THE GREAT, ELUSIVE DRUM SOUND
By George Petersen
It’s funny, I suppose, but getting a great drum sound still seems so difficult for many recordists. Of course, you’re waaaaaay ahead of the game if you start with a great sounding kit in a great room (not too dead, not too lively) driven by a master player who actually understands performance dynamics.
Sure, you can always close-mic the kit and (sort of) eliminate the effects of a miserable acoustical space, but working in a small, low-ceiling box can be a recipe for disaster. Odd room reflections, comb filtering and room nodes can still play havoc with your great sound, even when your miking is up close and personal.
In any case, you gotta have the right mics–not necessarily the most expensive mics–but the WRONG mics are a recipe for disaster. Bad mics sound bad and no amount of EQ or reverb is gonna change that. You don’t need a mic on each drum–in fact you can get a great sound with two decent overheads and a kick mic, although few dare to bare their souls with so few transducers. Sometimes, less is more.
Snare mics don’t have to be pricey—just able to withstand lots of SPLs and occasional hits by a wild drummer. To add some spice, you can always add an mic to catch the snare rattles from the underside. You may—although not always—need to put the lower mic out of phase (polarity) with the top mic. Listen to both and decide what sounds best. The under mic is sometimes a good place to try a cheap condenser that has a harsh, raspy sound. Save your good condensers for overheads, toms and hi-hat.
One trick I like using is combining a sampled kick (triggered from a Roland KD-7 pad) with an acoustic kit. Usually the whole idea of a kick sound is ending up with something that’s consistent and samples are just the thing. This way, the kick doesn’t bleed into the overheads (and vice-versa) and doesn’t create snare buzz. The effect is a cleaner sound and if you later want to edit some kick notes, it’s much easier…
STEELY KICK
I once heard Roger Nichols rave about using an old, old E-V 664 for his 1970s Steely Dan kick sound. Eventually I bought a used one to see what the fuss was and picked up one of these chrome, pistol grip, rayguns for $25 at a local flea market. On a 22″ rock kick, it delivered that exact dry thud you hear on “Time Out of Mind.” Switching to a very different sounding, double head 18″ jazz kick, the mic’s sound was identical. Evidently, the signal this mic puts out is the sound of the diaphragm bottoming out due to the excessive SPLs, resulting a dry thud under any conditions. That’s not the sound I always want, but hey, for $25, it’s another useable addition for the mic locker.
THE SM57 WARNING
Some guy read something in Mix about using a Shure SM57 for snare and went to buy one, but the store only carried something called an SM57LC. The guy behind the counter wasn’t much help and called another store in the chain to see if they had any “original” SM57 mics. They also only stocked the SM57LC variant, so the customer left. The next day I get an e-mail from the customer, wondering whether the LC version sounded that much different from the original. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him that the LC suffix on the outside of the mic box simply meant “less cable.”
When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Check ‘em out at www.jenpet.com.
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Got any drum miking tips/stories to share?
CLICK ON THE “COMMENTS” BUG BELOW TO READ/LEAVE COMMENTS…
September 27th, 2006 @ 1:54 am
“The right tool for the right kind of job” phrase is not always the rule when it comes to recording, especially for drums, some styles in music demand for rich pumping drums with dry snare and round kicks; other styles have a rich snare and a modest kick, therefore we can see that it definitely depends on which kind of sound we want to hear in the end. Such premise will lead us to think about what mic technique or positioning to use.
Usually, and I still don’t understand why, some people tend to over-mic drum sets, when really, like George says, sometimes all you need is two overheads that create the stereo image, and a kick… But I have seen people almost placing one mic per instrument on the drum set, i.e. once I saw a recording engineer doing this when recording a reggae drum session, micking everything individually, and to do so I saw him use a bunch of Neumanns and Sennheisers. The worst part of it was when I heard the drummer: The man was wild–pity the mics! He should have been a punk rock drummer as opposed to a reggae kind of man, no dynamics/no control, seven tracks full of peaking and imbalance. It was a mess: Marley would have sobbed.
With so much technology, I have observed that currently a lot of music production is done using a lot of the nice sample media collections, drum loops, which by the way get boring after some time; With not much of an investment, you can get greatly recorded drum sets and run them on the sampler of choice, you can use Native Instruments Battery, IK Multimedia SampleTank, Steinberg Halion, Propellerheads Reason, and a huge list of others; but there is an ingredient that most producers forget about when using the sample media and this my friends, is: dynamics. All I hear is invariable static uncreative drum lines with no character. I believe it’s okay to use some sample media on replacing a kick, or enhancing a snare or even cymbals, but relying completely on sampler, I’m not quite sure that’s completely acceptable, for most music unless it’s something like techno which by the way has never required musicians at all.
I personally enjoy miking a drum allowing the room to give its resonance, I usually place the two overheads 7’ or 8’ above the set, I place one mic on the snare altitude between the hats and the toms to add a little richness to the snare, toms and hat. One mic–maybe 1.5’ or 2’ away from the kick. This usually gives a nice result, but beware of the drummer, that is what counts the most!
September 27th, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
Question? Is the SM58 not the SM57 with the steel mesh grill taken off? I’ve heard they are the same mic inside.
November 7th, 2006 @ 1:07 am
I’ve been wondering if the problem with commercial music (rock and country) is from the recording mix or is it that the recording musician’s drummers need to be throttled back so that the virtues of the music that is recorded can be heard. At first I’ve thought it was in the mix. Perhaps the level of the drums and particularly the cymbals too loud, perhaps some echo making them sound abrasive, too much treble maybe. But the more I think about it, I believe it’s the way the drums are played, probably too much cymbals with their over all sustain that clutters the sound spectrum making the vocals and melody more difficult to discern. Is this a result of the Phil Specter’s “Wall of Sound”?
Does anyone think we’ll ever see a return to simpler more uncluttered drums in music?
I’m a real music fan but it has been real frustrating to miss what is probably some great music.
I appreciate any comments, Thank you
Chuck Taylor
November 7th, 2006 @ 9:29 am
I apologize for barging in here with the above question. I don’t mean any disrespect for the work that you do. I know you that you have to be highlly skilled and that mixing audio is an art form that most could not do. Your work is under appreciated and not even known by the masses that enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Sincerely,
Chuck Taylor