Click track plugin · AAX · VST3 · AU

Click tracks that can count past four

OddClick is a metronome for music that isn’t in four. Tell it 7/8 is 2+3+2 and it accents where the bar actually leans — bar after bar, through every meter change in the session.

7/8 grouped 2+3+2 — the accents OddClick plays

Why this exists

Your DAW’s click has one idea about a bar

One accent on the downbeat, then every beat after it identical. That’s fine in 4/4 and useless the moment you’re not. In 7/8, 2+3+2 and 3+2+2 are two different pieces of music — and an ordinary click plays them exactly the same way. So you end up counting over the top of the thing that was supposed to be counting for you.

OddClick makes the grouping the thing you edit. Type it, or drag across the beats you want held together, and the click leans where the music leans.

An ordinary click in 7/8. Seven of the same tick, one accent at the top. Nothing tells you where you are.

The same bar, grouped 2+3+2. Downbeat, then an accent starting each group. You can play to it.

A look at it

The interface

The OddClick editor open on a 13/8 bar grouped 3+4+3+2+1, beside a song list of mixed time signatures — A 13/8 bar grouped 3+4+3+2+1, in a song that changes meter constantly

The detached bar editor showing a 13/8 bar grouped 3+4+3+2+1, with individual hits muted, revoiced and set to different volumes — The bar editor, detached — per-hit volumes, per-hit sounds, subdivisions beat by beat

The sound picker showing the built-in click kits — The sound bank — five synthesised, four recorded

The Import panel reporting 58 meter changes imported from a MIDI file, over a song list of 5/8, 7/8, 12/8, 5/16 and 9/16 bars — One MIDI import, 58 meter changes — the whole song at once

The essentials

What you’ll use every day

Grouping you can hear

Type any grouping that adds up — 2+3+2, 3+4+3+2+1, 4+4+4+3 — or drag across the beats you want held together. There’s no menu of supported meters to be limited by: if you can write it as numbers that sum to the bar, it plays. The bar’s first beat comes out strong, the first beat of each group gets an accent, the rest stay ordinary. Grab a group by either edge and drag it wider to take in another beat, or narrower to give one back.

A different sound per role

Nine sounds built in — five synthesised as they play (Classic, Rim, Cowbell 2, Beep, Wood) and four recorded (Cowbell 1, Cowbell 3, Rim 2, Studio Click). Give downbeats one, group accents another, ordinary beats and subdivisions their own. Import your own samples alongside them.

Subdivisions, beat by beat

A step editor for the bar: set subdivisions across the whole bar, or beat by beat where only one of them needs splitting. Mute individual hits, set a hit’s volume by dragging it. The editor detaches into its own window when the plugin frame gets tight.

A whole song, in and out as MIDI

Export a MIDI file from your session and import it: every bar lands in the bar list as confirmed knowledge, so the first pass is right immediately with no meter detection left to get wrong. Drag the click back out as MIDI and drop it on a track — velocities carry the level each hit was actually playing at. Per-signature presets remember each meter’s grouping and sounds; bar overrides cover the one-off irregular bar.

Tempo Equivalents

What tempo, and what should you subdivide to get there?

Two rhythms, two tempos, one identity: the count times the note value on one side has to equal the count times the note value on the other. OddClick ships a calculator for it, because doing it in your head between cues is how mistakes get printed.

The Tempo Equivalents window, set to solve for the matching rhythm, reporting the closest note value with its percentage error and the tempo at which it would be exact — Solving for the rhythm — the closest spelling, how far off it is, and the tempo where it would be exact

Solve for the other tempo

Set both rhythms, type either BPM, and the other side answers. You’re at dotted-quarter = 92 — what tempo in straight quarters keeps the same pulse?

Or solve for the rhythm

You’re at dotted-quarter = 92 and the next cue sits at 118. What do you subdivide to land there? It searches every note value against every dot and tuplet spelling and reports the exact match — or the closest one, how far off it is, and the tempo at which it would be exact.

Double-whole down to 32nd, with dots, double dots, triplets, quintuplets and septuplets — and dots combine with tuplets, because a dotted quintuplet is unusual rather than illegal. Written for click ramps between cues, and for turning a tempo you can feel into a grid you can conduct.

The beat bulb

Something to look at from the drum booth

Counting in your head is fine until you’re four bars into a 13/8 and the click is somewhere behind you. OddClick puts the beat in its own window as a nixie tube — big enough to read across a room, or park on a second screen and forget about.

A brass and walnut nixie tube unit with OddClick engraved on the plate, its tubes lit to read 7 over 8

It counts the way you’d count

Turn Count Pulses on and it shows where each pulse of the grouping lands — 11/8 as 3+3+3+2 reads 1, 4, 7, 10, the figures as they sit in the notation. Turn it off and it counts every notated beat instead.

Or none of that

ADHD Mode swaps the tube for a plain counting number in high contrast — no glow, no glass, no crossfade, nothing moving but the number. It’s there for anyone who finds the photographic display distracting mid-take. The counting behaves identically either way.

Specifics

Where it runs

Formats	AAX, VST3, AU
Hosts	Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Cubase, REAPER
System	macOS
Status	In development · estimated release fall 2026

There’s nothing to buy or download yet — this page exists so I can tell you when there is.

Want to know when it’s ready?

Leave an address and you’ll get one email when OddClick ships. That’s the whole arrangement.