"Song of the Week" by David Berriman "Spirit of America" / Click Track discussion

Hello again.  I have uploaded a 1st draft of an original piece called "Spirit of America" to my soundcloud page.  Please check it out and let me know what you think.  Because the piece feels much better to me when played WITHOUT a click track, I'm a little concerned about how the shaker (maracas....) sounds at the ending choruses.  Although technically it fall "in time" with the piano, I believe, it (the shaker) sounds a bit "stilted" to me.  Any suggestions on making everything sound as tight as possible when not using a click track? 
 
How do people deal with tempo subtleties?  When I play a piece like this live, for example, I pay little to NO attention to tempo consistency.  It's not meant to be strident.  Yet recording it / arranging it requires some tempo consistency.  I did my best to merge the two ideas (no tempo, tempo) by playing all of the parts live and touching them up afterwards where necessary.  But this (no click track) leads to this slightly "stilted" sound I mentioned.
 
Any thoughts?  Comments on the song?  etc...?  Am I overreacting to the shaker tempo?
 
Thank you.
 
http://soundcloud.com/david-berriman/spirit-of-america
 
 

 
An absolutely beautiful arrangement and performance.
 
One of the most interesting things about performing a piece like this is the "feeling" and "emotion" that you can put into the performance. If you try to play the tune exactly in time with the tempo you will loose that feeling and emotion.
 
Instead of trying to play the composition in time with a tempo to get it to match with the percussion, I think you should try to use your midi controller to manually play the percussion to match the piano's tempo. Instead of manually placing the percussion notes in the Piano Roll view with your mouse try using your keyboard as a midi controller, which will trigger the percussive sounds of the drum synth and then play the percussion parts in time with the already recorded piano. In this way you'll preserve the feeling and emotion of the piano performance and I think you'll end up with an arrangement with which you'll be much happier.
 
Really nice job with this! I'm impressed and maybe just a little jealous.
 
Pete

Well, it's true, the only time you can tell if a piece is out of time is when it is.  :-)  A tune like this can get away with it more than a "beats" tune.  I didn't hear any problems and thought the tune was beautiful.