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Things to Do Before the Recording
Building a Headphone Mix and a Tempo Map
To make the drummer perform well, you need to create a headphone mix that will inspire the drummer. Usually sending the kick, overheads and click track + all the other instruments the drummer wants to hear is enough. I make the kick very clicky sounding by boosting the highs and cutting the lows. This way the headphone amplifier will have more headroom. Make sure the drummer is hearing the stereo image of the overheads correctly: he might be wearing the headphones backwards! If the drummer is hitting the hi-hat like a maniac, a good trick is to send it to the drummer's headphones very loudly.
When you build a click track, use the metronome functions in your DAW! This is very important. You will see a grid that will make editing, "punching," overdubbing and mixing much easier. Most DAW's support importing midi, so you can ask the band to create the click tracks themselves before they enter the studio.
Copyright (c) 2007-2008 Santeri Salmi
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