click tracks

Click Tracks! Two words immediately designed to set me on edge! Let me start off by saying I have no objection to them being used in a production where it is necessary, or as a brief interlude that adds something to the music that is being performed. In this day and age, it can be of benefit. But for a whole concert? That for me detracts. I know I am a musician and perhaps might notice things others don't, for instance, a small orchestra in vision when suddenly I hear some trumpets or timps playing yet none are visible within the orchestra. That annoys me hugely as I think it's a con! But it's so much more than that. A click track restricts the way a musician performs; it limits hugely his or her performance. They can only do what the track dictates and if is a repeat performance, what the track did on the previous occasion and the previous occasion to that. Also, the musician must surely be concentrating intently on the click/count through some headphones and not listening to the other musicians around them or their own playing, a practise that is so vital to a shared musical experience. They certainly wouldn't need the conductor. There is no room for spontaneity or that freedom that musicians like to call "art". They are confined to the rhythm, tempo and dynamics of the track. I come across music to be played at a live concert that has been written for a recording orchestra to play, and the rit(ardandos) have been written out so they fit with the clicks. For those not cogniscent with Italian(!), ritardandos mean slowing down in Italian, the language of music. So, if the music is written in 4/4 (4 beats to the bar) and the arranger wants it to slow down, the click that the orchestra records to and to which they are all listening, is given 5 or maybe 6 beats in that rit bar. That of course extends the bar and is supposed to make it sound as though it's slowing down. But in reality, all it does is give an extra beat or two to the bar, a pause, and not a gradual slowing down of the music. My understanding is that it is easier for producers to edit a click recording should they need to. I was once asked to conduct a recording session for an international singing group that always perform to playback. The recording session, played by musicians of a full symphony orchestra would all be wearing headphones and listening to a click. I asked what I would actually be doing. I presumably didn't even need to start or stop it, as there would be a count in! Of course I turned it down saying I was a musician who wanted to make music with the orchestra, not a traffic policeman waving my arms about in front of a wonderful body of players, all of whom would be ignoring me! And no, the redundancy of conductors is not really what appalls me about this! To put the opposing view, I can understand that if an artist wants to do the same thing every night, then it is very easy to just stick on a playback CD and do the same as you've done every other night. But surely, if you're a real artist then you want to do something different every night. To get that spark of spontaneity and strive to reach the heights of greatness, you have to live dangerously and do something slightly different every night. You don't want to do exactly what you did at the previous performance. There may be occasions at a live show where all does not go smoothly, but hopefully on those occasions no-one in the audience would notice. We are professionals and never fall below a certain standard. But then you can get those marvellous evenings where the performance takes on a special meaning. It has the indefinable degree of greatness that all who are there know happened, and it was shared by audience and performers alike. That is what we all strive to do every time we walk on to a concert platform. No, for me, keep music and musicians live. One reason why I adore my work with Katherine Jenkins. She is an artist that doesn't use click tracks, always sings live and together with the orchestra I think we make music that never falls below the level of wonderful. We lay ourselves open to failure every single time, and every single time we win. Everyone should do that. That's art.