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Recording drums is a bit of a lost art. Engineers used to spend a year experimenting with mics before they were allowed near a Fairlight or a Synclavia (old school samplers for the young among you).
There was no Logic Pro, plug-ins or even very good effects, so it was all down to clever mic techniques and improvisation. Here’s a few tricks I picked up over the years—tips and tricks which come in handy time and time again.
Take the front skin off the bass drum. Get a roll of carpet or roll up a rug. It needs to be about 4 to 6 feet long. Roll it up so that there is a tunnel about 3 to 4 inches in diameter down the middle. Place one end just inside the drum and then place your mic just inside the tunnel at the other end. Try a few different mics. SM58s work well. Beta 52s or RE20s work better. You’ll still need to mic the skin itself with another mic, but this will give you a very distinctive and big sound.
Time to get clever with some gaffer tape. Take a small condensor mic like an AKG C451 and mount it inside an empty toilet roll tube. Make sure the mic doesn’t stick out past the end of the tube, it needs to be just inside. Mount this in the usual way, pointing at the upper snare skin. I’d still recommend using a SM57 on the bottom of the snare (don’t forget to reverse the phase). This should give you a very snappy snare sound with an unusual twist.
This is simply a vocal condensor microphone mounted just behind the drummer’s head, slightly to one side so that it can pick up what the drummer hears. It’s always really handy to use this in the mix. I usually compress the hell out of it and just bring it into the blend a tiny bit. It really gives drums an edge. Play with the attack and release settings on the compressor on this to get a really great suck and blow drum sound which you can fade in and out when you like.
I often set up a regular 58 on a mic stand just outside the door to the live room where the drummer is playing. Then I leave the door slightly open when we’re recording. Again, it sounds good when it’s heavily compressed and just eased into the mix a bit, and it’s good for breakdown sections.
Take a regular NS10 bass driver and wire it up to an XLR mic plug. Then mount the bass driver right up close to the kick drum skin (the outer skin, not the inner skin). Yes, we’re using the speaker as a mic… and it works! It will give you some serious bottom end to your kick drum. It works with other speakers, but the good old NS10 seems to sound the best.
This is more of a placement trick than anything else. Instead of mounting your overhead mics pointing down at the cymbals of your kit, mount them in front of the kit on the same plane as the cymbals but pointing at them from the front rather than the top. This lessens the amount of snare and toms that bleed into the overheads. Not ideal for every project, but useful when isolation is key.
If you’re using a carpeted room for recording drums, you might find it’s a bit too dead. Get a hold of a sheet of plywood and set the kit up on it. The reflections give a much brighter and livelier sound.
If the snare or toms are ringing and you want to deaden them quickly, use a short length of PVC tape and make a little loop. Stick it on the skin at one of the edges where the drummer won’t hit it. Different sized loops attenuate different frequencies of ring. For stubborn rings and rattles on snares and toms, tape on some rolled up tissue paper.
The old tambourine and snare in unison on every two and four beat was a staple of some huge tunes years ago and it still works now. You can save a pair of hands by just using gaffer tape to stick a tambourine to the outer shell of the snare at a right angle on the side that faces the hi-hat. The snare mic should pick it up quite well, but you can add a dedicated mic if needed.
This last one’s a bit mental. It’s one of my own inventions. Get a pair of closed headphones and wire up the cable so that it feeds out to mic sockets. Clamp the headphones on the snare drum so that one ear picks up the top and the other gets the bottom. Reverse the phase of the bottom mic using your desk or DAW, and there you have it—a very strange (but usable) snare sound. You sometimes have to tape them on as they can slide off.
There you go: 10 ideas to try next time you want to experiment with your live drum recordings.
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Emmett Cooke November 3rd
Great tutorial – really handy and valid stuff – brilliant stuff
Emmett
( )http://www.soundtrack.ie
http://www.filmandgamecomposers.com
Tyler November 3rd
This is a seriously interesting article. I will be certain to keep this around for the next time I work with live drums. What I would love to hear, though, is perhaps an audio file exemplifying some of these techniques.
( )Drummer November 3rd
The good sounding drumkit needs only 1 mic.
( )Jay November 6th
“The good sounding drumkit needs only 1 mic.”
Unless of course you want a stereo image!
( )Digital Revolutions November 7th
Very cool tips, thanks. Live drums are amazing.
( )TheME November 14th
“The good sounding drumkit needs only one mic”
( )That’s so blantantly not true. Why do you think sound engineers dedicate such a huge amount of time to getting great drum tone? It’s one of the most difficult (if not THE most) difficult to record instruments ever.
Andy C August 29th
The best drums sounds on earth have been recorded simply with very few microphones.
The idea of trying to record an instrument by putting microphones DIRECTLY next to the skin defies logic.
That’s why it’s so hard to get a great drum sound because you’re polishing a turd. Recording a pitter patter and then adding effects to make it sound BIG.
Let the drum kit BREATHE. Place the mics far away so they actually PICK UP THE ACOUSTICS of the drum. Why the hell do sound engineers put the bass drum microphone directly in front of the beater? IT’s F*CKING INSANE? How is that going to pick up the warmth and acoustics of the drum?? Can anyone not see the insanity of putting a microphone directly next to the skin and then afterwards ADDDING F*CKING REVERB and ECHO!! JESUS CHRIST DON”T USE FAKE REVERB, USE REAL AUTHENTIC ROOM REVERB!!!!! ARGGHH!
Buy a Royer R122 Ribbon microphone, and a high-end condenser microphone, experiment with room placing and you will have a drum sound that will crap all over ones where they use 20 microphones.
( )Guilherme Canaes November 16th
Say to all your artists this kind of bullshit ” the great drum sound need just one mic…” then, try to convence it in a recording session or doing a liveshow. You gonna loose the gig very quickly. Even in a jazz session, with the best drummer, you need at minimum four excelent mics, such a Brüell 4006 and 4007. I loved the Sean Vincent`s ideas! Not all the same, but new ways to get the diference. Thanks a lot.
( )zerolmzero December 3rd
For live drums you will end up with 8-9 mics. Some tricks I’ve learned:
( )-try to avoid booms and stands all together. The ground shakes when the drummer goes wild and your mic will be pointing at the wrong direction. You can use clams for toms and the snare, but also underneath the snare you can use a small clipped gooseneck microphone. One of the best ways to record the hi-hat live is to clip the mic underneath the hi-hat, at the same height of the snare, thus dampening most of snare sound and still picking up the hi-hat sound very clearly.
-The ride is essential in jazz. Sometimes it’s better to pick it up from underneath. Same applies here as well. If it’s at the same height of the low tom you will not pick up the tom and focus on the ride itself.
-Trowing a contact mic into the kick will pick up the actual “clack” and can be blended with the “thump” from the outside kickmic.
Sean V December 4th
In my experience stands are much better in a studio situation… clamps transfer too much of the mechanical noise to the mic for a clean sound. I don’t like to mic the hi-hat from underneath as i find you get all kinds of phasing problems. Inverting the phase on the hi-hat channel to cure it just seems to make the sound more un-natural… but – it’s all about the individual kit and the drummer’s playing style…so you might find your way works for you. That’s what makes engineering fun!
( )Floris January 6th
A good sounding drumkit doesnt need drummer.
( )Ray Fulber June 5th
Good creative drum mic ideas. I love the sound I get with a good drummer playing drums he knows how to tune. Then the fun can begin.
( )cheers Ray
nick July 3rd
Some tips are very usefull. The truth is the better drum set and mic’s you have the less you need them. The #5 tip is a revolutionary idea. That idea gives to every kick what every drummer want to hear.
( )Mick Betts July 11th
Come one guys… evryone’s entiled to a different opinion… what one likes others don’t and visa versa… if old mate is getting a sound he (or she) likes from one mic then good for him (or her)… how easy would it be to set up!
I’ve gone from 8 mics to 3. and love the sound i’m getting! if your drums sound good then they sound good.
my 2 bobs worth is if they sound like shxt then yeah your gunna need to mic the bejesus outa it, compress the crapper to it and eq and effect it to make it sound good, placing headphones on either side of a snare drum is going to chnage the sound of that drum. i use no gaffa tape anywhere on my kit. no muffles. take the front head of my bass drum and the sound is going to be diffferent. if things are ringing perhaps tune them instead on tape. sometimes the tuning you need for a particular song on each drum can make other drums ring… this can be a flavour if you like it and make it work for you. in my younger days i hadn’t developed the ear to tune (or taken a few days outa my life to learn the way that works for me the best) so i’ld reach for the tape…
please, lets not argue over the best way… everyone’s way is the best if it works for them. if it’s not working for you then try everything to get to where you need to be so your able to focus on playing the instrument and doing what you love without being side tracked…
( )MetalCallOut July 29th
Thanks for this guide. The Can-Clamp Mic is an interesting idea. I have used somewhat of the same idea, but using a sub woofer for a bass drum mic. Same principle behind it.
( )