Mics to capture NATURAL drum sound

R

Ricky_Bobby

Junior Member
Hello folks!

Just wanted to see if anyone can tell me if standard Shure and Audio technica mics will capture the natural sound of drums? I want to record in the future and have studio quality but as of right now i want to be able to pick up the resonance which is usually filtered out in a "recording" I am finally making progress with tuning and i love the way the drums sing and i would like to record it.


Thanks for the advice... id hate to drop $1,000 to find out i bought the wrong gear.
 
It's not so much buying the wrong gear, but working with what you have. Years ago there was an artist (I forget his name) who used a single Shure SM57 to record an entire project that garnered him several awards and a gold record. He understood what he had, and how to maximize its use to get his results.

If you're looking to capture the natural drum sound, alot of that natural sound is dependent on the room you're in. If it's a dead room, or the drums are dead, you'll be adding EQ and reverb to make it sound lively. If, like John Bonham on "When the Levee Breaks", you're in a giant stair well, than you need to be able to capture that sound that you actually hear.

I have quite a few mics lying around here, and I tend to play my bass drum with a non-ported front head. At minimum, for me to get a natural sound out of my kit, I would position an AKG P120 condenser mic about 12-inches off the ground and about two feet in front of my bass drum. And another AKG P120 condenser mic on a boom stand, centered over the kit, about two-and-half-drumstick-lengths up from the snare drum.

In reality, I'd probably use two mics overhead and pan one hard left and the other hard-right to get a stereo image because that's naturally what's happening on the kit when you play a tom roll - it's traveling from one side to the other.

Can you do this with cheap mics? Yes. In fact, my AKG's are cheap mics. Get yourself three mics and a USB audio interface that can handle up to four mics at one time and start working it out. You can do it!
 
Matt Bo Eder said:
It's not so much buying the wrong gear, but working with what you have. Years ago there was an artist (I forget his name) who used a single Shure SM57 to record an entire project that garnered him several awards and a gold record. He understood what he had, and how to maximize its use to get his results.

If you're looking to capture the natural drum sound, alot of that natural sound is dependent on the room you're in. If it's a dead room, or the drums are dead, you'll be adding EQ and reverb to make it sound lively. If, like John Bonham on "When the Levee Breaks", you're in a giant stair well, than you need to be able to capture that sound that you actually hear.

I have quite a few mics lying around here, and I tend to play my bass drum with a non-ported front head. At minimum, for me to get a natural sound out of my kit, I would position an AKG P120 condenser mic about 12-inches off the ground and about two feet in front of my bass drum. And another AKG P120 condenser mic on a boom stand, centered over the kit, about two-and-half-drumstick-lengths up from the snare drum.

In reality, I'd probably use two mics overhead and pan one hard left and the other hard-right to get a stereo image because that's naturally what's happening on the kit when you play a tom roll - it's traveling from one side to the other.

Can you do this with cheap mics? Yes. In fact, my AKG's are cheap mics. Get yourself three mics and a USB audio interface that can handle up to four mics at one time and start working it out. You can do it!
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Thank you, i understand better now.
 
Ricky_Bobby said:
Perfect! - Everything i have seen till this point was always heavily eq'd or had effects added. I wanted to see examples that were more natural.

Thanks
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Bo has it right. It begins with an LDC to grab the ambient sound, two for stereo. Add a BD mic to add some bottom. Add one dynamic if you want a bit of control over another instrument you're featuring (snare).

A popular alternative is to mic everything. Here's what that sounds like raw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UFVRheNJlo . The neat thing about this config is that you can treat the instruments individually.

When you go to a real recording studio, they'll typically do both.
 
Ricky_Bobby said:
Hello folks!

Just wanted to see if anyone can tell me if standard Shure and Audio technica mics will capture the natural sound of drums? I want to record in the future and have studio quality but as of right now i want to be able to pick up the resonance which is usually filtered out in a "recording" I am finally making progress with tuning and i love the way the drums sing and i would like to record it.


Thanks for the advice... id hate to drop $1,000 to find out i bought the wrong gear.
Click to expand...

This is an interesting thread, though my budget is much less. Though, I have been thinking about this. Ideally, I want to record not only natural drums but also natural sound effects rain sticks, whistles etc. much in the vein of the stereo exotica lounge music.

There are many stereo recording techniques, binaural, matched pair, axial. My inclination is to get a four channel recordear with two directional condenser mics, one cartiod/directional condenser(I already have) and a high pressure kick mic.

This way I will be able to record four tracks in various stereo and isolation configurations. Ultimately the limitation is on the stereo side, where you have only two channels.

Now if I can just find the time to do all the mixing.
 
As a semi-trained audio engineer myself, think of the microphone as your ear.

Typically, a drumset has a couple of overheads, and close mics on several, if not all, the drums.

When you listen to live drums, are your ears ever 3 feet above the drums? Do you ever listen to a drummer with your ear 3 inches from the rack tom? No. This is not a natural sound. Its a good sound, sure, but you're asking for natural.

Its not so much about the mic, but mic placement.

Stereo pair in the room about 10 feet or so in front of the drummer. *That's* the natural drum sound.

If you had your choice of mics, I'd go with a ribbon for the more natural sound. You could go with condensers for a bit more definition, but either way, its the placement that's important.
 
Seafroggys said:
As a semi-trained audio engineer myself, think of the microphone as your ear.

Typically, a drumset has a couple of overheads, and close mics on several, if not all, the drums.

When you listen to live drums, are your ears ever 3 feet above the drums? Do you ever listen to a drummer with your ear 3 inches from the rack tom? No. This is not a natural sound. Its a good sound, sure, but you're asking for natural.

Its not so much about the mic, but mic placement.

Stereo pair in the room about 10 feet or so in front of the drummer. *That's* the natural drum sound.

If you had your choice of mics, I'd go with a ribbon for the more natural sound. You could go with condensers for a bit more definition, but either way, its the placement that's important.
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It isn't natural, but if you send the recording through a stero and stand 10-20 feet away, your ear will hear a fairly natural sound. Audiophiles really get into trying to record then reproduce the sound as it was recorded. Others, want something that sounds nice in ear buds, which of course sound horribly unnatural with an isolation mic. However for professional sound recorders isolation is just a professional convenience, they can not afford to mess around with stereo and balancing mic bleed.
 
Basic ambience from overheads, maybe a room mic is the natural drum sound.

We add snare mics because that's often needed in today's styles, to get the right dynamics or separate processing. Same goes for the other mics. We use them a lot today, but it's not essential.

A couple of overheads and well placed BD mic should do it. For certain styles, even just one condenser is enough.

You don't need super expensive mics. Check out some of Simon Phillips's stuff on youtube. He uses all Shure stuff.

What will make a big difference is at least some semi-decent mic pres.

Watch the levels and also understand that unless you're blessed with the perfect room for exactly what you're doing, then at least a bit of the right reverb doesn't hurt anything.
 
SmoothOperator said:
However for professional sound recorders isolation is just a professional convenience, they can not afford to mess around with stereo and balancing mic bleed.
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Isolation mic'ing also brings in another art form, in that the producer and engineer can give the individual instruments treatment.

I'm trying to think of a recent example where I thought the treatment was really cool.... This one comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoC-tSER6I0

While the video has a transparent kit, we can all tell that it's likely an old Ludwig Club and Supra.
 
I've been using a setup a bit similar to Matt's with 2 condensers. One about 20" off the ground horizontally and slightly to the left of center of the bass drum. The other about 36" - 40" up to the right and also horizontal. I vary the distance away from the drums at times depending on what and how loud or soft I'm playing Sounds pretty natural and good considering the modest setup.

The mics are inexpensive as well, $100 a pop Audio Technicas.


01-2-mics.jpg
 
You guys are awesome... seriously... i have learned so much in the last two weeks and i have been introduced to a lot of cool new music just from recommendations

Thank you
 
I'm a drummer and an engineer, and agree with most of what's already been mentioned. There are many ways to record drums, but no one has yet mentioned phase. When using multiple mics at different distances from the drums, be careful to check the phase of your mics. Out of phase mics will result in a thin sound. Pay particular attention to your overhead mics, especially if you're using a spaced pair. Also, different mics offer different off-axis response, so be careful in placing them. Sometimes moving them an inch makes a big difference in the sound.

I like to record my drums so the recording sounds like the drums sound to me when I'm playing, but some people prefer to record them as they sound from out front of the kit. Experiment, because a lot of the sound comes from the room.

I also agree that ribbon mics tend to have a more natural sound, and if you are limited to 3 or 4 mics, a pair of ribbons, with a kick drum mic and snare mic can give a very natural sound. Just be aware that most ribbon mics are a figure 8 pattern, so they will pick up equally from both the front and back, and reject most sound from the sides. If your room doesn't sound good (flutter echoes, and standing waves), ribbons might not be the best choice. They also tend to have a pronounced proximity effect, boosting the low end.

For snare mics, a Shure Sm57 or Audix i5 is commonly used in pro studios and are around $100. For a kick mic, a large diaphragm dynamic mic, like an Audix D6 or EV ND868 works well and sell for less than $200. Large diaphragm condensers make great overheads, but some people prefer small diaphragm condensers. In my home studio I've lately been using a pair of SE Electronics SE-1a mics that I bought for less than $200 including a stereo bar, and they produce a nice three dimensional image with great transient response.
 
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aspenleaf said:
There are many ways to record drums, but no one has yet mentioned phase. When using multiple mics at different distances from the drums, be careful to check the phase of your mics. Out of phase mics will result in a thin sound. Pay particular attention to your overhead mics, especially if you're using a spaced pair. Also, different mics offer different off-axis response, so be careful in placing them
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Since you brought it up....

With my 4 mic setup, My stereo spaced pair phase is handled by virtue of equidistance. For kick and snare, I compensate by way of the phase switch in my DAW.

My question is... In my current situation, is there any benefit in taking the time to match the phase via mic position compared to matching phase via a button in my DAW?
 
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If you can have someone play the drums while you place the mics, move them until you find the best placement for each mic, monitoring through isolation headphones in mono.

Because I'm usually working alone in my home studio, I measure the distance of each overhead to the kick drum, and use the phase buttons on the DAW channels on the other mics, checking to see which setting gives the fullest sound. In my experience it's not really practical to get the kick, snare and tom mics in phase by distance, but if you could it would probably sound better than a simple 180 degree shift. I have experimented with manually aligning the individual recorded drum tracks in the DAW, but didn't hear a significant difference between that and using the phase button.
 
aspenleaf said:
If you can have someone play the drums while you place the mics, move them until you find the best placement for each mic, monitoring through isolation headphones in mono.

Because I'm usually working alone in my home studio, I measure the distance of each overhead to the kick drum, and use the phase buttons on the DAW channels on the other mics, checking to see which setting gives the fullest sound. In my experience it's not really practical to get the kick, snare and tom mics in phase by distance, but if you could it would probably sound better than a simple 180 degree shift. I have experimented with manually aligning the individual recorded drum tracks in the DAW, but didn't hear a significant difference between that and using the phase button.
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OMG, You're not allowed to leave.... ever!

In situations where I record, flip phase on the BD back and forth, and cannot hear which side is the correct one... Is it worthwhile to visually zoom into the wave forms and see if the up/down/up/down patterns match? I imagine that if an overhead waveform goes above the horizon while the BD mic goes below, they're out of phase. Or is this technique the audio equivalent of pushing rope?
 
That's what I was referring to by manually time aligning the waveforms in the DAW. When checking your phase, be sure to monitor in mono. Often times the phase will sound OK in stereo, but as soon as you collapse the stereo image to mono, an out of phase signal will sound thin and lack low end. Cymbals will sometimes sound thin and brittle with an unnatural decay.

I send all of my individual drum tracks to a stereo drum bus and set the bus to mono to check phase. Start with your overheads soloed and check phase, then add each individual track, checking phase with the overheads. On my own kit, I usually use a subkick mic and a U47 clone tube mic on the unported resonant head along with a batter side EV ND868 large diaphragm dynamic, setting up a kick tunnel on the resonant side using a moving blanket supported by mic stands. Usually one or more of the kick mics will be out of phase with the overheads. If you're confident in your monitors or headphones and you don't hear a difference when flipping the phase on either the preamp as you are tracking, or the DAW phase button on the individual mic recorded track, then the phase may be off by more or less than 180 degrees and you might want to experiment by manually time aligning the track in the DAW, checking it against the kick waveform from the overheads.
 
Check out Earthworks mics.

I've been using them for quite a while now.
They are best when used minimally- often I'll just mic the bass drum and put up some stereo overheads.

Close miking is done to mitigate some of the room sound- the Earthworks approach included much more of the room- so if the room isn't optimal then you might not be happy.
 
Ricky_Bobby said:
Perfect! - Everything i have seen till this point was always heavily eq'd or had effects added.
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You might like to listen through some examples here http://www.gurudrums.co.uk/videos We've been recording our honest capture videos over the last 4 years. All feature drums without audio enhancement / effects - this year in full music settings, earlier years mostly solo drums.


gwetschdwummer said:
Check out Earthworks mics.

They are best when used minimally- often I'll just mic the bass drum and put up some stereo overheads.
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I love them, and agree on best used minimally. They're too high end for the purposes of our recordings, but I might do a recording for comparison at the next sessions.
 
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