Click Track in Pro Tools: Create It, Count It Off, Map It to a Recording, Bounce It Out
· 5 min read
Pro Tools has had a proper click since before most of us used it, and for a session recorded to that click there is nothing to explain: one menu command and you are done. This page is about the two things people actually search for. Making the click follow a song that was not recorded to one, and getting the click out of Pro Tools as a file the band can play on stage.
Try it on your own track, free
Create the click
Choose Track, then Create Click Track. Pro Tools adds a mono Auxiliary Input track with the Click II plug-in on it, and the metronome button in the Transport window's MIDI controls turns it on and off. The sound lives in the plug-in: open Click II to choose a sound (woodblock, beep and others), set the accent on beat one, the subdivision level, velocity and pitch. Pick something that cuts through drums in a pair of in-ears; a woodblock or sticks over a beep.
The count-off is a separate dialog, Click/Countoff Options, which also opens when you double-click the countoff value in the Transport: it sets when the click is heard (during play and record, record only, or the countoff only) and how many bars of count-off you get, one or two for a stage file.
For a song at a fixed tempo, set the session tempo and the click is finished. That covers every session recorded to a click in the first place.
A song that was not recorded to a click
Here the click has to follow the recording, not the other way round. Two tools in Pro Tools do this.
Identify Beat, by hand. Zoom in, put an edit point on a clear downbeat (Tab to Transient finds it on rhythmic material), choose Event, Identify Beat (Command+I on a Mac, Ctrl+I on Windows), tell Pro Tools which bar and beat it is, and a tempo event appears in the Tempo ruler. Repeat at the next bar, and the next. Accurate, slow: an hour for a song that breathes, and you need to know where every bar starts.
Beat Detective, from the audio's transients. Select four bars, starting exactly on a beat, choose Event, Beat Detective (Command+8 or Ctrl+8 on the numeric keypad), and in the Operation section choose Bar|Beat Marker Generation. Enter the start and end bar, pick an analysis algorithm (High Emphasis for hi-hats and cymbals, Low Emphasis for kick and bass, Enhanced Resolution for a full mix), press Analyze, and raise the Sensitivity until every beat has a trigger and nothing else does. Generate writes the tempo events into the Tempo ruler. Then the next four bars. It works well on a clean drum recording; on a full mix, or a song with pickups and ritardandos, it needs help: an upbeat gets read as the downbeat, a slowing bar gets missed, and each of those becomes a tempo jump the drummer will feel. A wrongly placed trigger can be corrected by double-clicking it and typing the right bar and beat.
Either way you end with a Tempo ruler that follows the song, and the Click plug-in follows the ruler.
Get the click out as a file
A click inside the session is no use on a stage without a laptop running Pro Tools. The file bands actually use is a plain stereo track with the click on the left channel and the music, summed to mono, on the right: left to the in-ears, right to the PA. How the split file works and how to wire it.
In Pro Tools: route the Click track's output to a bus, record that bus onto an audio track for the length of the song, and now the click is audio like everything else. Pan the recorded click hard left and the rest of the mix hard right (or a mono submix of it), select the whole song including the count-off bars at the front, and choose File, Bounce to, Disk: WAV or MP3, stereo interleaved. The file starts with the count and lands on beat one.
The one-minute way
If you only need the file, not the session, there is a shorter road. Drop the song into the click track maker: it finds the beats in the recording, puts a click on them with beat one tuned higher, adds the count-in, and exports click left, music right. No tempo mapping, no bounce, and the click moves with the song the way a Beat Detective map would. Step by step: how to make a click track from your own backing track. Pro Tools stays the right tool when you are going to record or mix against that grid.
Frequently asked questions
How do I add a count-off to the click in Pro Tools?
Open Click/Countoff Options (double-click the countoff value in the Transport window): set the number of count-off bars and whether the click is heard during play and record, record only, or the countoff only. The countoff button in the Transport turns it on and off.
Can Pro Tools make a click for a song that was not recorded to one?
Yes. Identify Beat sets the tempo by hand at each downbeat you mark; Beat Detective's Bar|Beat Marker Generation builds the tempo map from the audio's transients, a few bars at a time. Both put the result in the Tempo ruler, which the Click II plug-in follows.
How do I export the click as an audio file?
Route the Click track to a bus, record it onto an audio track, then File, Bounce to, Disk. For a stage file put the click on the left channel and the music in mono on the right.
Why does my click drift away from the song?
The song was not recorded to a click and the Tempo ruler holds one tempo. Map the tempo to the recording with Identify Beat or Beat Detective, or make the click from the recording with a tool that follows it.
Try it on your own track, free
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