This may be something everyone but me discovered long ago, but I will jot it down here anyway.
I find that it's very hard to get a headphone mix, while recording, that sounds similar to what you hear when you're just listening to yourself play in a non-recording situation. As intended, the mikes are more sensitive and are sensitive in different ways than our ears, so what you get through the phones is both more and less than what you're used to.
This can be very distracting, especially if you're the engineer as well as the musician. I find that I play a little more tentatively because every last string squeak is so pointedly amplified. So I lose some naturalness and even get a little tensed up.
The solution, duh, is to use the phones to get your levels and mike positions where you want them, then take them off for the actual recording. Then just play without the constraint of an artificial listening environment. I find this much easier, and the results much better.
Like I said, probably a stupid tip that's so obvious it's not worth mentioning, but you never know. It took me, at least, awhile to figure it out and convince myself it was OK. So, HTH.
I find that it's very hard to get a headphone mix, while recording, that sounds similar to what you hear when you're just listening to yourself play in a non-recording situation. As intended, the mikes are more sensitive and are sensitive in different ways than our ears, so what you get through the phones is both more and less than what you're used to.
This can be very distracting, especially if you're the engineer as well as the musician. I find that I play a little more tentatively because every last string squeak is so pointedly amplified. So I lose some naturalness and even get a little tensed up.
The solution, duh, is to use the phones to get your levels and mike positions where you want them, then take them off for the actual recording. Then just play without the constraint of an artificial listening environment. I find this much easier, and the results much better.
Like I said, probably a stupid tip that's so obvious it's not worth mentioning, but you never know. It took me, at least, awhile to figure it out and convince myself it was OK. So, HTH.
