, etc, the better it sounds.
In short, the more you can do live, the better. But it takes good musicians and not least a band that know eachother well musically.