Chris has stomped a tap tempo button between parts for twenty years. Now the iPad sits on his music stand where he can watch the ring lock, a mic on a boom by the kick runs into a Scarlett, and the Scarlett's MIDI out runs into his pedals, so the delay lands on the drummer's time from the first downbeat. Count-off, the plus or minus eight BPM anchor, set lists on a foot switch, what it gets wrong, and what it costs.
Who's talking. Chris is a real person. This is his voice, cloned, reading words he wrote and is responsible for. He digitized himself because there's one of him and a lot of hours he's asleep for. Nova, the co-host, is fully synthetic. The apps contain no AI.
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Transcript
NovaShop Talk from Creedy Solutions. I'm Nova, I'm the synthetic one, and Chris is the real one, and he's a guitar player, which matters today. Chris, the short disclosure, and then I've got a question that I think is going to annoy you.
ChrisYeah, so, I'm a real person, this is my actual voice, and I wrote every word of this, so if it's wrong it's on me. I digitized myself because there's one of me and a lot of hours in a week. Not Skynet, not Ultron, just a guy with a Telecaster and a laptop. Go ahead, annoy me.
NovaOkay. You're a guitar player. Why do you care what tempo the drummer is at? You just play.
ChrisHa, so that's what I thought for a long time, honestly, and then I bought a delay pedal. Because the second you've got a dotted eighth delay on the chorus, you care a lot, because that delay is at a tempo, and the drummer is at a tempo, and when those two things don't agree it sounds like somebody's playing in the next room. And basically every pedal that makes the guitar sound big has a tempo in it, and the drummer doesn't know that, and shouldn't have to.
NovaSo what have you been doing about that, Chris, all these years?
ChrisStomping, mostly. So every delay pedal has a tap tempo button, and you tap it with your foot, and what actually happens on stage is the song starts and I'm tapping, like, during the intro, trying to catch the drummer, and the first two bars have the delay going wherever it was from the last song. And then he pushes the chorus a little, because he's a human being, and now I'm tapping between the verse and the chorus like I'm putting out a fire, and I did that for about twenty years.
NovaAnd now you've got a phone on your music stand doing it. Walk me through that, because I want to understand why it's on the stand and not over by the drums.
ChrisSo the app is DrumClock, and the idea is it listens to the drummer and sends that tempo out over MIDI, and the pedals follow it. And the first way I ran it was the phone over by the kit, which works, but I couldn't see it, you know, and it turns out I want to see it. So now the iPad sits on my stand, right next to the chart, and there's a big ring that pulses on the beat and the tempo number right under it, and I can glance down and know it's locked before I ever play a note.
NovaBut a phone on a music stand next to a PA is a bad microphone. You said that yourself last time.
ChrisI did, and it is, which is why it's not using the iPad's mic. So I've got a little audio interface, a Scarlett, one with a MIDI jack on the back, plugged into the iPad, and a regular dynamic mic on a short boom pointed at the kick and the snare. So the iPad is on my stand but its ears are over by the drums, a real mic a foot from the kick, and then the MIDI out on the back of that same Scarlett goes into my pedals, so one box does both jobs.
NovaChris, is that all one app, or are you doing something clever in iOS to route it?
ChrisNothing clever, which is kind of the point. When the interface is plugged in, that's the iPad's microphone as far as iOS is concerned, so DrumClock just hears the drums through it, and the MIDI port shows up in the app's output list and you pick it. And if you already own a Scarlett, and a lot of us do, you own the whole rig, or the little Roland UM-ONE cable does the wire part if you don't.
NovaAlright, so the tempo gets to the pedals. What does that actually feel like on a Sunday?
ChrisSo the delay is right from the first downbeat, which, I can't tell you how weird that is after twenty years. The drummer clicks the sticks, four clicks, and that sets the tempo and beat one lands where he puts it, so the dotted eighths on the intro are already sitting on his time, and I didn't touch anything. And then if he leans into the chorus, the delay leans with him, because it's following, not holding a number.
NovaWhat's on the receiving end, for people who want to copy this?
ChrisAnything with a MIDI clock input, so a Timeline, a Helix or an H X Stomp, the Boss five hundred series, most of the Eventide stuff. DrumClock sends plain MIDI clock, twenty four pulses a beat with start and stop, and it can send a tap tempo message on every beat at the same time for the pedals that only have a tap input. You MIDI Learn that once, there's a button that sends four test taps, and then you never think about it again.
NovaLet me push on it, Chris. Drummers fill. Drummers drop a beat. Drummers double-time the last chorus. A phone that follows all of that sounds like a delay pedal having a nervous breakdown.
ChrisYeah, and that's a fair push, and it was a real problem in the first version. So what I do now is set lists. You put the tempo in for each song ahead of time, and the app treats that as home base, and it follows the drummer inside a window around it, plus or minus eight beats a minute. So a fill doesn't throw it, and a double-time section doesn't throw it either, because a hundred and forty isn't inside the window around seventy. And it holds through a break, so if everything drops out but the pad for four bars, the delay keeps the last tempo and picks the drummer back up when he comes in.
NovaAnd you step through the set list with what, your hands?
ChrisNo, with the foot I've got free now. A page turner pedal, or any Bluetooth foot switch, and you tap to the next song and the clock is already sitting at that tempo before the drummer plays anything. Which is a better use of the foot.
NovaWhat does it get wrong?
ChrisPlacement still matters, so if the mic's pointed at the bass cab, it'll follow the bass player, and some nights that's fine and some nights it isn't. Brushes on a jazz kit, it wants more attack than that. And if the drummer is genuinely all over the place, it's going to be honest about that, which is useful information, but not always welcome. It's a stage tool for bands with no click. If you've got in-ears and a click track already, you don't need me.
NovaPrice, platforms, and the training video you keep mentioning.
ChrisIt's on iPhone, iPad and Android, and it's free to try. Pro is nineteen ninety nine a year, or forty nine ninety nine once and you're done forever, and the mic and the boom are going to cost you more than that. Creedy Solutions dot com slash drum clock has the long video with the wiring, or just search DrumClock in the store.
NovaLast word, Chris. The guitar player who's reading this with one foot hovering over a tap button.
ChrisI'd say put the iPad on the stand this week, just the iPad, no interface, and watch the ring for one rehearsal. Because the thing that sold me was looking down and seeing the number move with the drummer and realizing I'd been guessing at that for twenty years. And then go find the MIDI jack on the back of whatever interface you already own, and plug the pedals in, and stop tapping. Search DrumClock in the App Store or Google Play, and if something breaks, tell me, because I read all of it.
NovaThat's Shop Talk. Thanks, Chris. Links are in the notes, and I'm Nova, still synthetic.