When a band is recording in a studio and everyone has on headphones, what are they listening to?
In: Technology
Well, think of it this way: let’s pretend we have a group of people sing happy birthday. They need to hear each other, so they sing the right notes and words at the right time. Otherwise, grandma’s saying “to you” while dad’s still on “birthday.” Also, when folks record music, we want to mix it; we want some things louder or quieter than others. Using the birthday analogy, maybe uncle has a voice that can sing the low part—but he sings a bit quietly. If we just put one microphone in that room, we can’t control how loud each voice is, or where the listener hears it in their ears; maybe dad sings off-key and super loud, and we can’t quiet him down, or the microphone is too near him. Plus, even if we record mom and dad at the same time with two microphones, you’ll hear mom faintly in the background of dad’s take, and vice versa.
Change these family members to individual instrument parts—a singer, a rhythm guitar, a guitar with a fancy riff, a bass, a keyboard, a drum set, etc.—and you can kinda get why the headphones. Mixing is super nuanced, and people really want to balance how much you hear of each part, and what ear it’s in. Therefore, nowadays most tracks are recorded one-by-one (person by person). Even if a song has mostly computer-made sounds, the singer will wear headphones.
So there’s your answer! Recording with headphones solves the paradox that:
-We don’t want to hear one track in another track (i.e. dad in the background of mom’s), and we want to control them one-by-one
BUT
-The people need to play along to other tracks so they are in sync (i.e. grandma isn’t saying “to you” while dad says “happy”)
I hope this makes sense! I’m largely self-taught at studio engineering, so people with more formal training might have a more nuanced or better explanation; but about thirteen years in, this is the understanding I’ve got.
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