Drum Micing (Part III)

Here’s the last of three parts where we look at the basics of micing a drum set for recording.  We’ve covered the overhead mics, snare drum and bass drum and now we’ll wrap up with the toms and the optional room microphone. 

To mic the toms on a kit a similar approach to the method used for snare drum micing can be employed.  A dynamic mic (like the Shure SM57 or a Sennheiser MD 421) usually does the job but again, a small condenser with high SPL handling may be used as an option.  Placement consists of having the mic look over the rim of the tom a few inches above and pointing towards the center.  When pointed more towards the center the mic will pick up more of the stick impact while pointing the mic more towards the rim provides more of the drum tone.  I usually find that somewhere in between gives the best balance of both.  Placing the mic closer to the head may help improve isolation but I find that giving a few inches of space above the drum adds some air and life to it even if it means more bleed from the other drums in the kit.  Some engineers (if the mixer channels are available) also like to put a mic on the bottom of the tom to capture more tone.  If you try it you’ll need to check the phase of the top mic versus the bottom one and usually you’ll have to reverse or flip phase on one or the other.  Have too many drums and not enough mics?  Don’t worry, you can also get great results with a single SM57 placed between two toms, the coverage is usually enough to capture both pretty well.

Lastly we move to the room mic or mics.  Whether you use a room mic or not is up to you.  If you have a great-sounding room then I’d highly recommend putting up one or two condensers a few feet away from the kit perhaps even facing them towards the walls to catch the reflected sound.  A single large-diaphragm condenser can also work well.  The room mics can add the ambience and “glue” that you can mix in with the rest of the mics to add more life and energy to the sound.  Even if you don’t have a good-sounding room it’s still worth putting up a mic, you may like the results and if channels and track space (as in most DAWs) isn’t an issue then you can choose to use the sound of the room mic or not.  Of course if you don’t use one then it’s a lot harder to add in that sound later.  The best thing about the room mic placement is that there’s no exact rule here – experiment with moving the mics around and trying different heights and you’ll find something that works best for your situation and gives the best result to enhance the overall sound of the drum kit.

There’s a lot more to micing drums but these three articles are pretty sure to get you started in the right direction.  Just remember that the best results are going to start with a good-sounding, well-tuned drum kit and a good drummer playing it, it’s hard to go wrong from there.