It is a typical picture that drummers are wearing headphones while practicing, band rehearsals, recording, or live performances. But why are headphones so popular? Do they have some magic electric that makes them better than other products?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This list includes nine of the top reasons why drummers wear and should<\/em> wear a good pair of headphones. They are not listed in any particular order, and there are a few more that are not on this list, but these are the ones that seem particularly vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spoiler alert: Right at the bottom, you’ll find a funny bonus note.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Musicians need to stay in time with the rhythm. Basically, a click track is just a recording of a click sound that runs at the same speed as the song being played. This keeps them in sync with the beat. How do you do that? Now either at the right speed for the song (handy when you usually tend to get faster as the song progresses, or for dancers who need the music at an exact speed) or at the right speed for the remaining tracks that were already recorded and played back to the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These days the majority of touring bands are using click tracks. While the band on stage plays guitars, bass, keyboards, and drums, these sounds are filled with extra sounds that have been recorded before. Most of the time, these are additional keyboard tracks (e.g., where the keyboard player does the piano part, but the strings, organ and pad lines are on the tracks too) and backing vocals (which give a nice, full sound and are perfectly tuned). Still, they can as well include special effects or extra voice-overs or lots of other stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make the live band match the recordings, they must play at precisely the same tempo as the recordings. So the live band plays the same metronome click via headphones or IEMs (in-ear monitors) that was played to the studio musicians when the pieces were recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not possible to record this on conventional monitors ( the speakers on the floor in front of the musicians) because this would mean that the audience will also hear a little click, which might mess up the sound mix. Headphones or IEMs can give the musicians the click without the audience hearing it. This makes the use of headphones a necessity, as any other method would mean that the audience would listen to these clicks. On some occasions, all live musicians hear the click, whereas sometimes just the drummer hears it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I bet if you’ve seen a named live band over the last few years, approximately 9\/10 of them have been using click tracks, although you might be thinking that they weren’t. The real entertainment starts when the click fails mistakenly making it going to the audience, so they are not only listening to the live musicians anymore. This is a terrible situation!<\/p>\n\n\n\n1. Listen to a Click Track for Live Performances<\/h2>\n\n\n\n