Tracking with headphones...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Uladine
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Uladine

Uladine

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I live in a residential area where theres no way I can record real drums at my house without the neighbors complaining within 5 minutes. Because of this whenever I want to record real drums I have to pack up all my equipment and take it to a place where the drums dont bother anybody.

The biggest problem I usually have with this is finding something to set my monitors on that is the right height. I use end tables at home with boxes on them. (Sad, I know.)

Anyway, If I leave the monitors at home when I go track drums and I use headphones will that effect the outcome of the recording enough to make me want to bring the monitors? If I take the tracks home and mix them through my monitors will I still end up with good tracks or will using the headphones while tracking mess up the whole thing beyond repair?
 
I don't have a control room, so my monitors don't do much good when setting up the drums. I use the headphones best I can, and rely on past failure/success for mic placement.

If you're the drummer, how do you monitor them yourself - with headphones or monitors? If you turn them up over your playing volume, it's no wonder your neighbors bitch :)
 
Haha no I'm not the drummer...

I use a 100 ft stage snake so I can put the drums in one room and all the gear in another, that way I can hear my monitors over the drums, or hear my headphones over them if thats the case. I was just tired of hauling my monitors around so I was wondering how big a difference phones would make when used for tracking.
 
I've been wondering about this. I do all my tracking through headphones - drums, guitars, bass. I know the phones emphasize bass. So if I get everything sounding just the way I like them in the phones, I must in fact be recording everything bass light and ending up with tracks which are bass light. Knowing this I should be able to compensate, but I'm not that sophisticated yet.
 
It's fine to use headphones when tracking - it's during MIXING that you really need to use monitors, for reasons explained fully in other threads... (try the "search" function...)

- Wil

PS: You might want to track everything with no eq or fx (i.e. as "dry" as possible) and add whatever is needed in the mix-down...
 
It's not "fine" to choose your tone or sound levels with headphones during tracking. For example, you wouldn't choose your amp tone via headphones -- get the sound coming out of the monitors the way you like, THEN switch to the cans....

Bruce
 
put your monitors on cinder blocks. thats what i do. they cost $2 a piece at your local hardware store. And are reconfigurable in any shape/way you want. tracking on cans is a toss up. If you are recording for fun/demo its fine. If you are planning on releasing the music, i would say record, playback, tweak, record, playback, tweak on the monitors until you are ready. But for fun/quick demos, i wouldn't consider it so much. but since you are 100ft. away, i would just lug your monitors, safer bet, and less ear fatigue.
 
well, if you haven't got a control room, you're not gonna be able to use the monitors extreemly well becuase it's gonna be quite hard to judge any tone when the actual source is near the monitors. and if you turn the monitors up, instant feeback, especially if you're using condensors.

you might have to make a rough judgement on levels and tone, record a bit, stop the drummer and listen to it through the monitors, alter anything wrong (i.e. mic placements) and record again, etc.


regarding drummers monitoring via monitors, none of the drummers who come to my studio have ever requested hearing their mix through monitors. it's very hard to record the drums without getting any of the monitor signal into the chain, unless you cancel it out with careful mic placement, which would be a little challenge. just give the drummer a mixer with a submix of the track and let him adjust his own mix. this is the BEST way to let a drummer have a headphone mix. ive noticed that most drummers play so much better when they make their own phone mix.

make sure you use good headphones for the drummer, closed ones to stop leakage. make sure they have good bass response too, most drummers like to hear the bass drum nice and clear. the better headphone mix you give them, the more confident you will make them play, in most cases.
 
sorry kristian, didin't realise you'd already posted the record tweak record tweak option.
 
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