Recording Drums
June 09, 2009 Filed in: Recording
Recording acoustic
drums is challenging. For one, they are generally
loud. And, a bad player can make a noisy situation
into an obnoxious one. For two, there are often
multiple microphones placed at varying angles from
each other. “Phase,” or stereo coherence, is of the
utmost concern with drum recording. For three, analog
tape, the best medium for capturing pleasant
sounding, full drumming is all but extinct.
What’s the best way to do it? Well, the old reliable studio adage, which applies to everything, holds true: put a good player on a good drum kit, in front of good microphones, in a good room, through a good console, over a good tune, and you can’t really mess it up.
A great starting place is to find the best drummer around. I like to employ Dale Baker (www.dalebakerdrummer.com) on just about all of my sessions. He’s moderately priced and worth every single penny. He has good skills, good gear, and great instincts.
The next task is finding a place to record the tracks. Most of the studios I’ve worked in have oddly shaped tracking rooms. You want a room with good modal relationships and one that doesn’t have excessive reflections. I started out with Primacoustic baffles and a wide-open space in my living room.
Nowadays, I track drums right behind my console in the control room. The absorbing and diffusing walls help me establish a tight, full drum sound that I can manipulate in Pro Tools after the fact.
Miking the drums is the next task. Less is not more. More is not more, either. The right number, in my estimation is between 2 and 8 microphones. This is purely my opinion and nothing more.
If the track is a jazzy, open drum or percussion performance, a stereo pair of condenser microphones, placed 3 to 6 feet over the drummer is usually all you’d need. For phase purposes, make sure the capsules of the condensers are at a 90-degree angle from each other. A great mono alternative with two microphones would be one condenser over the head of the drummer and a dynamic mic on the bass drum.
My all-purpose drum miking set-up is a stereo mic on the overheads, a dynamic mic each on the bass drum, snare drum, rack tom, and floor tom, and two room mics (placed at 90 degree angles from each other and six feet from the drum kit; swing low). That’s a total of 8 mics on the kit.
Where to place the microphone on each drum is a matter of taste, but there are some general rules that always apply. For more tone, place the mic near the rim of the drum. For more attack, place the mic closer to the center of the drum. This can be tricky with an imprecise player.
Kick drums are beasts in and of themselves. Millions of articles have been written on where to place the microphone for the best tone. The answer: it depends on what you want. Personally, I like it when the front head is open (as in a whole in the front) and a mic placed just inside, pointed at where the beater meets the skin. Works for me.
Analog pre-amps are the way to go with drums. Look for pre-amps that have a high-roll off around 12 kHz, if you can find them. These frequencies can be cut later in the digital realm, but they sound better when done on the way into the computer. Analog tape used to take care of the shrillness up here. If you can record to a two inch Studer, do it.
Once the drum performance is captured, there are many different options for sculpting the performance and tone, even after the fact. Drum replacement software (such as Drumagog or Sound Replacer) allows for individual samples to be blended into the close mic sounds. Poor sounds can be completely replaced. Good sounds can be enhanced. On a lot of modern records, the huge kick and snare drum sound is a product of blending several individual drum samples into the native performance.
Minor timing blemishes can be fixed in Pro Tools (and a few other systems) with the use of Beat Detective, a quantizing program. At its most basic level, a drum performance can be tightly locked to a grid (1-2-3-4). In a more advanced application, a performance can be locked to a particular groove. This makes tracking to grooves especially interesting. Imagine having a live, acoustic drum performance mesh perfectly with your favorite drum loop. Yeah, it’s that cool.
The main way to get drums to sound “big” in a mix is through various forms of compression. The on-tape tone of most drums is generally described as “oingy.” There’s lots of midrange information that isn’t very pleasant on most drums (this is in the 300 Hz to 600 Hz range; knowing absolutely nothing about drums or mixing, if a monkey pulled out 450 Hz on all of the drum tracks, it would automatically sound clearer and leave room for other instruments).
If there aren’t a lot of good compressors around in your mixing area, the best way to achieve a fuller sound is to use parallel compression. This form of compression runs a dry, or uncompressed signal “parallel” to it’s squashed counterpart. You’ll get all the attack of the basic performance and all of the sustain of the compression. Digital audio workstations with no delay compensation have issues with this method, so consult your manual before compressing.
I like to use serial compression on my drum mixes; that is, an individual compressor inserted on each drum with its own setting, tailored for the song and the performance. Usually, something in the 3:1 to 4:1 ratio with a low threshold works for me. Lately, I’ve been using the stock Digidesign compressor with the adjustable knee.
Reverb and echo is sometimes used on snare and tom drums. This can date the recording (to somewhere around the late 80’s or early 90’s) and should be used sparingly. Sometimes it’s cool. Sometimes not. Compressing drums so they are “in your face” makes putting reverb on them counterintuitive. Sometimes it makes for a particularly interesting rhythm track though. It all depends.
Really though, with all this technique, gear, and placement, there’s nothing more satisfying than putting up one microphone about three feet from the kit and having it sound right. No phase problems there. And, it’s impossible to screw up. The secret is: there is no secret. Just trust your ears and keep it as simple as possible.
What’s the best way to do it? Well, the old reliable studio adage, which applies to everything, holds true: put a good player on a good drum kit, in front of good microphones, in a good room, through a good console, over a good tune, and you can’t really mess it up.
A great starting place is to find the best drummer around. I like to employ Dale Baker (www.dalebakerdrummer.com) on just about all of my sessions. He’s moderately priced and worth every single penny. He has good skills, good gear, and great instincts.
The next task is finding a place to record the tracks. Most of the studios I’ve worked in have oddly shaped tracking rooms. You want a room with good modal relationships and one that doesn’t have excessive reflections. I started out with Primacoustic baffles and a wide-open space in my living room.
Nowadays, I track drums right behind my console in the control room. The absorbing and diffusing walls help me establish a tight, full drum sound that I can manipulate in Pro Tools after the fact.
Miking the drums is the next task. Less is not more. More is not more, either. The right number, in my estimation is between 2 and 8 microphones. This is purely my opinion and nothing more.
If the track is a jazzy, open drum or percussion performance, a stereo pair of condenser microphones, placed 3 to 6 feet over the drummer is usually all you’d need. For phase purposes, make sure the capsules of the condensers are at a 90-degree angle from each other. A great mono alternative with two microphones would be one condenser over the head of the drummer and a dynamic mic on the bass drum.
My all-purpose drum miking set-up is a stereo mic on the overheads, a dynamic mic each on the bass drum, snare drum, rack tom, and floor tom, and two room mics (placed at 90 degree angles from each other and six feet from the drum kit; swing low). That’s a total of 8 mics on the kit.
Where to place the microphone on each drum is a matter of taste, but there are some general rules that always apply. For more tone, place the mic near the rim of the drum. For more attack, place the mic closer to the center of the drum. This can be tricky with an imprecise player.
Kick drums are beasts in and of themselves. Millions of articles have been written on where to place the microphone for the best tone. The answer: it depends on what you want. Personally, I like it when the front head is open (as in a whole in the front) and a mic placed just inside, pointed at where the beater meets the skin. Works for me.
Analog pre-amps are the way to go with drums. Look for pre-amps that have a high-roll off around 12 kHz, if you can find them. These frequencies can be cut later in the digital realm, but they sound better when done on the way into the computer. Analog tape used to take care of the shrillness up here. If you can record to a two inch Studer, do it.
Once the drum performance is captured, there are many different options for sculpting the performance and tone, even after the fact. Drum replacement software (such as Drumagog or Sound Replacer) allows for individual samples to be blended into the close mic sounds. Poor sounds can be completely replaced. Good sounds can be enhanced. On a lot of modern records, the huge kick and snare drum sound is a product of blending several individual drum samples into the native performance.
Minor timing blemishes can be fixed in Pro Tools (and a few other systems) with the use of Beat Detective, a quantizing program. At its most basic level, a drum performance can be tightly locked to a grid (1-2-3-4). In a more advanced application, a performance can be locked to a particular groove. This makes tracking to grooves especially interesting. Imagine having a live, acoustic drum performance mesh perfectly with your favorite drum loop. Yeah, it’s that cool.
The main way to get drums to sound “big” in a mix is through various forms of compression. The on-tape tone of most drums is generally described as “oingy.” There’s lots of midrange information that isn’t very pleasant on most drums (this is in the 300 Hz to 600 Hz range; knowing absolutely nothing about drums or mixing, if a monkey pulled out 450 Hz on all of the drum tracks, it would automatically sound clearer and leave room for other instruments).
If there aren’t a lot of good compressors around in your mixing area, the best way to achieve a fuller sound is to use parallel compression. This form of compression runs a dry, or uncompressed signal “parallel” to it’s squashed counterpart. You’ll get all the attack of the basic performance and all of the sustain of the compression. Digital audio workstations with no delay compensation have issues with this method, so consult your manual before compressing.
I like to use serial compression on my drum mixes; that is, an individual compressor inserted on each drum with its own setting, tailored for the song and the performance. Usually, something in the 3:1 to 4:1 ratio with a low threshold works for me. Lately, I’ve been using the stock Digidesign compressor with the adjustable knee.
Reverb and echo is sometimes used on snare and tom drums. This can date the recording (to somewhere around the late 80’s or early 90’s) and should be used sparingly. Sometimes it’s cool. Sometimes not. Compressing drums so they are “in your face” makes putting reverb on them counterintuitive. Sometimes it makes for a particularly interesting rhythm track though. It all depends.
Really though, with all this technique, gear, and placement, there’s nothing more satisfying than putting up one microphone about three feet from the kit and having it sound right. No phase problems there. And, it’s impossible to screw up. The secret is: there is no secret. Just trust your ears and keep it as simple as possible.
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