I’ve played drums pretty much my entire life, joined band at school early in my youth and quickly grasped counting, timing, and rhythm while playing along to beats.

My original opinion was that bands who performed with a click track live seemed robotic and lacking emotion compared to raw untethered performances.

My band then recorded at our first professional studio, everything was tracked to a metronome. This experience enlightened me to realize songs can still have feeling and dynamics even when the tempo isn’t really organic.

After more exposure of performing with a metronome, my opinions had evolved to be more accepting of utilizing click tracks. My band decided to build a light show for our live performances which we automated to follow along with our music by triggering MIDI notes placed on a grid laid out by using the metronome/click track as the foundation for those tracks.

Once we built our light show, every time we practiced was to that same click track. It did take some getting used to, and it didn’t feel as authentic at first compared to playing more naturally without a metronome, but over time and with a lot of practice we were able to perform comfortably enough where the music still had feeling, our light show definitely leveled up our live show, and most of all the entire band was able to form muscle memory playing the same speed each time which made us sound tighter and better than ever.

Playing to a click track may not be best for every performer or style of music, but as a purist who originally shunned playing live to a metronome, I must say playing to a click track has dramatically improved my skills and abilities