How to best record a drum set is a slightly complicated subject. Most of the difficulty lies with how many sounds you have to capture at once. A basic drum kit consists of:

• One snare drum

• Two toms (possibly three if there's a floor tom)

• One bass drum

• Two overhead cymbals

• One hi-hat cymbal

For those of you who weren't keeping score, that's up to eight different sounds to capture. And that's just for a basic kit; you might encounter far more complicated kits when you record.

How to Mike a Drum Set

For miking a drum set, there are a few different schools of thought on the subject. The first school says “more is more”: Place a microphone on as many separate parts of the drum set as you can so you can control the level and balance as you mix. Here is an example of a fairly extensive microphone setup for a basic drum set:

• One dynamic microphone for the snare drum

• Two dynamic microphones for the two toms

• One dynamic microphone for the bass drum

• Two overhead condenser microphones to pick up the two overhead cymbals and ambience of the drum set

• One dynamic microphone for the hi-hat cymbal

That's a total of seven microphones! That also means eating up seven microphone channels on your recorder. You could pair down (or sum) the inputs to fewer channels, but that would defeat the purpose of miking everything. If you have enough inputs, and you can spare doing it this way, there's nothing wrong with it. You will have great control over the sounds when you mix. Most professional studios use multiple drum channels. However, this might not suit your needs well when you consider everything else.

The other school of thought says “less is more”: Use fewer microphones for a more ambient sound. The thought behind this is that a good drummer takes care of his or her own balance, so there should be little need for extensive tweaking. This is not always true; it really depends on the drummer. At a minimum, you can get away with two overhead condenser microphones to pick up the whole drum set. Although you can get a nice sound that way, it might not be flexible enough. Many engineers like to put effects on parts of the drum set, and none on others. Snare usually gets some reverb, for instance. A simple overhead-miking setup won't give you the ability to add effects. For the most flexibility, the minimum you really should use for the basic drum set is four microphones, as follows (shown in FIGURE 11-7):

• Two overhead condenser microphones

• One dynamic microphone on the bass drum

• One dynamic microphone on the snare drum

Using that setup will give you a more open sound that you won't have to spend days mixing together. Putting the separate microphone on the snare drum allows you to tweak its sound and add reverb if necessary. Putting the separate microphone on the bass drum allows you to set the EQ on that drum if it gets too much bass and sounds “muddy.” You can get a great drum sound this way.

FIGURE 11-7

Drum-set microphone placement

Muffle

Bass drums, also commonly known as “kick” drums, are the lowest frequency in the drum set. Because the drum shell is so large, it's really easy to get an overly “thumpy” bass drum sound, no matter how hard you try to reposition the microphone to get rid of it. You can easily solve this by placing a muffle inside the bass drum to get rid of some the excess ring and thump. Towels, pillows and blankets work well in this regard. Experiment with the sound to see what you like. Some bass drums sound fine without any help, so only when you test the microphones, will you hear what needs to be done.

Tune Up!

Tune your drumheads. Better yet, replace them with new ones, and then tune them before a recording. New drum heads sound great and record well. There are many books available on this subject, just check out your local bookstore or music shop for information on proper drum tuning. Having a properly tuned drum set can make all the difference in the world.