I would like to preface this by saying that we live in an amazing age of electronics and audio technology. In and of themselves, these marvels are amazing tools for us to make great music with great ease, and when used as a tool, they are great things. The dark side to this technology is that it can easily overwhelm and take over the art. Technology is not meant to create the human art. It is meant to capture and enhance. I personally love electronic music and the moods it can create, so long as there is a human there, manipulating the technology to get his or her art across. So it’s clear, I love the modern music technology, so long as it is not the source of the music.
That said, I have no real desire to spend any time talking about the people generating prefab or programming “beats” or drum loops to take the easy way out in making music, or using electronic drum sets (which is also kind of cheating, though I understand the reasoning many use them to get their drums tracked. I am instead going to focus on the keys to recording great drums in the traditional sense of recording a drummer playing acoustic drums. With the technology available, I think just about anyone with a computer of some sort, a few mics, and some way to get them into your recording device or software, can easily record themselves playing drums. Here are some keys to get the best our of your recordings whether you are tracking in a major studio, in a smaller project studio, or in your parents garage.
1) TUNE YOUR DRUMS
You might think this is a pretty basic concept but for many drummers, this gets neglected. I can’t tell you how many drummers I have met with DW drums with gold hardware, brand new heads, looking amazing and sounding like absolute garbage. The beauty of drums is that they don’t have to be in perfect pitch to sound good, but tuning is important. Depending on your personal preferences and the song you are recording on, there are a near infinite number of ways that you can tune your drums and have them sound incredible. Head choices play a part (and should be considered for what you are going to record), the drum shells also play a part, and the room you are tracking in plays a part. You should start by getting each drum head tuned pretty close to the same pitch at each lug. I personally feel like you should develop an ear for pitch, but if you use a device or app, more power to you. Again, it doesn’t have to be a perfect pitch, so long as the drum sounds good to the ear when struck. Keep in mind that microphones are going to pick up sounds more accurately then the human ear will. If you faintly hear some oddball sound or buzz on your own, it will certainly be there on playback. The simple way to think about it is Good Input = Good Output. If it sounds good to your ears, it will likely sound good recorded as well (though there are always exceptions to that rule).
2) MUFFLE SLIGHTLY IF NEEDED
Before we dive in here, it is always best to get as much as you can from your drums. You can always do things in post to take away, but it’s very difficult to add anything. If you can, it is best to record your drums without muffling, or if anything, a slight muffling (maybe to control overtones or tame a frequency in a room). I personally play live and record with strips of Electrical Tape on my toms and snare because it really does not change the sound of the drums, save for tamping down stray high end frequencies and focusing the drum ever so slightly. Much more subtle than moon gel, which I find shortens the decay of your drums considerably, or O-rings which essentially turns your drum into a great sounding bucket. Your personal preferences come into play here, and there may be certain songs or situations where you want more muffling to achieve the sound you are after. I don’t want to chastise muffling your drums, but just remember, the more you take away before the microphone captures it, the less you have to work with in your recording. You can always EQ the drums to get the sound you want and less of what you don’t (to a point).
3) MICROPHONES AND PLACEMENT
So, now your drums are all set up in the recording space and sound great to your ears. Now, you need to Mic these bad boys up so you can get in the mix! Thankfully, you don’t have to spend a fortune on drum mics, or even necessarily need a bunch of mics to get a great drum sound. We live in an amazing age of technology for musicians and there are so many choices of microphones of any type and budget that will get the job done! I won’t get into specific mics this time around. Instead, I would prefer to talk about some placement options and what they do for you.
“Letting It Breathe” – You can capture a a nice general drum sound with this technique. Essentially, you mic the kick drum, and put up one or two pencil condenser or large diaphragm mics overhead, and a bit further away than usual to capture the overall sound of your drumkit as a collective. This configuration doesn’t allow for much mixing of individual parts, so it relies heavily on dynamic and musical playing, but for advanced drummers that enjoy a more airy and organic sound, this is still a very popular way to mic drums. This is also a very popular way of recording live drums on a limited number of channels.
“The Core 4” – This is kind of an extension of the “Letting It Breathe” configuration, and adding in a snare mic. The overheads also get back to a more normalized distance. It should be noted that anytime you use more than one overhead, you should make sure the overhead mics have an equal distance from the snare drum to avoid any major phase issues. The core 4 is probably one of the most commonly used micing setups for tracking drums in live situations or where there are a limited number of channels available. It is popular in rock music in particular where the thinking is Kick, Snare, and everything else.
“Live 5/6” – This was pretty popular back in the late 80s, and through the 90s. Most drummers were using 4 and 5 piece kits, so it made sense to try and get some control over the toms individually and really fill out the mix without going too crazy on mics. Typically, they mic’ed Kick, Snare, Rack Tom, Floor Tom, and an overhead (or two for the live 6). If you have three toms, they around stick a mic between two and one on the other drum that was by itself. This two for one mic deal works best with rack toms, as they are higher pitched and often require less EQ. Floor toms are best individually mic’ed to get the most out of them. Overheads can either be used to grab mostly cymbals, or to fill out the sound with the mid range opened up a bit for a “live” sound.
“Studio Direct” – The typical direct micing situation a studio uses is one mic per drum, and two overheads. Sometimes a snare gets an underside mic as well, and other variations, but for the most part, each drum is directly miced and the cymbals get two overheads. Larger kits may often add in a third overhead to make sure the cymbals get a balanced and complete representation. Hi Hats and rides may also get their own mics. For me, I typically record without a hi hat mic or ride mic. I tend to go for a balanced but equal cymbal sound (and my hi hat work cuts quite well on it’s own). Every drum gets an individual mic, as does Kick, and two overheads for cymbals. I find this is the best standard micing situation for most recordings (at least for me).
Now placement is a pretty debated subject, and there is lots of room for you to experiment, and figure out what works best for you. The more recent trend is for direct micing to aim flat at the drum head, about two inches inside the rim. I prefer the old school method of aiming into the center of the drum but that is just me. As mentioned before, make sure you keep your overheads an equal distance from the snare drum to avoid phase issues. If you have lots of toms, or may want to think about using a gate on each one to help separate them (or anything that might bleed over). I think gating your snare is crucial. Speaking of snare, mic placement is wide open here, but if you want a more direct sound, mic about an inch above the rim and aim into the center. If you want a more open sound, move the mic back from the rim about an inch and a half, still aiming at the center of the head. In conjunction with a bottom snare mic, this can really open up the drum and give you more or less articulation. For the kick, closer to the beater inside the drum gives you more attack and direct sound. More towards the port hole (if you have one) gives you more of a round shell sound.
4) DYNAMIC PLAYING
I cannot stress enough to you, that you are the most important part of your drumming. Recording or otherwise. Your passion, playing, feeling, and dynamics create your performance, and that performance is the real art. The gear are the tools you use to create and capture your art, but it is not the art. You are the artist! Just like a paintbrush or canvas board is not the painting, your drums and microphones are not your music! The best or worst gear in the world can do nothing without your performance! Make whatever music you track on come alive with your playing! Your musical voice is the most important part of the whole recording process. Ultimately, that is what will shine through on the track. Not the gear, not the drums themselves, but your voice. If you keep that in mind, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish! I have heard masterpieces played on junky kits and I have heard crap played on insanely expensive kits. Nice gear makes it easier to express yourself, but there is no limit to what an artist can do on whatever gear they use, if it comes from the heart! The music is in you, not your gear!
In summary, these are the most important keys to success in my mind. There is plenty of other stuff that I could vamp on, but at the end of the day, the keys to success in making a good drum recording are the following. Make the most of your gear (IE; Tune your drums, muffle if needed, make good head/cymbal/tuning choices for the music you are tracking for), make the most of the space you are tracking in (tuning for the room, muffling again if needed, microphone setups and placement), play dynamically, and the most important, have fun and remember that you are the artist! Let your musical voice shine and make the music sound it’s best!
– Chris McKinney