Click track

The click track originated in early sound movies, where optical marks were made on the film to indicate precise timings for musical accompaniment.

The earliest known usage of "precise timing-aid" in movies may have been by Walt Disney’s team when recording music and sound effects for their early cartoons.

The Disney team experimented with additional graphical symbols, to better show the performing musicians when to expect happenings.

The musicians who embellish the tracks created with MIDI sequencer essentially play along with the already timed piece of music.

The click track may be used as a form of metronome directly by musicians in the studio or on stage, particularly by drummers, who listen via headphones to maintain a consistent beat.

The use of a click track allows for easier editing in a digital audio workstation (DAW) or music sequencer, since various parts can be easily quantized and moved around or spliced together without worrying about minute differences in timing.

Click tracks are especially useful to modern "one man bands" who may use a multi-track audio editor to perform all or many of the different parts of a recording separately.

[4] Simon Wolstencroft, drummer for The Fall in the 1980s and '90s, stated "[Smith] hated it if the drums became too slick" by synchronizing with a click track.