uglytaco wrote:cheers guys thats all really helpful.
hey chris dont most artists you record require a headphone mix?
No, they are usually all in the room playing live. Sometimes I'll have a small monitor wedge for the vox or if i'm in a bigger room i might have a small PA setup in the room. All the material i have on my myspace page was done without headphone mixes, and the first song by Eddie Cole, everything is the original take except for the guitar solo. ( I played the shakers into the room mic during the take.... I suppose i was lucky they didn't tell me to piss off) it was a lot of fun actually and we had a great few days of tracking. The North Meets South jazz tunes were done with a small vocal monitor speaker near the singer and the band including vox in the one large room with a nice high ceiling. Usually we'll do a few takes until everyone is happy with the performance, then the drum tracks are always keepers, usually the bass and guide guitar are keepers. In this set up sometimes the drummer will have a headphone mix but not the other players. Sometimes if the vox hits the spot performance wise it will be a keeper also. If i'm doing a singer songwriter with a studio band, the singer will be in the control room in full view of the band, the drummer will have a headphone mix of the singer with the bass and guitarist if needed having small monitor speakers where their amp mics wont pick it up.When re doing vox i set the vocalist up in the control room listening to the near field monitors, lights down low etc. This is also the way i track all other overdubs. If the amp is small it will be in the control room, but if it's a loud mutha then its in another room and the player is in the control room or maybe headphones are used if the player wants to stand near the amp.
For my style of recording my motto is passion before perfection, meaning the element that engages the listener is the power of a performance rather than technical accuracies of the recording. So the things that interfere with a powerful and passionate performance are not a priority and as headphone mixes interfere with the playing chemistry of a band i do without them whenever i can. I hate playing with headphones, so i figure most other musos if given the option would like to play in touch dynamic and performance wise with the other musos in the room....compression on the headphone mix messes with the real feel and dynamics of the instrument being played. The "record with headphones" approach is akin to taking most of the creative power away from the band and placing it in the hands of the engineer and i think it's a shit way to record when other ways can be employed. There are styles of music that need the headphone approach....think Australian Idol.......( ha! don't take me too seriously on that....i know they have their place)
This also means a lot of my time has been spent learning how to get enough isolation or use bleed effectively when tracking a live performance in the studio. I started down this path by accident when all i could afford to record on was a 1/2 eight track otari but i soon found out the restraints that placed on my style were in fact a huge asset. I have since found out many of the older engineers recording in the early 60's Motown etc felt music took a real dive when headphones were introduced and track counts grew to over 16. I like the best of both worlds but there is a lot to be said in using the methods worked out when options were fewer.
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2010 10:37 am