What is the minimum amount of mics needed for a great drum recording?

In this article, we are going to cover techniques used for recording drums with 1 mic, 2 mics, 3 mics, 4 mics, 7 mics, and what to do if you have more mics than drums and want to do something like 32 tracks of drum capture, as well as some gear options for gettin’ it done.

Note: This Article is currently Under Edit.

More important than gear – the most important asset you have is your ability to capture a genuine recording of the drummer’s performance. It means knowing your gear, and having the patience to make sure that what you hear in playback from your studio monitors (or headphones) sounds the same as what the drummer played – for each drum and cymbal in the kit – and more importantly, knowing when you failed to capture a genuine recording. We’re going to cover these things as well, including our pick for secret weapon when recording drums (hint: sub-kick mic).

Any time you are recording drum tracks there are things that might be out of your control – the ability of the drummer, the sonic qualities of the room, the timbre and sustain of the drums. We aren’t going to cover those things here, and we are also not going to cover the mixing stages – though it’s worth saying that many of the top mixers in the world agree that a great recording in the first place makes for a better mix, a hence a better master and final product.

It’s so important, it’s worth repeating: a great recording in the first place makes for a better mix, a hence a better master and final product.

Awesome Sound. How many drum mics?

There are many factors that go into answering this question, but first, let’s have an honest moment: Most professional recordings – for more than the past decade or two – have all of the drums replaced (or at least mixed) with drum samples. And for good reason – sampled drums can be effectively triggered to match attack and volume, and quality can be awesome – samples can be used from some of the best drum kits in the best rooms with the best microphones through the best boards imaginable. A clever engineer could take a drum take from a single microphone, copy it for each drum and EQ it aggressively to isolate each drum enough to give proper separation to adequately trigger samples for the entire kit. So from that perspective, it’s a lot of work for the mixing engineer and a ton of processed sound, but in that case a realistic answer to the minimum amount of mics needed could be: one.

But, ewwww.

Not because of using a single mic. That’s cool if you can do it. (and you can)

But it’s a bit disturbing to recreate a synthetic electronic version of a drum performance with such disregard for the what actually occurred that a single mic would be sufficient.

Obviously, a lot of popular music has no natural drums – and in many cases, there never were drums – it’s all electronically produced.

However, you wouldn’t be on ImproveRecording if you didn’t actually care about capturing honest quality audio where the performance and skill of the drummer matter. So that’s what we are going to work toward.

The goal we are seeking is a realistic playback that sounds and feels the same as the drums do when the drummer plays them – realistic and natural.

Au Natural

That’s just a (super) sexy way of saying “clean – with nothing added that doesn’t belong there.” It’s best to say it with a French accent, but if that’s not your thing, you can just say it really fast in a slightly lower voice. Au Natural. Really fast.

When thinking about capturing drums, this would mean starting by turning off all the effects (compressors, limiters, EQ’s, etc.) when recording.

As much as possible leave the effects for the mixing stage – or at the very least dial in the perfect sound with microphone placement, preamps, and channel volumes before starting to spin knobs. Your goal is authenticity and clarity. If you want to have some “effected” sound (perhaps boost the living bejeebers out of a snare) then make sure you start from an accurate representation of the entire drum kit.

Quality

The book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” is a surprising treatise on quality among other things. There is an interesting story about bicycle assembly instructions from a foreign culture, wherein it is noted that an important step to properly building the bicycle is to start with peace of mind.

That begs the question: would doing so really produce a better bicycle? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it’s reasonable to think it would produce a better you – and a better you could produce a better bicycle and at the same time: a better experience. The same would hold with recording, with the right mindset you can expect better results.

Simply put: take the time to build up your feelings of positivity, optimism, and confidence before you start, and your performance as an engineer will be better, your experience will be better, and you can expect better results from your work.

Of course, we’re not all zen hippies here, but patience might very well be your strongest weapon against poor quality recording. And patience is easier if you are happy and enjoying what you are doing. You can have the best mics and gear available, but if you fail to take the time to make sure that you are capturing the magic the drummer is laying down then the end result will only be good if very lucky.

How to capture the moment?

Great drum recordings present one of the most complicated and challenging elements of contemporary music.

However, the most important tool for dialing in a good capture is the same as for every other instrument – your ears. Almost every iconic drum sound was recorded in a unique way, often using a brilliant approach that only works for the person capturing the recording. It’s because they are using their ears against the gear they have to create an amazing recording.

One huge challenge is when a drummer is in an isolated environment, which is the standard approach in most studios. You as an engineer cannot hear what the drummer is hearing. Even with isolated monitoring headphones, the drummer is going to play in a way that responds to the natural sound and feel of the drums, and you have to know what that is in order to capture it.

It’s critical that you have a reliable monitoring environment for both live and playback, even if headphones. If you can’t hear, you won’t know – you are just guessing. We’ll be writing another article covering quality but minimal monitoring in the near future – at least from the perspective of people new to recording.

Also, we’re going to take the position that your preamps are set to deliver signals that are between 50% and 75% of your total channel bandwidth when a drum is played as loudly as possible – not quiet but nowhere close to loud enough to start clipping.

Here is a suggested method for getting each drum (and cymbal) dialed in:

1. Set up microphone for a given drum (or drums).
2. have drummer play a single drum while recording.
3. play it back very quickly and compare the recording to the live sound.
4. move the microphone, adjust the channel volume and if necessary channel EQ to match the sound.
5. note – with multiple microphones, balancing the volumes may have the desired effect..
6. repeat from number 2 until sound is perfect for that drum.

Then, move to the next and repeat for every drum and cymbal until complete.

Then, repeat that process starting from the first drum until every drum sounds amazing solo without having to make adjustments. It is very possible that you will have to sacrifice and only “get close” on some drums to be perfect on others. That’s okay, because you still have the next step:

The Entire Kit

It’s generally helpful at this point to write down the current settings for anything that has been dialed in, and pictures of general mic placement can come in very handy in the future.

Once ready, have the drummer play a full kit run – no more than 5 seconds – starting with a focus on the low end – bass kick, floor toms – and work upward. Capture this, play back, fine tune mic positions and knobs. Repeat until the playback matches what you are hearing in the room

Different engineers will go separate directions during this part, some still using all the mics and modifying levels, and some turning all the mics off, turning on one at a time and trying to come up with a minimal set that gives the proper sound.

No matter what approach you use, we recommend eventually finding a playback mix that uses as few microphones as possible. If you can get a realistic sound from a single mic, great! If it takes 5 and two are pegged, one middle, and two almost inaudible but necessary, that’s great too. It’s clearly a test of the ears, but if you can pass a cleaner more simplistic audio set to the mixing engineer it could have a huge impact on the cleanliness of the final sound.

Also important: Make sure you limit the time between the performance and the playback to as short as possible.

Don’t forget the emotions aspect. No matter how many microphones you are using, you are looking for clarity and presence of each drum and also making sure the emotional side is coming through as well (often an EQ issue) – for example, if you are working with an energetic drummer, does the energy come through?

A Note about Cymbals

Sylvia Massy (Tool, Aerosmith, Prince) developed a technique recording drums using a Shure SM57 dynamic mic (probably because it fit) shoved into a 10 foot garden hose which circled the drums.

This approach catches the attack and removes the overwhelming brightness of the cymbals. Cymbals can be the most nightmarish aspect for a mixer – especially if the drums don’t each have individual mics. Take extra care that the cymbal levels aren’t completely masking elements of the natural drums, and as always, go for a realistic playback.

Limiting Factors

Perhaps the two biggest limiting factors are: How many mics (with stands and cables) you have, and how many inputs you have. Whether using a 4 track or a computer interface you are generally limited to a maximum amount of inputs.

Time. Lack of time is your biggest enemy in dialing in the proper sound. Even with unlimited time, there is a limit per session on how long you can be constructive. Every second that passes will increase ear fatigue and make it harder to discern sounds with clarity. The best way to overcome these issues is to know your gear and your microphones inside out – so that you can quickly make the necessary modifications to get great sound, perhaps even with time to try some “out of the box” ideas.

Full Band vs Drummer Only

Using 1 Mic

Using 2 mics

Using 3 mics

Using 4 Mics

Using As Many Mics as You Want

If you are fortunate enough to have an endless mic locker at your disposal and the ability to track 68 or more channels at once, then you can do a stunning mic configuration, micing the top and bottom and center edge of each drum and cymbal as well as near and far and high and low room placements surrounding the kit from every angle. This will give the mixer a huge amount of spatial flexibility even if the mics have a lot of bleed outside of their focused component. In the end, the mixer will probably choose only a few tracks to work with and just bring in other mics as needed for emphasis.

The same rule holds true as with any mic configuration – the playback from the recording must accurately match the sound of the drumset. Think about the final mix as standing in the room, perhaps five feet in front of the drums, and then being able to move around and put your head anywhere to get a different sound – the sound  could not be more accurate but selecting the positioning could create a huge variance in the sound that is just as real and authentic.

Gear you might use

Most of the time you are going to want an computer interface that can support at least 8 lines in. There are lots of options, but it’s also going to depend on which DAW (if any) you are using.

Get Creative

As noted above, some of the best drum recordings are because the engineer went way out of the box. Yet, it wasn’t some strange technique that made it work or we’d all be using only those techniques today. Instead, it was their ability and engineering vision that allowed them to ensure that the capture of the drums matched the awesomeness of the drummer performance.

Here are some interesting ideas you could try:

• Use a subkick under a floor tom.
• Use a pair of subkicks 8 feet away from the kit on opposite sides, 2 ft from the floor.
• Set up vocal mics in the positions where the other band members would stand (for example 8 ft away off at an angle) – these tracks can sound amazing.
• Set up a vocal mic in a pillow under the snare.
• Set up a pair of condensers pointing at the snare drum each the exact same distance from the snare, but 1 foot out from each of the drummers shoulders.
• Tape a vocal mic inside a (clean) coke can and put the coke can in the kick drum in a small cardboard box.
• Put mics as high as you can.
• Put mics as low as you can. Perhaps cover lightly with soft things. Not living things though, like kittens. That never works out when drums are involved.

Upcoming articles

• How to make your own sub-kick mic from a consumer speaker.
• Minimal Monitoring
• The value of A/B comparisons during recording.
• Dynamic mics vs. Condenser Mics
• The impact of mic placement on drums, guitars, vocals – Dynamic vs Condenser.

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