Tres geeky but fascinating expose of the effects of drummers’ use of a click track in recording in the Music Machinery blog. [Link via Slashdot.] The writer, Paul Lamere, programmed code to chart variances in the regularity of the beat on a variety of songs; using a (non-clicktracked) Ringo Starr track as a point of comparison, he generated a bunch of charts of the drumming on songs by everyone from Britney Spears to the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Weezer. The result is predictably tautological—of course a click-tracked-drum recording is going to be more precise. But the charts are fun and it seems like it will be a good tell-tale tool.

The comments section is informative as well. There’s nothing wrong in priciple to a click track, of course, and in some genres it is, if not necessary, relatively harmless. (Unless you want some human variation in a techno dance track, why not eliminate it entirely?)