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A few weeks ago I saw Dave Grohl’s Sound City at a local cinema: on the whole, it’s an interesting, if somewhat obsessive and self-indulgent film – a tribute to the mystique of analog studios. There is a particular sequence in the film where Grohl talks about one of his first experiences in laying down a drum track in the studio and being forced to work with a click track because he kept speeding up so much. It’s an interesting sequence, in part, because Grohl admits that he learned something new from the experience but, in the end, he cannot help but wonder (only half jokingly) whether it isn’t musically valid to speed up just a little bit during a performance.
To some extent, Grohl’s statements reflect an old dichotomy, pitting the human against the machine. Recent books on the subject, however (such as those by Steve Savage or the collection edited by Anne Danielsen, that includes a chapter by Simon Zagorski-Thomas on recording technology and performance, among others), suggest that the human/machine relationship is more complex.
There is often an assumption that recording a rhythm section in the studio obviates the need for a click track, the players achieving a groove through an intimate form of musical interaction (in the case of Grohl, he was, of course, only laying down an isolated drum track). But I’m wondering whether anyone in this discussion has any thoughts on, or experiences with, the productive use of click tracks in recording rhythm sections. Are there ways in which a click tract can be used to enhance a collective groove? Are there ways in which a click track can structure a performance in ways that the rhythm section might do otherwise without the track? Is the decision to record a rhythm section (with or without a click) more a question of musical genre than one of logistics?
Please Note: this post is one half of a set of questions and ideas related to click tracks that I will be distributing across two panels – one on Rhythm Sections and the other on Embodiment and Gesture – so there may be some overlap in the discussions but I’m trying to keep them as separate as possible . . . at least at the outset.
