Why we don't use a click track
We practice with a metronome. We record without one. Here's the trade — and why we'd rather have feel than convenience.
Might sound strange that we don’t use a click track, considering that if you ask either of us how we practice, it’s almost always with a metronome. Both of us have had years of experience recording and playing on records with click tracks. There are real reasons to want one: it gives you more control over the editing process, it ensures that musicians are listening to a common time reference that’s guaranteed to be in time, and it makes it easier to send recordings out to other musicians for overdubs.
If those are the upsides, why aren’t we doing it here? Because for all of that convenience, you end up trading away what matters most, which is the feeling that you get when a band plays and listens to each other intently and locks into a groove together.
We don’t wear headphones because they force us into an artificial space. Without them, we simply stand around the microphones and play music with them. We inhabit a different space. It’s not catastrophic, but it’s also not the same feeling. It doesn’t evoke the same emotional state.
And for what we’re going for, that is the combination that we want.
We like to call it a dare, because we’re basically daring musicians to come and stand in front of a microphone without a net and see how they do.