Microphone Choice & Placement

Jonah Altrove: I’ve got an old, beat-up IEM system that I can patch into my solo bus outputs and listen to the actual drum sound right at the source in my ears. This allows me to make placement adjustments in real time while hearing exactly what the mic hears, not the overall acoustic sound from the kit. That makes it much easier to find the exact placement I’m looking for. I wish I could take credit for this one, but I got the idea from Dave Rat.

If it’s genre-appropriate, I use underhead rather than overhead mics on the cymbals. This greatly reduces the bleed from the rest of the kit and gives a tighter, more focused sound. It does generally require more inputs, but I find this doesn’t cause a headroom issue because the closer placement means I need less gain at the console.

Dave Natale: From time to time I try new mics, but for the most part I almost always use the same ones on all kits. The lineup includes:

Kick – beyerdynamic M88
Snare Top & Bottom – Shure SM57
Toms – Sennheiser 409
Hi-Hat – Neumann KM184
Overheads – AKG C314
Ride Cymbal – Neumann KM184

Because I never use compressors, my drum sound is all about EQ to shape the sound into a particular thing that fits within the mix and does not occupy any space at all where it has no business. I EQ out all of what I refer to as unnecessary frequencies for clarity and punch. This is usually a lot of mid and low mid.

Next, I add some attack in with the high EQ. I will also patch a noise gate on kick drums and all toms, just in case. If I use it at all, it’s primarily to keep the drums from ringing between songs.

This is a pretty basic, no-frills approach, which especially pays off when there’s very little gear to work with. All consoles have EQ, so I’m good to go in that regard, and in fact, could probably survive with just EQ alone, but the gates do help out in certain instances.

Samantha Potter: My approach is wholly dependent on the genre of music I’m mixing. When it’s a jazz group, I rely heavily on an overhead mic and then sprinkle in tom and a hi-hat as needed, ignoring the kick drum almost entirely. If it’s an R&B or funk group, the drums play a much larger role in the overall amplification.

I’ve come to really love and appreciate an Audix D6 suspended inside the kick drum. It gives me a clean punch and a deep low end without feeling wobbly. I like the kick to be the lowest frequency range with bass guitar sitting just above it. A 4 or 5 dB bump at 60 Hz gives that chest-thump that gets people dancing. When necessary, I do a small bump at 1 kHz to push the pedal head through.

Next is snare, where an SM57 always does the trick. I like a slight crack to my snare so I’ll use an HPF up to about 200 Hz, and a few dB extra at 1 kHz to get that rim/crack. Then I follow-up with supplemental mics on things like overhead and toms. Those mics are there and present but aren’t first on my list to get close to perfect.

In some gigs, resources are low and you do with what you have. If I have nothing else, I will request a D6 for the kick and a large-diaphragm condenser for an overhead. Between these two mics, a high-pass filter, and some careful gain staging, I can get a beautiful full drum sound.

I think a lot of engineers (particularly the new ones) want to rely too heavily on onboard processing, fancy plugins and expensive equipment. If you can get a great drum mix out of the basics, then you know you’ve got the skills.

Some EQ and some compression/gating work will take you so much further than $500 mics on every piece of the kit. Cut the mud out of the kick, bring the sparkle to the cymbals. I compress the kick just a hair with a 6 millisecond (ms) attack, and perhaps 5 dB of reduction and a fast release. Balance between these two mics and you should be good to go.

Nicholas Radina: Extra tip – How to mic timbales! The sides of the drum are essential for Salsa music (think of this like a hi-hat). The rhythmic pattern played on the sides (cascara) can be mixed quickly with a single mic below pointing up between the two drums.

Miking under each drum is also a solid solution. Consider high ratio compression to grab timbale hits (“abanico”) in order not to overpower the cascara. A single overhead/bell mic can also be quite effective. If the sound lacks low end, play with the polarity of the underneath mics relative to the overhead.