Drum Miking Techniques: How to Mic Drums for Recording

How to mic drums for recording header

Miking drums is almost a โ€œlost artโ€ in the time of 40GB drum sample libraries, electronic music, and home music production. Today, starting out making music with drum samples doesnโ€™t require knowing how to mic drums. But those of you who want to take it up a notch are getting drum kits and drum mic kits for their home or project studio. Although drum samples make everything easier and more consistent, they also tend to take away from the personalization of both the band and the people behind the production.

Table of Contents

Without getting too much into the โ€œback in my dayโ€ spiels, knowing how to mic a drum set is an important topic, and this guide brings together research and experience to give you more ideas to work off of in your exploration of audio engineering.

Whether you only have one mic or have an entire locker full of vintage mics, going back to the basics and reinforcing fundamental knowledge will give you a sort of โ€œhome pointโ€ when exploring drum recording techniques or coming up with new ones. This will help achieve a more natural sound when miking drums.

How to Mic Drums Overview: Mic selection, Polar Pattern Based Positioning and Mounting

Understanding the tools at hand will help you make better decisions down the line, especially when you know how to compensate for a lack of one thing. Mic placement is key to capturing the right drum sound in any scenario. The mic setup for drums starts with what you have or what you plan to get. It is important to know every detail of the drum microphones you have or will have, especially the difference between dynamic mics and condenser microphones.

The first is mic type. Some mics are more obviously labeled for their purposes, like a kick drum mic, but others are more versatile. Knowing your micsโ€™ frequency response allows you to match them to the appropriate sound source. Understanding how to mic a kick drum can lend itself to other applications. For example, a โ€œkickโ€ mic can sometimes be used for the floor tom or even other drums depending on the sound of the kit. A dynamic mic is often used in close proximity to high SPL sources like shells, while condenser mics are often used as overhead microphones.

Next, become familiar with your micsโ€™ polar patterns. This will influence how you position them around your drum kit. Cardioid patterns tend to capture sound in front of the mic, so when micing a snare drum, for instance, point the capsule toward where you want the sound to be picked up. Adjusting the angle can bring out more snare sound or resonance. Using a snare mic for this part of the kit ensures a more defined snare drum recording.

Lastly, mounting is crucial for drum mic setup. Some mics can be clipped onto the drum kit, making miking drums easier but increasing mic bleed and crosstalk. Alternatively, using Mic Stands offers more control over placement and reduces bleed from other parts of the kit, especially with cymbals.

Now, if you want to know the answer to how many mics to record drums, read on.

How to Record Drums With One Mic โ€“ Large Diaphragm Condensers

Just because you have only one mic doesnโ€™t mean you have to compromise your recording quality. While not the best for modern rock and metal, for indie, classic rock, jazz, and blues, 1 mic for drums is adequate so long as you use a great large diaphragm condenser microphone. The most optimal spot for a single mic is directly in front of the kit, elevated at least 1 foot higher than the tallest cymbal and pointing toward the snare. This ensures that the whole drum kit is captured. To understand how to mic a kick drum and how to get more bass drum sound, just move the mic down and slightly closer. Adjusting mic placement for a single mic setup can make all the difference in capturing a natural drum kit sound.

How to Mic Drums With 1 Mic

We Recommend These Large Diaphragm Condenser Mics:

In this recording entitled โ€œFelizโ€, I miked up the drums using this technique and recorded the other instruments later. This track is a garage/indie track with a late 60โ€™s vibe. To give the mono guitar track more dimension, I added a room reverb. I also employed using an 1176 style compressor to give it a bit of grit appropriate to the vibe of the track. Overall, this track was a challenge I undertook to see how fast we could write and record drums and have it played on the radio. From writing to radio took us 6 hours. Donโ€™t underestimate the power of simplicity!

How to Record Drums With Two Mics โ€“ Large and/or Small Diaphragm Condensers (Matched Pairs)

Two mics enable you to do either a stereo drum mic setup version of the technique described above if you have a matched pair or a Kick drum/Front mic + Over Shoulder/Overhead mic if you have mismatched mics. Mismatched mics are not optimal for stereo recordings because the stereo field will be compromised with the difference between frequency and transient response. Using two overhead mics or a stereo pair helps capture a more balanced drum sound across the kit.

How to Mic Drums With 2 Mics

How to Record Drums with Three and Four Drum Mic Techniques โ€“ Glyn Johns Method for Vintage Sounding Drums

Glyn Johns has produced and/or engineered with such artists as Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, the Beatles (during the Get Back Sessions), The Who, Eagles, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and more. This is a man who knows how to mic drums. His signature drum miking technique results in a natural-sounding drum kit that can be tweaked to take in more or less of the room the drums are in. While he usually uses three mics, this technique can be used with four, including a dedicated kick drum mic and snare microphone.

The method revolves around a mono overhead mic placed above the drummer, with another mic beside the floor tom with the same distance to the drummer as the overhead mic. The height of the overhead mics determines how much room sound gets captured.

How to Mic Drums With 3 Mics

The placement of the next mics is where variations can start to be used. For a three drum mic setup, Johns uses a large diaphragm condenser mic placed in front of the kit, much like the mono miking drum technique but placed closer to the kick drum since most of the tone will come from the overhead and side mics. If more kick drum is desired, you can place the front mic lower and closer to the front head of the kick. Not too close though, like putting the mic inside the bass drum.

The four mic variant involves a close-miked snare and close-miked kick. This is the method more commonly used today since it gives more impact from the kick and snare.

How to Mic Drums With 4 Mics

Here is an example of the method:

YouTube video

How to Record Drums with Five Drum Mic Techniques โ€“ Using Duplicate Tom Mic Tracks for Cymbals for Small Venue Recordings

Five mic kits usually come with mics for the shells only. Companies forgo the need for overhead mics for small venues since cymbals are already loud on their own. However, if you chance upon a live recording with just the shell mics, you can still come up with an overhead mic track for your mix.

What you can do is to duplicate the rack and floor tom mics and apply a high-pass filter (low cut) up to 2kHz, removing all the low frequencies from the duplicates. The important part here is to hard pan them left and right and not apply any compression to preserve the bleed of the cymbal sound to the tom mics. To process the tom mics then, you need to apply a high cut on the original tom tracks (so as not to conflict with our โ€œcymbalโ€ tracks). Put the high cut LAST in the chain after all your processing. This results in a faux-overhead (or what I like to call Faux-verheads) from 5 drum mic setups, as can be heard on this recording I did a few years ago of a live band. While there is an overhead mic on the stage, due to a faulty cable or if it got damaged during the bandโ€™s performance, no signal went through to the recorder I was using, so when I came to mixing, I had to get creative. It doesnโ€™t sound as brilliant as dedicated cymbal mics, but they do an adequate job. Just be sure to check your phase.

How to Mic Drums With 5 Mics
YouTube video

How to Record Drums with Six and Seven Drum Mic Techniques โ€“ Miking Drums with Two and Three Toms

This is what most people would recognize as โ€œstandard,โ€ with a Kick, Snare, Rack 1, Rack 2 (optional), Floor Tom, and two Overhead Mics. Most recording studios have this setup as a basic starting point.

The only thing that varies here is the placement of the overhead mics. You now have several options, but the most common three are X-Y, Near Coincident/ORTF, and spaced pair.

X-Y Miking or Blumlein Miking (after Alan Blumlein, an engineer for EMI who invented the technique in 1931) has both capsules of the overhead microphones stacked directly on top of each other at a 90-degree angle and placed in the center of the kit. This results in a cohesive drum sound, with less chance of phase issues between the mics.

Near Coincident/NOS and ORTF miking have both mics facing away from each other at either a 90-degree angle, 12โ€ณ apart (Near Coincident/NOS), or a 110-degree angle and 7โ€ณ apart (ORTF). NOS stands for Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (Dutch Broadcast Foundation), while ORTF stands for Office de Radiodiffusion Tรฉlรฉvision Franรงaise at Radio France.

To choose between NOS and ORTF miking techniques depends on how large or wide your drum kit setup is. NOS tends to sound better with smaller kits because of the tighter angle, while ORTF favors larger kits or capturing better room acoustics.

How to Mic Drums With 6 Mics

Lastly, spaced pair drum miking is probably the most common but often misplaced miking technique for drums. I say misplaced because haphazardly putting overhead mics without taking into consideration their distance from each other and the floor introduces phase issues. There are several schools of thought with regard to miking drums in a spaced pair setup, but I prefer two approaches that I call the Arch and the Floor method.

Stereo PickupPolar Pattern
Microphone Positions
X-YBoth CardioidAxes of Maximum Response at 90ยฐ. Spaced Coincident.
X-Y Stereo Miking Technique
ORTFBoth CardioidAxes of Maximum Response at 110ยฐ. Spaced near Coincident ~ 7″.ORTF Stereo Miking Technique
NOSBoth CardioidAxes of Maximum Response at 90ยฐ. Spaced near Coincident ~ 12″.NOS Stereo Miking Technique
SpacedBoth either Cardioid or OmnidirectionalSet at any angle. Spaced from 3′ to 10′.
Spaced Stereo Miking Technique

See image credits below

For the Arch method, I get a piece of string and tape it to the right edge of the snare and pull the string to a space above the center of the hi-hat, crash, and rack tom. This is where you will place the first mic. For the second mic, I use the same string and place it above the spot between the ride and the floor tom. Both mics point to the snare drum. This results in a tight overhead sound with lots of snare sound coming through. This drum mic setup is particularly useful when trying to capture the snare’s punch in the overall drum miking configuration.

If I need more cymbals, I use the Floor method. I still use string and tape it to the floor in between the hi-hat and the left-hand side crash. For the right-hand side mic, I use the same length string and place the mic above the spot between the outer rim of the tom and the ride. Mic height here is dependent on how much of the room sound you want to capture. The higher the mics, the more room gets captured. This method works great for miking drums when you need an open, natural sound in a larger space.

There are literally an infinite number of possibilities you can do with overhead mics, but so far these are the ones that are my go-toโ€™s.

How to Mic Drums With 7 Mics

We Recommend These Drum Mic Kits:

How to Record Drums with 8 Mics โ€“ Capturing the Kitโ€™s Nuances Including a Hi-hat Mic

What to do with an extra mic? You can either establish a mono room mic or use it as a drum hi-hat mic. For tighter-sounding drums, use a drum hi-hat mic to capture the nuances of the playing. This is useful for genres like funk, where hi-hat play is common. For a bigger overall sound, a mono room mic is captured at the end of the room, then processed with a little reverb during mixing, glues the sound of the entire kit, and gives life to recordings that will eventually be layered with samples. It also keeps the drums from sounding too โ€œdryโ€ after gating the shells to minimize bleed. You can also experiment with using small diaphragm condenser mics for hi-hats for greater detail in your drum sound.

How to Mic Drums With 8 Mics

Beyond Eight Mics: Room Mics and Experimental Approaches

So, you have a ton of mics. What to do then?

Other things you can do beyond this are utilizing a stereo room mic or more. Iโ€™ve mixed projects with as many as five room mics with close and far placements, including a mono room mic. These are just for options, or you can get creative with how to mic drums and use room mics during intros to make the drums sound distant.

One trick I learned from Audio Engineer Kurt Ballou is to leave the room mics on after recording drums, place guitar amps and bass amps as though it were a live performance in the room, and record the rest of the instruments close-miked with room mics. Then, you can mix in the room mic sounds for all instruments to glue the entire track together subtly. Itโ€™s a bit more complicated and experimental, but I do encourage you to try it when you have the resources (and time!). Doing this method requires an acoustic-treated room complete with acoustic panels, bass traps, and DIY acoustic panels. Similar principles are used in Guitar Micing.

Another alternative approach is to use electronic drum kits, which can now be had for cheap. With these, you wonโ€™t even have to worry about mic placement and the complexities of miking drums for recording. The downside is that they won’t have the nuances and sound of a miked acoustic drum kit.

Conclusion

So much can be done with drum microphones, whether you have just one or twenty. In the end, there are no rules when it comes to knowing how to mic drums (after I said all that!), but you have to learn the rules in order to understand what breaking them does to your sound. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnโ€™t, but knowing guidelines and standards lets you know how much they deviate from the norm and helps you understand things better when you experiment, especially when you encounter different drum setups. If you don’t get it the first time, keep trying to get the good, balanced sound that you want.

If you have any questions about how to set up drum mics and mixer or about recording drums, just ask below, and Iโ€™ll try to help.

Happy Miking!

About the Author and Contributors
Lead Author & Researcher
Contributors

Jason Horton: Illustration.
Alexander Briones: Editing.

Media / Image Credit

Main/Top Image: Created by Gearank.com

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *