Recording jam sessions - Electronic drums, bass and guitar DI

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drummer401

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Hey, let me start by saying that I'm a drummer that knows next to nothing about the electronic side of music. I'm looking to set up a mini studio at my house to make quick and dirty demo recordings for the band to listen back and re-arrange music and so forth. I'm not looking to record final product for other people to listen to. I'm definitely a noob and I would greatly appreciate some guidance.

What I would like to be able to do is do live recordings of jam sessions with an electronic drum set (Alesis DM5), bass and guitar (both direct input if possible), and one vocal mic. I want the setup to be in such a way that all four people can have a set of headphones, we hit record, and we can all hear a metronome as well as hear each other, and record what we're hearing (minus the click).

Basically I want to be able to hit record and do one-take demos that we can listen back to for songwriting purposes. I don't care if each instrument is recorded on it's own track because I won't be going back to do any kind of editing or manipulation to any tracks anyways.

The only equipment I have currently is a mixer (Behringer 1202). Can I plug the audio out of my drumset, the mic, the bass, and the guitar into this mixer, and send the output of this mixer to a recorder? I don't know anything about pre-amps or any of that kind of stuff, so I don't know if the mixer will accept the 1/4 from the guitar and the bass... does that work? Do I need to send the guitar and bass through amps or something before they go to the mixer? Can I run the guitar/bass through effects pedals and then run that into the mixer with a 1/4"?

What I would like to do is have everything go into this mixer, adjust all the levels on there, and have the output of the mixer all recorded to one track that I can easily take off an SD card and email it from my computer. I'm guessing that the way we would all hear the click and hear the audio being recorded would be by using a headphone splitter on the headphone jack of the recording device... does that work?

Thanks for your time. If anything I'm posting doesn't make sense or is not feasible, please let me know. Thanks!
 
Yes you can patch everything into your mixer and then from the mixer into your recorder. you will need a monitoring system to hear everything. amps are useful for achieving certain tones but not mandatory. I would just route the click to the drummer's cans and let the other players lock onto the drummer--just my preference. I patch the output of pedals to mixers and recorders frequently.
 
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Thanks for the response, that helps clear things up for me. As far as the monitoring goes, would it be possible to have the headphone jack on the recording device go out to a headphone amp instead of one set of headphones?
 
yeah a headphone amp (like the little rolls thing I have 1 in 4 out) splits it so everyone has their own master volume of the same headphone mix in the mixer.
 
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