Drum Miking... Going Beyond 4.

[Mark]

What advice would the Pros and ProAms here give to those wishing to start close miking more than just snare and kick/bass? Or even double miking.

Assume "Don't" isn't an option

[kslight]

If you're only talking close miking...Toms obviously...bottom snare, inside/outside/beater side kick...hi hat if you're into that...I've had good results miking the bottom of the drummer's stool... It's worth stating that my rooms and overheads usually become a great deal of the overall drum sound, the close mics are just for detail and attack.

[Mark]

What about little bugbears? Such as phase issues between the room, overheads and close mics?

[GooberNumber9]

Maybe I'm a terrible engineer who can't hear things very well, but for some reason I haven't noticed a problem with close mics mixed with overheads and room mics.

To me the big challenge with close miking (or any miking) is auditioning what the mic hears. I've used in-ears in a pinch to get me some isolation and then I just experiment with placement until I really hear what I want - or reasonably close. Ideally a separate room for a control room and someone to move the mics around for you is the best way to get ideal placement. Maybe I've unknowingly dealt with phase issues by changing placement until it sounds good... One thing I surprised myself with was tom placement that sounds good is not intuitive to me. Not really aiming for the point of impact but instead aiming more towards the snare over the top of the tom seems to get me the sound I like, which really surprised and confused me when I hit on it. If you're messing with placement, don't take anything for granted, I guess. Trust your ears on and not your eyes or your knowledge of acoustics.

I do prefer the recorderman technique for placing the overheads and making sure they are placed approximately the same distance from the snare and kick.

[kslight]

What about little bugbears? Such as phase issues between the room, overheads and close mics?

Never had an issue, I always put thought into placement and listen to everything in the control room before hitting go? I also try not to use more mics than I have to, depending on context of song of course. Start to run into issues if you go crazy with individual cymbal mics and or bad room or room mic placement.

[Snarl 12/8]

First thing I add when I'm branching out from 2 OH's and kick and snare is the omni under the snare by the kick drum. It adds beater side kick definition and under snare definition with one mic. And it's a great candidate for distortion and/or compression. Another thing you can try is distance changes on the OH's. I've found a few inches up or down can really change whether the drums sound tight-mic'd or not. When you're tight mic'ing toms, remember that what those are giving you is definition and high end attack, the bulk of the boom is still coming from the OH's. Place and EQ accordingly. Don't get them as tight in there as you possibly can going for the proximity effect, it'll just muddy shit up.

[joninc]

what mics do you currently own? what kind of drum sound are you going for?

i can get 80% of my drum sound from a mono OH (coles 4038) and then a bit of kick/snare and room if wanted. but i might like way darker, less attacky drums then you do....

going for modern rock?

bombastic punk?

metal?

vintage motown?

soft acoustic stuff with brushes?

there's a million ways to record drums (that's why they are so fun to record IMO)

[vvv]

Upon reflection, I realized that lately I usually kinda don't even do overheads, tho' I still call 'em that ...

Weird.

I use two LDC's (typically AT4040's) about 3' above and 3'-5' in front of the kit, about 1-2' to either side and toed about 45 degrees in to point at the drummer's head.

On mixdown, I pan 'em about 8 and 4:00.

I think I'm-a call it, "full-frontal spaced pair", because I can. (Others might call 'em close stereo room mic's?)

I do also like Recorderman, and wish I could get more drummers to appreciate M/S.

Finally, when all 8 tracks of my recorder are used (1 Snare top, kick in, 2 OH, 2 tom mic's {1 on racks and 1 on floor} and 1 each scratch guitar and scratch voc), I like to sometimes mix the OH's down to a mono track, smash the beejayzuss outta that, and even delay it some milliseconds to fake a room mic track, typically with a steep high-pass at 400Hz or so.

[Recording Engineer]

Heck, throw 20 mics on the kit, it doesn't matter.

I have two words of advice:
1. You don't have to use them all.
2. Check phase; preferably in mono with monitor that can really reproduce lowend.

Get all like mics in phase with each other. Got 3 kick mics? Get them in phase with ech other. Got 3 stereo sets of room mics? Get each set in phase with each other and then the 3 stereo sets in phase with each other. Do that with everything and then get it all in phase with each other. There's no right or wrong here, just whatever so best; be it more out of phase or more in phase. We're only talking 180 degree flips here; which is all we really care about for this. We hear "phase problems" every day and that's exactly what we're trying to get here.

By the way, do this with all other instruments too. And don't forget to do the same while mixing. It's amazing how you can go from the kick being lost in a dense mix to being able to follow the punchy kick with just one switch!

[drumsound]

I set levels on the OH mics, and check that they have a good phase relationship. I usually use ORTF, and I'm usually good. Then I do the same with the room pair. Then I compare the phase relationship between the OH and the room. This is done on ONE SPEAKER. I plan all the returns left to check for phase relationships. Then I add one mic at a time, and compare its phase relationship to the OH and Room. If at any time I don't like the tone, I go move the mic. If that doesn't do it (and the drum doesn't need tuning) I swap the mic for something else.

On Snare I like the mic just peeking over the rim, looking across the head. On toms, I like more of an angle looking through the point o contact toward the bottom head and shell's meeting place. If the toms are too thuddy, I raise the mic a bit, if its too thin I lower it.

Once everything is in and sounding good together, I experiment with the low cut on the OH mics. Sometimes the BD sounds more pronounces when cutting some of the low from the OH. Sometimes it makes the snare POP more. Sometimes it sounds too thin and I leave them full range.

[Mark]

Excellent advice ds and RE

[blungo2]

Another great thread! I usually do recorderman for rock OHs and a mono OH for jazzier stuff. Either ribbons or LDCs, depending...

VVV, your frontal stereo OH/room mic technique sounds interesting! Can you post a pic or a diagram? Me not so good with descriptions of mic placement.

[vvv]

This is from earlier this year.



1. AT4040
2. AT4040
3. RE320
4. MD421 II
5. Beta 58

The kick hadda E609 in front; I like it inside a cuppla inches and pointed slightly off the beater.

The angle is deceiving, the AT's are about 3' in front of the kick. The board and other crap is not being used - I had a Zoom R16 behind the camera.

(You can hear this set-up on all drums tracks, here - my ex-band.)

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Lots of good advice here. Drums are so much fun to record. I'll add
- toms, maybe toms bottom?
- snare bottom, snare shell (i like an omni here), condensor & dynamic taped together for the snare top, second snare mic as eq (I use an altec salt shaker as a second snr mic if I think I'll need to add tons of high-mid crack)
- kick in and kick out, kick beater side
- front of kit (I usually use a ribbon at about waist level for this), back of kit or behind drummers head.
- Mono OH, stereo OH, mismatched stereo over head, M/S OH or front of kit.
- close room, far room, mono ultra smashed room, down the hall and around the corner room

Also try the crotch/heart mic. For this I usually use a 635a into a MXR distortion +. It gets placed over the beater side rim of the kick pointed at the players junk. Mix it in under the kit when you need things to get explode-y sounding.

I've recently started tracking my live room talkback mic. Usually this is whichever condensor is left over. It gets plopped in the middle of the circle of players so I can hear what they say between takes. Gain gets cranked way, way high so I can hear people talk, when they start playing it's a crazy distorted mess. Sometimes it's perfect. When I track this mic i put an inline pad between the pre and computer.

Going totally the other direction on simpler set-ups I've started using a 2 mic technique. It's a ribbon mic down low between the kick and snare and a second ribbon over the floor tom/ride. Both get panned to mono. The kick/snare mic should get both of those as well as the rack tom, hats and crash. The OH/FT/Ride mic will fill out that side of the kit. Just shuffle things around till you get the balance you want. With a good kit/player in a good room it can be a great sound.

[Nick Sevilla]

Let me share the drum micing from hell:

One Kick.
One Snare
4 Toms
Cymbals.

For this we used:

2 mics for the kick. One inside, one outside.
2 mics for the Snare. One on top, on on bottom.
8 mics for the Toms (that's 2 mic per Tom)
3 mics for overheads. One above the drummer, two to the sides, for "Stereo" effect.
3 mics for room ambience. One in front of the kit, two far away on either side of the room. All in omni, all squashed to heck.

Needless to say it took a whole day to figure out the phase relationships between
all this mess. And it ended up not sounding as "BIG" as was advertised.

Next time I am asked to do this I will include a whole new set of mics, to mic the shells from the side as well. I'll need one of those "Little Devil" phase knob thingies per mic, and we will take TWO whole days to do it.

TORTURE IS GOOD KIDS.