Click track

The click ticks at a fixed BPM, and beat 1 of each bar is usually higher or louder so you can hear where the bar starts. To find the gap between clicks, divide 60,000 by the BPM: at 120 BPM that is a click every 500 ms, at 90 BPM one every 667 ms. In 4/4 a one-bar count-in is four clicks. You hear “one, two, three, four” and come in on the next beat 1.

Recording to a click pays off twice. Parts recorded at different times line up with each other, which keeps overdubs and looper layers tight. And because the app knows where every beat falls, your take sits on its grid of bars, so you can snap MIDI notes to the nearest sixteenth (quantizing) or copy a chorus to a new spot and have it land on the beat. A take played without a click speeds up and slows down a little, and the grid stops matching the music.

The click should reach your ears and stay out of the recording, so wear headphones when you record a voice or guitar with a microphone. Wired ones are best, because Bluetooth latency delivers each click late and you end up playing late with it.

A plain click can feel stiff at first. Start a little slower than the song wants and count along out loud. A simple drum beat does the same job and is easier to feel, which is why some apps offer beats next to the click. In GarageBand on iPhone, the Metronome button in the control bar turns the click on and off, and the Count-in switch is in the song settings under Metronome and Count-in. Making your first beat on iPhone walks through recording to them.

The loop recorders in Gelato Synth and Gelato Chord both start with one bar of count-in. Gelato Synth’s Beat control offers a plain Click or a Rock, Hip Hop or Dance beat, and Gelato Chord offers a click plus eight drum grooves to play over.