Finding the right microphone for the job can be a daunting
challenge. After years of screw-ups that
resulted in bad sessions, I have finally found the right combo of mics to
capture the drum kit the way I like it.
With the right positioning and a little tweaking, I can pretty
consistently grab that sweet spot, in the studio or on stage.
Any good sounding kit starts with the kick. If people are dancing, the kick is good. In the beginning, there were two mics that
had my heart: a Shure Beta 52-A and an Audix D4. I always go for a real punchy kick, with a
lot of low end (below 90 Hz) and a lot of high end (above 4.5 kHz). The desired result is a kick that literally
rattles your innards on a good system, but still slices through the mix if
there’s no sub. The Beta 52 took the low
end a little too far for me. Its
frequency response runs down to the bottom of human hearing (20 Hz), and it
started to muddy my sub band. On the
other hand, the D4 starts to roll off around 40 Hz, and leaves plenty of
working room down there for the bass guitar.
The D4 also operates equally well under two very different miking
techniques: mounted at the kick’s port, or just dropped into the drum shell and
kept towards the back.
The snare drum is a very particular instrument. Most drummers would take a few bullets for
their snare. They are very often custom
crafted, and may have been baptized.
There is only one mic in my world that can do justice for such a beloved
drum: Shure’s legendary SM57. The SM57
picks up a full-bodied snare, and really leaves the snare’s tone alone. It gets all the harmonics and even the decay
of the drum’s shell if you don’t gate it in production. The best part of using the SM57 on a snare is
its ability to handle really loud transient noises. I drop the mic’s head as close as possible to
the drum head’s rim. Once positioned,
it’s usually hovering less than a quarter-inch above the rim. Just make sure the snare is perfectly tuned,
because you will hear disharmonic frequencies resonate with a 57 at this region
of the drum. When it’s done right, it
sounds so good!
A high-hat is often the last priority in recording rock, but
I’m recording reggae and world, and the hat can prove a crucial rhythm in such
an open environment. There aren’t always
a lot of cymbals crashing in the songs I record, so I like to let the hat
occupy the highest frequency extension of the kit. I use a mic that I originally bought for
snare: a Shure KSM 109. This mic left my
snares cold, flat and kind of nasty, but it eventually found its strength in my
studio: recording things with metal.
Horns, for instance, sound great through the KSM 109. Because of this quality, I always throw it
about six inches above the bell of the hat, making sure the hat eclipses the
snare from the mic (visually), or it’ll pick that up too. Once in place, I put it through a parametric
EQ and completely roll off the bottom end.
By the time it reaches its destination, nothing comes through below 1
kHz.
Probably the best part of using SM57 and KSM 109 so close to
each other is their bleed. These mics
really compliment each other’s respective drum.
The KSM 109 over the hats adds the sparkle to the snare. In return, the SM57 on the snare can provide
all the body the hats need in my mixes.
Toms are fun, but can get annoying quickly. The best way to get the most out of any mic
is to first determine the size of the toms.
It can also be helpful to ask the drummer if they’re birch, maple or
something else. This will count when
positioning your mics. My favorite mic
to use, regardless of the tom size, is Sennheiser’s E604. They clip right onto the rim of the drum, and
have a perfect pickup pattern for toms because they sit right next to each
other. There is just over an inch of
flexibility to move the mic closer or farther from the drum head. I usually position the mic further for larger
or maple toms, and noticed it captures a very warm and smooth bottom end that
way. For small and birch toms, I usually
move the mic right down to the drum head to get all the attack they have to
offer. Before they get to my recording
console, I also run them through a parametric EQ. I drop the mids all the way down (-15 dB) and
sweep the frequency until I find the sweet spot. The E604s always carry a sweet spot once you
cut out all the tom’s midrange anomalies.
Last, but not least, are the overheads. A matched pair of condenser mics set in any
various positions should do the trick.
If I’m looking for a natural and live sounding kit, I will borrow my
friend’s pair of Neumann KM184s. Very
often, though, I don’t place much emphasis on the overheads in my mixes. When this is the case, and I’m looking for a
produced sound to compete with the MIDI drum age, I’ll just throw two dynamic
mics behind the kit and compress the hell out of them. I usually put a Sennheiser E835 on each side
of the drummer, high up pointed down towards the snare. This provides just enough “kit sound” to make
me happy.
