Click Track in MainStage: Metronome, Count-In, Playback and a Click That Follows the Song

2026-11-01 · 6 min read

MainStage is the Mac app many keyboard players and bands run on stage: it hosts the sounds, plays the backing tracks with its Playback plug-in and has a metronome you can send to the in-ears. Unlike the other DAWs in this series, it is built for the gig, not the studio, so the click question is a live one: what does the drummer hear, and does it stay with the track. If the term is new, what a click track is is the short version. This page follows Apple's MainStage User Guide, version 4.3.

If the song is on your computer, hear CountIn put a click on every beat of it. Listening is free and needs no account.

The metronome and the count-in

Two lines from the manual decide how all of this behaves. The metronome "always plays at the current concert tempo", and the Playback count-in "always uses the concert tempo and meter, regardless of the Sync mode". The click comes from the concert, not from the audio file.

The click in the in-ears, not in the PA

The manual covers the stage case directly: by default the metronome goes to the main outputs (Output 1-2), and you can route it "to another output pair", for example a headphone mix. Open the Channel Strips Action pop-up menu, choose Show Metronome Channel Strip, and pick a different output in the Output pop-up menu of that channel strip. The backing track stays on the main outputs, the click goes to the drummer only.

The backing track: the Playback plug-in

Playback plays an audio file while you play. Where you put it decides how long it keeps playing:

• in a patch: it plays while that patch is selected,
• at the set level: it keeps playing while you switch patches inside the set, which is the usual way to run one song,
• at the concert level: it keeps playing across the whole concert.

Three pop-up menus control the start. Snap To delays Play to the next beat, bar or marker, Play From picks the start point (Start is the one for a song), and Sync decides the tempo. With Sync off, "the audio file plays at its recorded tempo"; with Sync on, it plays at the concert tempo, but only if the file contains tempo information. A plain MP3 or WAV of a band does not, so Sync stays dimmed and the song plays as recorded.

One warning from the manual worth knowing before the gig: when you start the MainStage clock, "the audio engine is reset, causing a brief interruption in the audio output". Start the clock at the top of the song, not in the middle of one.

Where it breaks: a song that was not recorded to a grid

Put the two facts together. The backing track plays at its recorded tempo. The metronome and the count-in play at the concert tempo, a fixed number. They agree only when the recording holds one steady tempo and you have typed that tempo into the concert or the set exactly. If you are unsure of the number, the free BPM finder reads it from the file.

Many recordings do not hold one tempo. A track played by a band moves a few beats per minute over a chorus, and some move a lot: we measured Stairway to Heaven going from 71 to about 102 BPM and Honky Tonk Women from 113 to 126. Against a track like that, the MainStage metronome stays on its number while the song walks away from it, and the drummer hears two beats that disagree. MainStage has no tool to read the tempo of an audio file and build a tempo map from it.

The fix: the click inside the file

The way around it is to stop asking MainStage for the click and put the click in the backing track itself, on its own channel: click and count-in on the left, the song in mono on the right. Then:

1. Load that stereo file into the Playback plug-in at the set level, Play From set to Start.
2. Leave the MainStage metronome and the Playback count-in off; the count-in is already at the front of the file.
3. On your audio interface, send output 1 (the click) to the in-ear mix and output 2 (the music) to the PA. How the split file works and how to wire it has the diagram.

Because the click was made from the recording, it cannot drift from it. The click track maker builds that file in the browser: it reads every beat of the song, puts a click on each one with beat one tuned higher, adds the count-in and exports click left, music right. Step by step: how to add a click track to any backing track.

Other DAWs

The same job in Cubase, FL Studio, Logic Pro, GarageBand, REAPER, Ableton Live, Pro Tools and Audacity.

Frequently asked questions

How do I turn on the metronome in MainStage?

Click the Metronome button in the toolbar, use a screen control mapped to the Metronome action, or click the Metronome button in the Playback plug-in window. Starting the metronome also starts the MainStage clock.

How do I send the MainStage click only to the in-ears?

Choose Show Metronome Channel Strip from the Channel Strips Action pop-up menu, then pick another output pair in that channel strip's Output pop-up menu, for example the outputs that feed the headphone mix.

Does MainStage have a count-in for backing tracks?

Yes, the Count-in button in the Playback plug-in gives one bar of the MainStage metronome click. It always uses the concert tempo and meter, so it matches the song only if the concert tempo matches the recording.

Why does the MainStage click drift from my backing track?

The metronome plays at the concert tempo, a fixed number, while a backing track without tempo information plays at its recorded tempo. If the recording speeds up or slows down, the two separate. A click built from the recording and baked into the file does not have this problem.

If the song is on your computer, hear CountIn put a click on every beat of it. Listening is free and needs no account.

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