Micing the monitors

I've heard of bands who record themselves live by close miking their PA stacks, but never heard of it in a studio. Seems improbable the monitors would sound any better than the source. Seems like a lot of grief to essentially EQ something, but go nuts and let us know how it turns out.

Sounds interesting, test it out and let us know.

If I can find time I'll try it. Give me a week.

Not that it will do anyone else much good because there will be a thousand variables making it unrepeatable for anyone else.

But if you can, please provide the 'before' and 'after' recordings.

It is a well known technique for bringing a bit of life into the sound of a drummachine or triggered samples. They did this in the 80s on Linn drums and Simmons pads. These had a way of sounding very sterile. Re-recording them through the studio monitors added some real air to the sound.

You can probably do this with any material that you think would benefit from this. I can imagine anything you close miked or DI'ed and want to add some natural room sound to. It is a bit like reamping a DI'ed guitar.

There is one album of which I know where they did that with the Linn drums or so the band leader Andy Latimer said in an interview. Camel : Stationary Traveller. I think they did it on the track called Missing.

Adding live tracks to the pre-existing mix played through monitors was done all the time as well. That's the famous Phil Spector wall-of-sound sound.

Handled properly can be a nice effect. Moderation is the key grasshopper.

Phil

I thought about doing this for midi drums to try and get some room feel in the track but eventually recorded live drums cuz midi drums always suck in my ears :)

i've read that the chlili peppers played back the drums through a big pa system, recorded it and blended it to the "normal" drums. you can hear that effect on blood, sugar, sex, magik.

i'm sure you can achieve similar effects with recording your monitors.

I've used a similar technique when I didn't have enough mics/channels to set up a room mic for the drums.
Since I record in the sanctuary of a church, I have a large space to use - so I send the drum mix to a PA, crank it, and put a couple of mics up in the room.

It's worked pretty well for that purpose. I'm sure the effect is lessened as the room gets smaller, but hey.

Guitarfreak wrote: Hmm, the song or the entire album? Wow, it sounds like I was onto something, too bad it's already been discovered...

i think it was on the entire album, though the blending level might differ from song to song.
i would compress the hell out of that "ambience" track and mix it to taste.

Good point ouzo, I forgot to mention that.

I typically do compress that "reamped" drum room mic track decently.
I'm rarely heavy w/ compression, but that track gets about as much or more than anything else.

if it sounds good to you it's enough!