I'm quite new to recording and best practices. At the moment I'm enjoying learning through recording existing songs I'm playing myself.
One song is in 8/4 (in my opinion) but has an extra (loose) half beat at the very end of the bar that's just silence, like a quick breath. This only occurs for the first few bars when it's just a single acoustic guitar and vocals.
When I play this song on guitar without recording, it feels easy to incorporate this into playing. It's just a natural timing choice that adds feeling to the song. But I've no idea how to approach this with recording? I'm learning to play along with the metronome in headphones and I miss this pause when I stick to a strict bar count. It feels like I'm rushing into the next bar. But, as I said, it's loosely done and not a case of adding an exact count into my DAW. In the original recording, after a few bars it disappears and sticks strictly to 8/4 when a full band comes in.
What is the best way of approaching this? I'm wondering if this type of recording usually forgoes a metronome as it's too unpredictable, even though the majority of the bar is on count.