Micing live drums with one mic?

[Deester]

Hi all,

We play fairly small venues and usually have no problems with drum sound level. However occasionally in the odd bigger venue the drums are slightly lost. All we have is one spare SM57, is it possible to use this to slightly raise our drum level? I know it's asking a lot but we only want a slight increase, if so where would the best place be to put it?

[Deester]

Sorry guys, just realised I posted this in the wrong Forum altogether!!!! Any help would still be appreciated though..

[bvaleria]

Hmmm... an SM57 is not going to be of much help - it's cardioid, so as an overall tool to pickup a distant, fairly wide signal-source, it's not very effective. Some sort of omni, possibly placed behind the drummer, may work.

The problem a lot of times in these venues is that the kick and sometimes snare gets lost, although cymbals cut thru fairly easily. With my own band, for times that the drums didn't seem to have enough "ooomph", we threw a mic on the kick drum (and nowhere else) and it helped immensely.

Bruce
Blue Bear Sound

[Deester]

Thanks Bruce

So the 57 just on the kick would help a little? Obviously not too much gain on the Pa, just a bit of reinforcement?

[bvaleria]

Actually, we were using a true kick mic (can't remember if it was an AKG or Sennheiser), but you can try it with a 57 and see....

Bruce

[Slapback]

Yea, a SM 57 won't get you that far - its pretty limited to what you can use it on as far as a drum kit goes - snare and tom miking. If you cannot afford another, more suitable mic, take the SM 57 and drop it in overhead equidistantly centered on the set. It will function as an ambient mic, but will probably be heavy on the high frequency transients that your cymbals produce, and way short on the low end of kick and floor toms. The best way to make do with what you have is experiment until you are satisfied with the result. Good luck!