Microphone Placement for Acoustic Drums

In the early days of rock recording the entire drum kit was often recorded using a single microphone placed approximately two drumsticks above the snare drum. If you only have one mic for the entire kit that’s as good a place as any! Back when rock and roll was born, music was recorded in mono. A few years and some technical advancements later we had stereo and multitrack recording. This allowed for three microphones on the rum kit. One mic in the kick drum and two microphones over the drum kit to capture a stereo image. This is referred to today as an inverted pyramid technique. It’s still a very good way to capture the sound of a drum kit especially if you’re looking for an ambient sounding kit. However for this technique to give you professional sounding results you have to have two things.

First you have to have a well maintained well tuned drum kit and second you have to have a very good drummer. You need the kind of drummer that will sit behind the kit and play a while, listen to the playback and then adjust their playing style and the way he or she attacks the kit to suit the recording. You need to get the balance of the kit pretty much perfect because you won’t have much flexibility to balance the sounds of the kit later on in the mix.

This is why discreet or semi discreet mic placement techniques are more widely used. This involves more microphones. In this type of setup you have microphones in kick drum, on the snare drum, on each tom and a pair of overheads. Sometimes the hi hat has it’s own mic sometimes not depending on the style of music. Reggae music would most certainly call for a hi hat mic where blues, or heavy rock might not. This is because the sound from the hi hat will leak into the snare drum mic.

If that isn’t enough microphones for you I have done sessions in professional studios where there were microphones both above and below the toms and the snare drum, in front of and inside the kick drum, on the hi hat, two more microphones over the kit and as many as six additional microphones placed elsewhere in the room! This is overkill, but when you have the gear to do it why not try it! Although the drums did sound amazing in the finished product I have had equally amazing results with far fewer microphones.

Microphone Placement for Electric Guitars

I will include some alternate mic placements in the blog. For now I will just give you the standard tried and true method for mic placement on a guitar amp. You should place the mic about one inch from the speaker cone itself about halfway between the dust cap in the center and the outer edge of the speaker cone. By moving it closer to the dust cap you will get more treble. Moving the microphone closer to the edge of the speaker will give you more bass.

Having said this, with the wide array of direct recording devices out there for a guitar you may decide not to use a microphone on a physical combo amplifier or speaker cabinet. These devices are pretty much plug and play.

Recording options for bass guitars

There are two ways to record bass guitars. You can either place a microphone on the speaker cabinet, or use some sort of direct input. Many bass guitar amplifiers have a direct recording output so you can use that in addition to or instead of putting a mic on the speaker. Some bass amplifiers have a built in direct box that allows you to to connect your amp to your recording equipment with a microphone cable.