Microphone Placement for Acoustic
Drums
14/07/09 01:46 Filed in:
Drums
| Music Production
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.
Tags: Drums
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