Practicing to Click

TheBigDipper

My 2p. Any consistent rhythmic device (mechanical metronome, metronome app or programmable drummer app) is good for practice and developing your own sense of time and rhythm.

If you have one sound to follow, such as a click or a hi-hat, then you're not getting any musical cues about the start of a bar, or the offbeat, or whatever. Developing the skill of playing under those conditions might be helpful if you don't have a good sense of timing inside you. As long as that's what you want to achieve.  

Changing over to a metronome app or a programmable drummer app where you can set up kicks, snare and hi-hat sounds means you'll be getting those cues and it will probably be more pleasant (and fun) to play along to. It is for me. But will you have developed the ability to keep time without a drummer to play with? Dunno. I learned to play in time using a mechanical metronome, so I'm now ruined as an experimental subject for my own question. ;-)

And as I've said before and will say again, I don't think it's always the drummers job in a band to be the timekeeper. In some songs, it might be the bass or the rhythm guitarist. 

Lestratcaster

If I'm teaching strumming patterns to beginners to practice chord changes with I'll use a programmable drum app to help accent upstrums and make them hear what parts of the kit their playing reflect, e.g backbeats on 2 and 4. A metronome can be a bit too stale for some but there's a few who actually will prefer to play with a click. And I always use the original recording to play along to establish the ear for timing. Playing in a band with a real drummer helps too as you can interact by looking at their hands and feet.

pintspiller

So long as you use something that keeps a steady beat that can be controlled it doesn't matter. Or even slow-down/speed-up software if you prefer to play along to CD/MP3.

Sometimes when I'm recording and I can't find a MIDI drum pattern that's right for the tune, I'll record to the click in the DAW and write the MIDI drums to the strumming pattern afterwards.