Music is all about relationships; a note at one pitch related to a note of another gives us harmony.

The beat of a drummer with the rhythm of the rest of the band creates the groove. In an art form, where the relationship IS the event, it should not come as any surprise that what you hear influences what (or how well) you play or sing?

A common topic of discussion in a session is the mix of the headphones. “I can’t hear myself, can you turn me up?”

In a large session it would be nearly impossible to please everyone in a timely fashion.

The solution many have concluded is to feed a multichannel headphone system where each person can control their own mix to some degree. While this is convenient, it might not be the best solution in smaller sessions such as overdubs. In fact, many producers refuse to give the talent any sort of control of their own headphones except for overall volume.

Why would they care if the artist can change their headphone mix? After all, isn’t the most important thing that the artist feel comfortable and get into the groove of what they’re doing? That’s certainly the right attitude, but the wrong consideration. If our performances are a reaction to what we hear, isn’t it reasonable to think that an experienced producer can hear and guide the performance by making adjustments to the headphone mix? Like the givens of intoning any musical instrument, manipulation of the headphone mix will generally produce a predictable result.

Have a singer battling their pitch?

Try lowering some of the more harmonic instruments such as guitars and keyboards and turn up the bass. This is especially helpful if the singer is missing their notes sharp. Increasing the level of the lower frequency parts of the band, you can often cause the singer to flatten their pitch.

How about somebody pushing ahead of the beat?

Try turning up the snare drum in their headphones. Typical phrasing will put the snare on beats 2 and 4, generally a little on the back-side of the beat. If they can feel the beat a little more like the snare drum is phrased, they’ll generally lay back.

What if they’re dragging?

Turn up the kick. Kicks are usually voiced on and around beats 1 and 3 and tend to push the beat. A little more of the kick drum will often cause a singer to sing more on the front side.

Have someone who is just all over the place and sounds completely disconnected?

Check their volume. It’s fun to crank the phones up to “death level 10” and rock out. Maybe that works great for some people. For most it won’t. Same rules apply to the headphones being too soft. If the performer isn’t listening at the right level range, no amount of mix changes are going to help.

These are only guidelines, of course. Every performer is a little different, but if you’ll remember that whatever you give them is going to affect what they give back. It's then that you’ll start learning to recognize the relationship. You’ll find sessions go much better when the performer is happy with what they hear in the headphones. Like playing any musical instrument, it’s often the producer’s responsibility to learn how to play the performer. Legends are created by being able to do this without the performer even knowing it’s happening.