Absolutely! Kick (bass) drum. If possible replace any old drum heads and spend some time learning to tune your drum kit (or ask an experienced drummer to give you a hand). These (assuming you use two mics) are called overhead mics and, as the name implies, they are placed above the drumset. Figure 4 shows both of these set-ups. The more you experiment, the more you will find out for yourself what works and what doesn’t. If your bass drum doesn’t have a porthole, just position the mic a couple of inches away from the resonant head. Place the mic just outside the resonant head porthole, pointing at where the beater strikes the batter head. Place a single mic a couple of inches away from the head near the rim. If you’re like most musicians, getting great-sounding drum recordings seems like one of the world’s great mysteries. The usual price is 100 dollars per mic. If the mic distances are off, adjust either mic position until they are both an equal distance from the snare drum. You can hear big, fat drums on great albums, but when you try to record your drums, they always end up sounding more like cardboard boxes than drums. YMI provides you with expert musicians to answer your questions and reveal their insider secrets. Adding compression to the snare drum is crucial if you want a tight, punchy sound. In this essential guide, I will take you through some tried and tested techniques to make micing and recording a drum kit feel like a breeze. For me the overheads are the most important mics for the overall sound of your drum recordings. No matter where you place the mic, you can reduce the amount of boominess that you get from the drum by placing a pillow or blanket inside the drum. If you mic hi-hats, make sure that the snare drum mic is picking up as little of the hi-hats as possible by placing it properly and/or using a noise gate (a dynamic processor use to filter unwanted noise). Also, keep an eye out for bass drum microphones, they are dynamic but tend to have a larger ‘egg-like’ shape. They are placed a few feet about the drum kit, pointing down to face the drums. I actually have found that this method sounds better than the kick attachment sometimes. Read More >> How Do You Play Electronic Drums? A sample setting looks like this: Gain: Adjust so that the output level matches the input level. This allowed the engineer to raise up the levels of the drums without having the cymbals drown everything else out. The bass guitar can cover the kick drum’s rhythm, and the rest of the drums aren’t part of the main groove. If your room is square and has a lot of hard surfaces, the sound will bounce around and cause all kinds of problems. Got a question? Adjust the gain knob associated with that channel until there is a good level coming into the audio interface and there is no ‘peaking’ (i.e no orange or red LED’s) from the level being too high. This is commonly a large-diaphragm condenser mic, placed a few feet in front of the drum kit at head height, pointing roughly at the snare drum. If you’re looking for a big drum sound, you need a fairly live room (one with lots of reflection). The dynamic mic gives you a trashier sound and the small diaphragm condenser mic produces a bright sound. If you use two mics, place one above each drum about 1 to 3 inches above the head. If you’re looking for lessons for a live drum mic setup, read on. You can then mix this in with the other drum tracks to add a different quality of reverberation to the drums. Try adding just a little bit (4dB or so) of a shelf EQ set at 10 kHz to add just a little sheen to the hi-hats. Overheads are generally two mics that are combined to create a stereo image of the drum kit. Using some pretty limited and inexpensive equipment! First is the dynamic mic, which will often be used on the snare, bass drum and sometimes on the toms.A dynamic mic functions just like a speaker, only in reverse, with the movement of the diaphragm in turn moving a … Because the drums bleeding into the overhead mics is inevitable and the overhead mics are responsible for providing much of the drums’ presence in a mix, playing the cymbals softly allows you to get more of the drums in these mics. Both the distance and the surrounding instruments that may bleed into the target source will often impact the success of these microphones. Dynamic mics 1. The most common mic for a snare drum is the trusty Shure SM57. Depending on what you’re looking to record there are different types of mics that are better suited for certain jobs. Some have phantom power available for individual channels, others just a single general phantom power switch. Phantom power is the power needed for condenser mics to work. He has been a professional drummer, producer and audio engineer for over 10 years. The ideal mic setup (and room) would consist of really nice overhead and room mics. For each channel that has a condenser mic in it, you will need to turn phantom power ON. YourMusicInsider.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Microphones pick up the sounds at the source and transmit them to the audio interface. Now, take your second overhead microphone. There is no wrong answer, just use your ears, and if it sounds good...IT IS GOOD! The exact placement of the mic is less important than the placement of the other instrument mics because of the hi-hats’ tone. Further mic = open/ringy), Take your hi-hat mic (small-diaphragm condenser microphone, ex. Lower end PC’s and Laptops often don’t have the power to process audio. Here are a couple of ideas to spark your imagination: The mic of choice for most recording engineers when recording a kick drum is a dynamic mic. Recording Drums – Excellent 4 mic setup. Try adding some acoustic tiles and soft furnishings to tighten up an overly ‘lively’ sounding room. Some people choose to let the pillow or blanket touch the inside head. That gives you the distance of the mic … NOTE: Drummers often play louder when they are recording along to music, I often find my desired gain level for each mic, then just back it off a touch to accommodate for this. Some of the most famous drum recordings have been made using a very modest mic set up. Set the gain for each microphone by getting the drummer to play the whole kit. The further away from the mic, the more ‘open’ the sound. Adding a pillow inside the bass drum can really help get that low end ‘thump’ too. Put the drums in your garage (or living room, or any other room with a reverberating sound) and run long mic cords to your mixer. This set-up uses an Overhead Drum Miking Technique includes the 2 overhead Pencil Condenser mics and a quality large Diaphragm Dynamic Kick Drum mic. Copyright Phlash Formations, LLC © 2020 A good, punchy snare drum can make a track, whereas a weak, thin one can eliminate the drive that most popular music needs. Conclusion. You may need to make some minor adjustments to eliminate any bleed from the hi-hats. So he played his cymbals softly and hit the drums pretty hard. Phantom power is usually represented as +48V and there should be a switch on your audio interface that turns it on. The fewer microphones used, the more responsibility gets placed on a solid, balanced drum take. Compression isn’t usually necessary when tracking the hi-hats unless you have a drummer whose volume level is inconsistent. Search below to see expert answers from our music insiders! For drums you probably want at least an 8 channel interface such as the Focusrite Clarett 8 Pre...but you can record with fewer channels if necessary (more on that later). Check out some of these other helpful guides from this music insider. XLR (External Line Return) is the standard connection type for almost all microphones. Point the front of the mic (grill side) towards where the bass drum beater strikes the batter head. Top 5 Best Budget Cymbal Packs (2020 Review), Top 5 Best Electronic Cymbals (2020 Review), Take your large-diaphragm dynamic microphone (ex AKG D112 kick drum mic) and connect an XLR cable to it, Plug the mic into CHANNEL 1 of your audio interface. Basically, the microphone will be positioned facing the drummer on his right side. Simply put, mic gain is the amount of raw audio signal you’re allowing the microphone to send to the computer (or mixer, etc). If you have a studio-in-a-box system, you can just throw it under your arm and move everything into your garage or, better yet, take all this stuff to a really great-sounding room and record. Hold one end on the center of the snare drum head and stretch the other end of the cable until you meet the grill of the first mic. Leave a comment! This may cause phase issues when you’re coming to mixing, so be prepared to move the audio a bit in your DAW so it matches up with the close mic signals. From there, make a mark on the floor where the mic stand is (or take a picture) and record a little bit of the drummer playing. Small diaphragm condenser mics capture the cymbals’ high frequencies well. How Do I Mic My Drums? In general, they will be used to close-mic the snare drum, toms and bass drum. Neumann KM184) and connect an XLR cable to it, Plug the mic into CHANNEL 3 of your audio interface, Position the mic so it’s pointing at about halfway between the edge and the bell, roughly 5 or 6 inches above the cymbal, I usually position it on the opposite side to the one the drummer is playing, facing slightly away from the snare drum...you’ll want to try and minimize how much snare sound it picks up, The toms (tom-toms) will have a very similar process to the snare drum, Plug your toms into CHANNELS 4,5 and 6 respectively (Hi, Mid and Low toms).

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