I really enjoy experimenting with different microphones and mixing techniques for getting good drum tones. Here is a picture of how I currently have the drum kit mic’d (sorry for the poor quality photo):
One of the main themes for this mic’ing technique is to eliminate the natural reverberation of the room as much as possible. I don’t hate the sound of the drum room I have, but I don’t love it either. It’s easier for me to eliminate the sound of the room, and then add some ambience later on with a reverb. If I had an acoustically treated room with vaulted ceilings, I would definitely take advantage of the character elements that the room sound has to offer.Before I get any further, here is a quick run down of the mics that are currently setup on the kit.
Kick: There’s a Shure PZM (or pressure zone microphone) on a folded up towel inside the kick drum. This mic is absolutely perfect for capturing the wet sound of the mallet smacking the kick drum skin. It’s also extremely convenient to use considering it comes with a long proprietary cable that connects to a standard XLR cable, and it doesn’t require a mic stand.
I also have a Shure PG kick drum mic setup near the hole in the front skin. This is the right type of microphone for kick drums, but it’s not a studio quality microphone. “PG” stands for performance gear, which is exactly what this mic was designed for. It’s still good for capturing the “woof” of the kick drum, but not ideal.
Snare: There is a Shure Beta 57 just to the right of the first rack tom, and a KELS HM1 right beside that. The Beta 57 is a dynamic microphone that is great for capturing the attack of the snare drum and is tuned to enhance some crucial high-end frequencies. The KELS HM 1 is a medium diaphragm condenser mic and is tuned for low frequencies (it doesn’t embellish high frequencies at all). Not only does the HM1 reduce the amount of audio bleeding from the hi-hats, but it provides me with a contrast sound to the Shure Beta 57. It’s nice to have options during the mixing process; sometimes I might want to choose only 1 of the mic sounds, and sometimes I might decide to blend the two together.
Rack Toms: I’m using Shure 57 mics on the rack toms. The Shure 57 is arguably the most widely used microphone for studio and performance applications in North America (maybe the world). I don’t always use it on toms, but decided to in the instance.
Floor Tom: On the floor tom I’m using a Sennheiser MD 421 dynamic microphone. This mic differs from other dynamic microphones in a few ways, but for me the big difference is that it contains a hum bucker coil. That coil adds character to the mic, and character is a very good thing for drum tones. It also represents the low frequency spectrum more tastefully than the Shure 57 does, which is why it is frequently used for mic’ing kick drums, guitar amps and bass amps.
Overheads: For overhead mic’ing, I’ve chosen an X/Y technique using a matched pair of Rode NT5 microphones. The NT5 mics are small diaphragm, pencil condenser microphones. I like these mics because of their true representation of the tones of the drum kit. A lot of other overhead mics are tuned to emphasize the high frequencies associated with cymbals. This can be beneficial in a lot of applications, but it can also limit the ways you can use the tones during mix down. I like both kinds of mics, and use each according to their strengths.
Hi-Hats: The reason I left hi-hats for last is that it is the one that has caused me the most grief (hence the “tribulations” in the title). Prior to landing on the one in this photo, I tried the Apex 185 (cheap!), and the AKG C1000. The C1000 simply rubbed me the wrong way on hi-hats. They are very versatile though, and I like having them around for acoustic guitar and congas.
The mic that is currently on the hats is the SE Electronics’ SE3 small diaphragm condenser mic. I bought this mic because I wanted a character mic that isn’t widely used in North America. In fact, at the time I bought this mic, there wasn’t a single company in Winnipeg that sold SE Electronics products.
Similar to the C1000, the SE3 sounds great on acoustic instruments like guitar, and percussion. It doesn’t make the hi-hats sound bad; it just doesn’t make the hi-hats sing. By far my favorite sounding mic on these hi-hats is the AKG C451B. One of my engineer friends has the C451B, and so luckily I get to borrow it for important recording projects. I am constantly swapping gear with friends. It’s really the most economical way to learn about and encorporating gear options for your recording projects.
There isn’t one “right way” to record drums, but there are a lot of wrong ways. The wrong ways usually involve phasing issues, which can happen pretty easily when you have a bazillion microphones on a single source (in this case, the single source is the drum kit in its entirety).
One of the best ways of fleshing out a source’s best tone (whether acoustic or not), is to sweep the microphone over the source. The sweeping technique is a time consuming and tedious process, but is really the best way to find out how the mic responds to the different placements over the source. And here again, there is no best way to mic a source, you are really just trying to get the sound that suits the project.
Fat tones aren’t always the be-all end-all of drum tones. A friend of mine was involved in a project where he was working with a female funk singer, comparable to Remy Shand. They ended up putting a towel over the snare drum to get a dampened effect that was meant to emulate a snare drum from the 70’s. The technique really worked for the project; it wasn’t necessary to have a snare tone that could peel the chrome off of a truck hitch. It just sounded right.
One thousand words later and I’ve only really begun to scratch the surface of drum mic’ing. I guess I’ll have to save pre-amps and in-line compression and EQ for another post.
I bet you can’t wait!
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