Click tracks for recording
Why record to a click
Recording to a click makes everything downstream easier. Bar lines align with the grid, so cutting and comping is precise, and overdubs have a reference. Loops and samples are effectively impossible to place without one.
The reverse is painful. A take recorded free of a click is awkward to edit: you may love everything except one bar, but if that bar is a different length from its neighbours, splicing it makes the join audible.
Choosing a voice and a level
A click in headphones has to cut through the performance without leaking into the microphones. Everything about the choice is a balance between those two demands.
Short sounds in the upper-mid range tend to be audible while being less objectionable if they do leak. The mechanical click voice fits this well. A bell, by contrast, has a long tail that is difficult to remove once it is in a room mic.
Set the level to the quietest that is reliably audible. Louder means more bleed, and it also means the performer starts chasing the click, which flattens the take.
Count-in and starts
Give at least one bar of count-in and preferably two. One bar frequently does not give the player enough time to internalise the tempo before they have to play.
The first beat needs to be accented so the player knows where the bar begins. Accenting beat 1 only in the accent editor gives you a usable count-in pattern directly.
When not to use one
Not all music belongs on a grid. Classical solo repertoire built on rubato, free ballads and improvised playing are all harmed by a click.
For those, record without one but document the tempo anyway: measure the finished take with a tap tempo tool and note the average. That number becomes the starting point when overdubs arrive later.
Band sessions allow a compromise. Leave the click out of free sections such as the intro and outro, and feed it only during the sections that need it.
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