reverse engineering a click track

relic245 · October 30

Our band wants to play 505 by the arctic monkeys.

The song starts with a synth pad that plays through the rest of the song. It plays for about 2 mins before bass and drums kick in.

I've used moises (AI track seperator) to separate the original track into its component parts so I now have the isolated synth track.

Problem is that I need a click track to go with it as there are a couple of changes in there.

Moises generates a 'smart click track' but it's not very smart and speeds up and slows down quite a bit.

I've tried creating one in audacity and reaper but I can get it so that it sounds OK but throughout the track it drops out of sync. Only a little but enough that it would cause a problem .

Any suggestions for how to create an accurate click track?

AsterixTG · October 30

Possible daft question, would it be easier to adjust the synth track to the click?

Done it plenty of times with a rough vocal track that meanders to put it over new music.

Lodious · October 30

Not sure if it helps, but this is easy to do in Ableton.

AlbertC · October 30

Your problem could be that the original song isn’t played to an absolute strict BPM. Or if it was, possibly the process of isolating the keyboard track has warped the tempo somehow.

You need to use a DAW to time stretch/sync it so it’s one rigid BPM. Most major ones can do this now but I’m not familiar with Reaper so I don’t know its capabilities.

The song is basically the same 2 chords (Dmin/Emin) throughout at the same tempo - it sounds like an organ with lots of reverb and some vibrato rather than a synth. It would be very easy record something that sounds very similar (though replicating the exact sound absolutely perfectly would be trickier - but I would imagine a close proximity would be fine) and include a nice rigid click track.

AlbertC · October 30

I knocked this very quickly as an example -

With click - https://jumpshare.com/s/5tb8yfAp9iDI7frFhD13
Without click - https://jumpshare.com/s/x9nWX5oKyLyESC0x6DKm

You could probably get nearer to the exact sound messing around with EQ, etc.. but I'm not sure an audience would need any closer than this

relic245 · October 30

AlbertC said:

I knocked this very quickly as an example -

With click - https://jumpshare.com/s/5tb8yfAp9iDI7frFhD13
Without click - https://jumpshare.com/s/x9nWX5oKyLyESC0x6DKm

You could probably get nearer to the exact sound messing around with EQ, etc.. but I'm not sure an audience would need any closer than this

Nice one thanks.

That's basically the whole track although there is a slight variation towards the end.

I think you may be right that the original may not have been played to a click track.

I'm going to investigate the time stretching thing in reaper.

blobb · October 30

Or tempo map it.

PolarityMan · October 31

blobb said:

Or tempo map it.

this

relic245 · October 31

PolarityMan said:

blobb said:

Or tempo map it.

this

Thanks I'll take a look. I've never come across the term before.

barrettisgold · November 2

relic245 said:

PolarityMan said:

blobb said:

Or tempo map it.

this

Thanks I'll take a look. I've never come across the term before.

I would also tempo map as @blobb and @PolarityMan have suggested.

Reaper Mania has a tutorial how to do it:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2SB73rGeIXQ

blobb · November 2

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/tempo-mapping

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reverse engineering a click track

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