Miking Drums - Posted on 2015-01-13 by Jesse Kirkwood

A drum kit was set up from a recording session the day previous of us going into the studio, so Brian took advantage of the situation and talked a little bit about miking drums and phase issues that could occure. It was fun to take a break from mixing to learn about the different aspects of miking drums and so acquire some general guidelines to follow.

As a drummer, the majority of the time I have seen the microphones as close to the drum head as they could be, pointed straight down nearly touching the rim of the drum. Its not that this is the "incorrect" way to mic a drum, but it certainly isn't the "correct" way to mic it eighther. Brian told us right off the bat that a good rule of thumb to follow is to have the mic about 4 inches away from the head and have the mic positioned above the rim of the drum. You don't want the drummer to strike the microphone because microphones cost money, so you want the mic to be the opposite side of the drum as the drummer, pointing at the head of the drum. Duh. Anyways. When placing your microphone you need to think about whether or not you need to draw out more tone from the drums, or more attack due to the way the drums sound, or to how your drummer is drumming. If the head of your drums are super attackey and dead, maybe you would want a little more tone out of them, so you can point your mic at a slightly sharper angle and capture more of the head instead of the center of attack. If you have a full sounding drum with a lot of tone, you may want to mic toward the center of attack to capture mostly the attack of the drum. In the studio setting especially, you do not want your drums to ring for days, and you need need NEED to have someone tune them up so there arent any weird overtones for the recording. It would be worth paying someone to give the drums a good studio tuning if you don't know how to do it yourself. Also invest in some dampening tools like Moon Gels or dampening rings to minimize some of the overtones of the drums. Probably the most important thing is to get the drums sounding awesome before you start recording and then try and "fix it in the mix" later. Also having a good drummer who knows how to play in the studio is also just as important. What I talked about earlier in this paragraph mainly pertains to miking toms and snare. Some people like to mike the bottom of the snare as well to add more body and sizzle, but, thats also another microphone to worry about phase problems too. Whatever floats your boat. Brian said he has never needed a bottom snare mic and he has been a studio drummer for years. For the toms and snare most people go for the sm57 or a similar type of dynamic microphone because it handles the high spl very well. For the floor tom some people like to use a specialized mic to boost the lower frequencies, such as a kick mic or like the audix d4, which is just a tom mic that picks up the lower frequencies better. 

When miking the kick drum, you pretty much need a kick drum microphone. Shure and Audix are both known to make a good kick mic. Brian said he likes the Shure Beta 91A which you place inside the kick drum. He says it captures the full body of the drum really well and has a lot of punch to it. If he has something like Yamaha's Sub Kick paired with that microphone, he likes to place it closer to the beater head for the attack, and the Sub Kick will capture the, well, subby boominess. It all depends on what kind of a sound you are going for though. If you are going for more of a big hall, live, organic performance feel, then using fewer mics placed farther away in a big room would be the way to go. One of my favorite bands, Fleet Foxes, uses just 3 or 4 microphones for all the drums, and it sounds really awesome. You don't get the huge attackey drum sound, but it sounds natural and full.

For overheads, most people use condenser microphones to capture the detail of the overall kit, but they are especially there to capture the crispness of the cymbals. There are many different ways of doing this, some people like XY pair, ORTF, or just a simple spaced pair that are pointed straight down somewhere over the crash cymbals. This is where the phase issues are most prominent  you have to make sure that your overheads are evenly spaced in relation to eachother and to the drum kit as well and try to follow the 3:1 ratio rule. Also make sure that they are high enough to capture the whole picture of the drum kit but emphasize the cymbals enough to give the mixing engineer control of the cymbals. Brian said that at least 6 feet off the ground is a good place to generally have your overheads. A lot of the time you do not even need a separate microphone for the hats because they usually cut through to mix pretty well, but if you decide to use a supplemental microphone for the hats, a small condenser such as the shure sm81 or a rode nt5-s would be good to use for the high hats.

A thing to always keep in mind is to place your microphones where you want to reject the sound as well. For example, when miking the snare, if you want to reject the hats, make sure you place it facing away from the hats. The floor tom can also be tricky because of the ride cymbal or crash cymbals, so do your best to place it so it is facing away from the things you don't want to bleed into your mics. The other thing that Brian talked about was experimenting with room mics. You'd probably only need one condenser, probably one with a large pickup pattern, to blend into your overall mix of the drums to give them some depth.

There are more nitpicky details that I could spew about what I've learned but that is a pretty good overview for now. It was really exciting to learn all that stuff because I am a drummer. I don't know if I would call myself studio worthy, but it was definitely good to learn some general guidelines to follow for studio miking drums. Woo-hoo! Good stuff! I'm amped about learning some more good stuff! OK bye.