The Origin of the Click Track
When I came across this a while back in an old interview, it finally made sense to me why the click sounds more like a wood block than a traditional metronome (which had been around since the early 1800s). In Ub Iwerk’s own words, “We had to get a new print for Walt after he had gone to New York, with the bouncing ball printed in the soundtrack area. Walt had thought that the musicians could follow the images. [Wilfred] Jackson and I thought not and we were right. Finally, the idea was so secret it was only known to the conductor. The picture was projected on a sheet of music paper on the conductor’s stand and he followed the bouncing ball. Carl Stalling had come to Hollywood and he started putting soundtracks to film, but he said, “I can’t keep my mind on what I’m doing with that bouncing ball.” So a hole was punched in the soundtrack every twelve frames. It gave a dull cluck rhythmically. Then by striation I put stripes on film and got a real click, a wood block effect. This recording was for the conductor. Then headsets were used for more perfect synchronization. The musicians never saw the picture; they only heard the clicks. Opry House was the first really perfected use of sound with cartoons. The preview was terrific.”
Rachmaninoff visited Disney Studios in 1942 and that was when he saw the clip of Mickey playing the piano in “The Opry House”. I’ve seen a few different versions of this quote, so its hard to parse which one is the most accurate, but they are all similar to this: “I have heard my piece beautifully done by some of the best pianist and cruelly murdered by amateurs, but I have never been more moved than by the performance of the great Maestro Mickey Mouse.”
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