Simple micing/mixing for practice

Soupy

Silver Member
I'm hating the fact that when I'm practicing with hearing protection on, I can't hear myself play (doubly so when playing along to an audio track). Really kills my feeling for dynamics and finesse on the hats. And there have been more than a few posts on the importance of blocking the kit sound when playing along with another audio track so you're not turning the track volume up to ear-damaging levels.

So what gear would I need to do simple micing of my set so I can mix it back in with a click or other audio tracks in my earphones? I figure a single room mic would be adequate for practice purposes; no real need to close mic the entire kit. Is this something that can be done simply with a laptop? I'd probably want to pipe it through the laptop to record so I can review some of my practice sessions anyawys.
 
The laptop makes it kinda' complicated. Say, if you had a few audio sources (like an iPod, a CD player, or what have you), you could get yourself a small mixing board and plug your music tracks into that, add a couple of microphones and mix the two to your liking in your headphones.

But if you want to be able to hear the tracks off your computer and also record yourself along with the tracks back into your computer, then you're getting into having some sort of USB audio interface and a recording program to learn on your laptop. Getting into recording via computer is really unsatisfactory until you start to spend alot of money on it.

My recommendation would be the small mixer, with a couple of mics and maybe a small flash stereo recorder (like the Zoom H2). Then you can mix your audio tracks in with your drums, and then the Zoom will record that mix if you want to make recordings.
 
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