I've played to click tracks in both studio and live settings. Playing to a click in a band setting is a little unnatural for most musicians, even those who regularly practice with a metronome. Here are my recommendations :
- Use just four bars of click track for each song as the count-in, then play freely as a group. This gives you the benefit of having a tempo reference as a starting point, but minimizes the pitfalls of using a click track throughout the song. It means the tempo may drift, so you're dependent on the tempo stability of all the musicians in the band. If this approach works for you, it keeps the band's attention on on playing together, rather than on playing to an inflexible outside tempo source.
- If you use a click track during the entire song, have it audible to the drummer only. Again, you want to have the band playing together as an organism, so when the drummer is getting a click, it means everyone in the band must follow the drummer. This allows you to have a rock-solid tempo, but keeps the band's focus on playing together as a unit, rather than everyone focusing on the click. This will take practice, but will give everyone more confidence in following the drummer.
- Full band click is more challenging. I've been a part of ensembles that used backing tracks, so everyone has to be locked in. If the full band can play to a click track, then you do get consistency. When playing in a pit orchestra (for a musical), or with other multimedia that incorporates timecode, everyone must play to the click because the cues are all programmed down to a SMPTE frame. But, music that is performed to click or timecode can sound stiff. It takes a lot of confidence and experience to swing or express a groove under this setting. The musicians who are the best at playing to an external source of tempo are often those with experience in an orchestral setting, where a conductor is the source of time.
When I work in the studio as a musician, I'm often a guitarist-for-hire, so when I come in to record my parts there is usually a framework of the song already in place, with time code running throughout. During run-through, I play to existing tracks, and use the click track to lock in my part. When I record my takes, I almost always turn off the click, and just play to the bed tracks. My reasoning is this : if they wanted the guitar parts to be frame-locked and totally perfect in time, they would have programmed them. I'm there to contribute musically to the recording, so I'll follow the other musicians as if we were playing live together.
When I'm engineering in the studio, we start with full-band scratch / guide tracks, and those are recorded to a click. As we build the keeper tracks, the first several layers (drums, percussion) are almost always recorded to the click as a reference, but those musicians are also hearing the guide tracks to know where they are in the song. The bass / keys / guitar rhythm tracks may use the click, but I prefer to use the keeper drum track as the musical reference. Once we have the framework of a song in place, I prefer to mute the click for everything else, unless a musician requests it. I want the band to sound like a band, where the time can breathe. Like I stated above, if we wanted it to sound sequenced, we would have done it that way
Above all else, play to the music, not the click. The biggest pitfalls of a click track : it can't hear you. You've abdicated your right to influence the tempo. The click is an inflexible authority for the groove, and a band can divert a lot of musical energy to staying on the click, rather than playing together as musicians. Used sparingly, a click can greatly increase a band's confidence in getting songs started at the right tempo.
... was not interested in wearing in-ears. So I built a little circuit that converted the audio signal from the click output to a 12 volt DC pulse to drive a light.
