Click Track in Audacity: Rhythm Track, a Count-In, and the Split File for the Stage
· 5 min read
Audacity is free, it runs on anything, and it has a metronome built in under the name Rhythm Track. For a song at a fixed tempo that is all you need to make a click track file for the stage. This page walks that route step by step, from the manual, and says plainly where it stops: Audacity cannot make the click follow a recording that was not made to one.
Try it on your own track, free
Generate the click: Rhythm Track
Add a new track for the click, then choose Generate, Rhythm Track. The dialog has everything a stage click needs:
- Tempo (bpm), default 120. Type the song's tempo. If you do not know it, the free BPM finder reads it from the file, or tap it in with tap tempo.
- Beats per bar, default 4.
- Swing amount, default 0. Leave it at 0 for a straight click.
- Number of bars, default 16, or Rhythm track duration if you would rather give it a length.
- Start time offset, in seconds, up to 30.
- Beat sound, default Metronome tick; other sounds are in the list, and a ping or a tick cuts through in-ears better than anything drum-like.
- MIDI pitch of strong beat (92) and MIDI pitch of weak beat (80). This is your beat one accent: the strong beat sounds an octave higher by default, so the drummer hears the bar line without counting.
Set the number of bars to cover the whole song plus the count-in bars, generate, and you have a click track the length of the song.
The count-in
Make the Rhythm Track start at zero and give it one or two extra bars. Then move the song's clip so that it begins exactly where the count-in ends: at 120 BPM in 4/4 one bar is two seconds, so a one-bar count puts the song at 2.000 seconds. Zoom in on the first beat of the song and line it up with the first click of bar two (or three). Beat one of the song has to land on a click, or the count-in leads the band into the wrong place.
Click left, music right
A click through the whole song only works where the audience cannot hear it, so the file bands use has the click on the left channel and the song in mono on the right. In Audacity:
- Select the song track and choose Tracks, Mix, Mix Stereo Down to Mono. It averages the two channels into one.
- On the song track's Track Control Panel, drag the Pan slider fully to the right. On the Rhythm Track, drag it fully to the left.
- Select both tracks and choose Tracks, Mix, Mix and Render. Audacity renders one stereo track with the pan applied: click on the left, song on the right. (Mix and Render to New Track, Ctrl+Shift+M, keeps the originals.)
- File, Export Audio: WAV or MP3, stereo.
Left goes to the in-ears, right goes to the PA. How the split file works and how to wire it has the diagram.
Where Audacity stops
Rhythm Track ticks at one tempo from the first bar to the last. That is exactly right for a song recorded to a click and exactly wrong for one that was not: a live recording, a rehearsal bounce, a track that pushes into the chorus. Within a minute the click drifts away from the song and the drummer has to choose between them.
Audacity has no tempo map. The nearest thing is Analyze, Beat Finder, which puts a label on each beat it detects, with a Threshold Percentage (default 65) you lower when it misses beats. The manual calls it a rough and ready tool that will not necessarily work well on a modern pop track with compressed dynamics, and its output is labels, not a click. You could generate separate Rhythm Track sections at different tempos and line each up by hand, but by then you are doing tempo mapping without a tempo map.
For that case, the click track maker does the job in about a minute: it reads the beats from the recording, puts a click on them with beat one tuned higher, adds the count-in and exports click left, music right. Step by step: how to make a click track from your own backing track. Audacity stays the right tool for the fixed-tempo case and for everything else you edit in it.
Frequently asked questions
Does Audacity have a metronome?
Yes, as a generator: Generate, Rhythm Track. It makes a click track of any tempo and length on a track of its own, with a different pitch on beat one.
How do I add a count-in in Audacity?
Generate the Rhythm Track from zero with one or two extra bars, then move the song's clip so it starts exactly at the end of those bars, with its first beat on a click.
Can Audacity make a click for a song that was not recorded to a click?
Not one that follows it. Rhythm Track holds a single tempo, and Beat Finder only labels beats. Use a tool that builds the click from the recording, or a DAW with tempo mapping.
How do I put the click on one channel only?
Mix the song down to mono, pan it fully right, pan the Rhythm Track fully left, then Mix and Render and export as a stereo file.
Try it on your own track, free
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