Drum micing - review on a day of experimenting

[Halion]

Today I got the chance to record a great drummer. I had 5 hours time to record a single song (pop rock), so I had lots of chance to mess with micing techniques. Let me post a small summary of what I tried:

Last timed I miked drums I had a U87 still standing in the room and I thought, hey lets just stick this in front of the kit and see what becomes of it. It turned to have a near perfect balance of everything in it. The cymbals were a little loud and the snare didn't have the attack it can have when close micing but it did have a cohesive, glued together sound of all the drums. So today I decided to try the same, but instead of adding some overheads, place 2 mics directly left and right of the kit, at tom level. + kick mic. It didn't work too well. The cymbals where extremely left or right, and they washed over most the toms + snare. I didn't like the tone of the toms like this either (although the drumkit was great, we tuned to toms aswell). Next, I tried an AB pair (about a foot from each other, a little too little I think) behind the drummer, coupled with an SDC on the snare (pointed at the side of the snare), and and RE20 on the kick (in front of the hole, about 10 cm outside of the kick). This turned out to give a very ambient kick sound (I put the RE20 inside the kickdrum before this). The snare sounded pretty good, although a top/bottom dynamic mic pair would probably have worked a little better. The cymbals and toms were much better balanced, because where miked from the back. I added an SM underneath the toms, pointing horizontally at the lowest rack tom and the floor tom. This gave a HUGE buttom end to those toms, I didn't think it would be possible to get this kind of sustain and boom out of these.

All in all, I think the kick turned out not punchy enough, and the snare didn't have the snap it would have when miced top and bottom. The hihat wasn't as focussed as when close miked aswell. On the other hand, it did sound like a miked kit more than anything, no library will be able to fake it like this.

Conclusion: I still feel that only close miking + overheads provides too direct a sound, but this was an other extreme. I think with another experimenting sesion or 2, I will have a very good own miking technique, so I'm happy

 

[fuquam]

So you're saying you don't like close micing plus overheads? My personal feeling is thats the best way to get a drum kit sound real. Listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers "Blood Sugar Sex Magic" album (even if you don't like that band). Rick Rubin only used 4 mics (snare, bass, 2 overheads) the whole session and the drums sound killer on tha record. To each his own though. Some like drums to sound larger than life or beyond.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Halion,

Sounds like your best results were with just the single U87 . Actually that wouldn't be all that suprising to me.

Might I recommend instead of the stage-left and stage-right mics at to level that you stick a L/R or ORTF cardioid stereo pair in front of the kit approximately 1/2 to 2/3rds of the way up from the toms and the cymbals. Set the exact height along with the exact downward tilt of the mics to taste to get the best mix of cymbals and skins to your taste. The stereo will sound very natural, not too wide and the toms won't be left out. Depending on the kit, the drummer and the song, sometimes with this setup a snare mic may not even be necessary. That's to taste as well.

I started using this technique for live recordings. Quick easy and unobtrusive with great results. Just the front stereo pair mounted on a T, with a kick mic hanging down into the kick hole on the downward-hanging mic boom. Three mics, one mic stand, three recording tracks with a maximum of bleed rejection from the rest of the stage; and very nice-sound results. It wasn't long before I decided to try this in the studio with different and better mics, refining the mic positioning a bit for the recording, etc. and I gotta tell you, I am sold on this technique for most pop/rock/country/blues recordings.

The exceptions to this technique for me are when recording some classic jazz or rockabilly stuff where the kit is too small to mic in horizontal stereo, in space rock or radioactive angst metal mixes where they need an extremely artificial drum sound, or in cases where the drummer sucks and needs each drum miked seperately so his playing intensity can be surgically facelifed in post.

But with those exceptions, I'll never go back to "standard" multi-miking techniques again.

G.

 

[fuquam]

Halion,
or in cases where the drummer sucks and needs each drum miked seperately so his playing intensity can be surgically facelifed in post.
G.

AMEN BROTHER.

 

[foreverain4]

having a hard time visualizing this, could you post a pic?

Halion,

Sounds like your best results were with just the single U87 . Actually that wouldn't be all that suprising to me.

Might I recommend instead of the stage-left and stage-right mics at to level that you stick a L/R or ORTF cardioid stereo pair in front of the kit approximately 1/2 to 2/3rds of the way up from the toms and the cymbals. Set the exact height along with the exact downward tilt of the mics to taste to get the best mix of cymbals and skins to your taste. The stereo will sound very natural, not too wide and the toms won't be left out. Depending on the kit, the drummer and the song, sometimes with this setup a snare mic may not even be necessary. That's to taste as well.

I started using this technique for live recordings. Quick easy and unobtrusive with great results. Just the front stereo pair mounted on a T, with a kick mic hanging down into the kick hole on the downward-hanging mic boom. Three mics, one mic stand, three recording tracks with a maximum of bleed rejection from the rest of the stage; and very nice-sound results. It wasn't long before I decided to try this in the studio with different and better mics, refining the mic positioning a bit for the recording, etc. and I gotta tell you, I am sold on this technique for most pop/rock/country/blues recordings.

The exceptions to this technique for me are when recording some classic jazz or rockabilly stuff where the kit is too small to mic in horizontal stereo, in space rock or radioactive angst metal mixes where they need an extremely artificial drum sound, or in cases where the drummer sucks and needs each drum miked seperately so his playing intensity can be surgically facelifed in post.

But with those exceptions, I'll never go back to "standard" multi-miking techniques again.

G.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

having a hard time visualizing this, could you post a pic?

I don't have my own drum kit here at the home studio, so I had to kludge together a "fake picture", but you should get the idea.

I know, I know, that's not how U87s would actually mount to a T-bar, I was just trying to get the idea across as to actual mic placement. With U87s it would probably be better to hang them from seperate booms instead of using the T, but I use the T all the time with anything from plain ol' 57s to NT-2As in either X/Y or ORTF configuration.

In order to be able to use one stand for all three mics, you need to have the kind of mic stand that has the detachable boom that clamps to the main body of the mic stand. I got some Prosound stands from Guitar Center a few years ago that are very well built for this (though they are a bit on the heavy side.) This allows you to use the thread at the top of the stand for the T adapter and still have the boom to hang the kick mic down. of course, one stand is not necessary; often the mic goes inside the kick on the pillow or mounted via a short floor stand with it's own boom. And the T can be replaced by two stands with their own booms as mentioned above.

The only reason I came up with the single stand "tree" was for ease of setup and small footprint in a live space. In fact that was the genesis of the whole coincident pair technique for drums for me; I just wanted something simple and unobtrusive for a live recording setup. So I put a couple of 57s in an X/Y and hung the e602 down in front of the kick hole. This also allows for maximum rejection from the stage monitors and the rest of the stage with no kit bleed or phasing issues. I wound up liking the way it worked and sounded so much that - with better mics and more critical placement setup and more flexibility in mic stand use - it is now my favorite miking technique in-studio as well.

G.

 

[cello_pudding]

really interesting.

is the kick mic pointing down and not at the drum?

i wish i had a drum kit just to practice mic techniques.

 

[blueroommusic]

southside glen...what kind of angles and distances (up and down relative to the kit) have you had good results with...I don't want you to give away your secrets, but the picture was slightly confusing (I know it was a cut & paste job).

It would seem if you angled a stereo pair downward (across the toms) as it was depicted, you would get less attack on the toms. Also, how does this placement affect the sound of cymbals? it would seem that you would get more of the wash of the cymbal, as opposed to the attack.

Just wondering if you could clarify this for me...thanks

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I admit that picture sucks if one looks at it too literally; you're right, it is just a cut and paste job. All it really describes with any accuracy is how to use one stand for three mics and the relatibve location of the mics and the stand to the drums.

No the kick mic is not really pointed down or sideways; when I do have it mounted inverted on the boom like that it's actually pointing in towards the kick drum, as often as not it's actually sticking towards or actually inside the sound hole of the front skin. If because of the drummer style, the sound of the kit itself, or the needs of the song, that placement is not what I want and I need to go inside the drum or something, then of course I won't hang it from the boom and I'll place it a more traditional way.

As far as the stereo pair, again the angle shown in the picture is sloppy, the best I could whip together in an impulse instant. The key there is to experiment with both the L/R seperation and with the up/down angle of the mics to get the best result.

Like I say, that aspect of it started out as a simple X/Y of a couple of SM57s when doing a live recording a few years ago. Because of the size of teh T bracket I was using, the heads of the two 57s actualy touched in an alost perfect triangle with one laying on top of the other. I literally had sandwiched a small piece of IC chip packing foam between the X/Y'd heads of the 57s to stop vibrational noise and then wrapped a little electrical tape around the junction just to keep the foam from falling out. It was a real spur-of-the-moment jerry rig idea but I was actually rather pleased and impressed with the resulting stereo tracks I got out of it.

Depending on the size of the kit and the nature of the song, a tight X/Y like that may not be what I want for teh stereo image. Then I might either widen the X/Y angle or (more likely) swing the mics inside out and change them to more of an ORTF configuration (which is what I was trying to sloppily show in that picture.) Of course the drum kit configuration and the player's style all have to figure into into the actual positioning (or whether this technique is used at all), but the key is that one can adjust the height of the T (the top of the stand) up and down a couple of inches and at the same time adjust the up/down angle of the mics, using these adjustments to slightly fine tune the tom/cymbal balance (down for more tom, up for more cymbal.)

As far as the attack/wash of the cymbal, yeah that plays into it a little bit, but remember that though these mics are lower than most of the cymbals, they are also *in front* of the drum kit and not quite really underneath the cymbals. You guys have heard me say this many times before probably, but now there's a context in which I'm saying it; if the drums sound good with two ears standing in front of the kit, there's no reason why they can't sound good from two microphones from the same relative perspective. Ok this is a little shorter than the average person's height, but that's just to get into the toms and the snare a little closer. And it's of course expanded by adding the kick mic, but it is, after all, necessary.

That said, this technique is not perfect and is not always suitable. If you have a drummer with four rides and three crashes and his style is to hit them more often than he hits the skins, this may not be the technique for miking him. I just find that for most rock n' roll drums with a quality guy holding the stick, this is much easier and much better sounding than throwing 23 mics up there. And if I'm recording some dipshit who's penis is measured by the size of his kit but couldn't keep a simple reggae beat to save his life, then the rest doesn't matter anyway, does it?

G.

 

[blueroommusic]

thanks southside...I'm going to give it a try in a session today and see how it turns out. This guy is the easiest drummer i've ever had the chance to record, so hopefully we can acheive something nice with this config.