Hello folks, A fairly simple question, I hope. The other day I recorded my son playing acoustic guitar without a metronome because he wanted a free tempo. It was a reasonable first take but he wanted to re-do a couple of phrases. I thought we could either Autopunch in the revisions or record a short Take 2 to sweep into a Comp. We eventually did it with Autopunch but I first tried and would've preferred to do it by the second option ( further takes sept into a comp). When we tried the second option (further takes) I had to turn the monitors down to avoid the mic picking up the lead in and lead out to the offending parts so I thought he could monitor where he was through the headphones - but not to be. There was nothing coming back through the headphones at all - presumably because all previous takes are muted. Has anybody got any advice on what I am doing wrong and what I can do to overcome this. Sorry if this is a bit of a stupid question - I am quite new to this - but I'm having a blast! :-)

Hey welcome to the wild world of home recording! First of all, you are ALWAYS going to want to record the first, and every subsequent take of any acoustic part (i.e. anything through a microphone) using headphones. A mic is going to pick up the sound of your monitors in addition to the instrument (or voice) and that's, as a general rule, not good. Playing without a click can be great at times, but it makes doing alternate takes pretty difficult. Swipe comping depends on the transients more or less lining up, so you can change in midstream to a different take without any rhythmic jumps or hiccups. One way around this might be to play the first take without a click, then Beat Map that take, and then play subsequent takes to the tempo (and tempo changes) of the first track. That way they'll all line up, and you get the expressive, free-form quality of the first take.

Morry - thanks for the response above. I think my main problem is that I am getting nothing back through the headphones at all so with the monitors turned down can't hear anything of the previous take(s). This is because I think they are all muted. Is there any way of selectively unmuting them?