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A: Hey guys, we just completed a day of recording drums all day, just
getting one-shots for this drum library. And while we're at it, I'm going
to give you a little quick tutorial on how to put together some really
great drum captures, different approaches, and things you can do to get
different sounds. So the first thing I'm going to show you is a couple of
different outside mic techniques. So what's important to know is that this
side here is the resident head and this side here is the batter head. The
batter head is where the drummer is going to be playing their foot pedal.
So this is where the attack is coming from. This is where the tone and the
body is coming from.
So when you're doing an outside kick mic, a lot of times what you're trying
to capture is a very vivid and focused image of the low-end, the tone, the
resonance of the kick. So here's a quick way to do that. You use a
microphone, like a good condenser, I like an M147, and you get about level
with the center of the drum. And it takes a little experiment, but I find
that actually pretty far out, this is pretty good space. This is maybe
about two feet. Sometimes even further but usually about two and a half
feet out from the drum, that's where you're going to get the best low-end
sound.
Now when you've got a full kick in a lot of times what you need to do is
grab moving blankets, of some sort, packing blankets and drape over the
kick and the microphone. What this does is it eliminates the cymbal sound
from getting directly into the mic and this gives you just a focused
picture of the low-end. It's called tunneling. So that's a great way to get
a good sub out of a kick. Now, let's say that you want to get more smack
out of the overall sound and you don't mind getting the cymbals and the
snare into the sound as well. Like if you're doing a jazz set-up or
something like that and you're using a minimal mic technique. Instead of
having the mic here, you might want to actually raise the mic up a little
bit higher and have it closer to the kick and aim down. And what's going to
happen is that the low-end is going to come off axis.
So, relative to the low-end, you're actually going to get more smack and
punch from the tone. This is a really good technique. The con of it is that
you can't really get the cymbal sound and snare sound out, but if you can
get the placement just right, where it sounds good for all of those things,
this can actually be a really great technique. Now of course, a tried and
true rock technique for like, solid punch is just to get the condenser real
close right up against the head.
This is going to give you a good umph to the tone. It's going to be shorter
docay [SP]. The low-end isn't going to extend as far, but it's going to
give you a lot of power in the attack. So what else can you do? Well,
let's say that you want to get the shell tone. That sort of mid rangey, I
don't want to say clanky because that makes it sound bad but sort of that
like... I don't know, Jeff. How would you describe the sound that you get
when you put the mic inside and aimed at the shell?
A: I think it's a very resonant, good picture of the actual shell sound,
the timber of the drum.
Q: So that's basically what it is. It's the shell sound. So what you're
going to do is you're going to take the Z112 or something similar, a large-
diaphragm dynamic, and you're going to place it right inside, just up in
front of the cut away here. And you're going to aim it. Instead of aiming
it forward at the batterhead, you're aiming it directly to the side or
maybe 45 degrees off to the side. And the more to the batterhead, the more
attack you're going to get , the more to the perpendicular line, the more
shell tone you're going to get. And anywhere in between is going to give
you a mix of those flavors.
Now, another way that you can approach miking a kick drum is to actually
mic both the outside and the batterhead, which is going to give you an
attack. So there's a couple ways you can do that. One way you can do it is
you can take your D112 and point it forward, or even an SM57, if you want
and go all the way inside the kick ,right near the batterhead, and that's
going to give you a very clickey, punchy attack, very short duration.
That's really good for things like metal records, anything where the kick
drum is going to be hitting very quickly.
Another way to do it is to actually go around the other side and mic this
side of the kick. So when you're miking up that side of the kick, the one
thing you have to remember is that you have a phase thing to consider now,
that the distance between the resident head and the batter side should be
equivalent to how far any outside kick is going to be. So, once again,
we're going back to this idea of having the kick out mic actually fairly
far from the drum. The important thing is that this is your low-end.
This side here is going to give you the punch and thickness of it. That's
what needs to be in phase. The attack is such a short duration, the phase
issues are going to be fairly minimal and not something you need to
terribly worry about. So remember, it's not the distance from the batter
head to that mic being the same as the resident head to this mic. It's
actually the distance from the resident head to the batterhead out, if that
makes sense.
A: Alright, cool. So that's a couple of ways you can mic your kick drum. I
hoped you learned something.