What The Pros Know About Drum Recording

In this episode I will show you all the steps to getting great drum sounds. We will cover Mic choice, Placement, EQ, Double Mic'ing, Phase and Tone.

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My Links to Follow:

[jerryedwards]

Hey Rick, just wanted to tell you that a drummer passed away tonight, Ron bushy from the Iron Butterfly died at 79. He was a good friend of mine I played music with him in the 70s

[garydonnelly]

I love that you're not gating anything. I've always believed that a kit, when tuned and mic'd properly, sounds best with no gates. There's nothing wrong with toms that ring out and the natural bleed from the various mics make for a very natural and homogeneous sound. A drum kit should be treated as a single instrument. I'd love to see a vid on how to record a Jazz kit with a double-headed 18" bass drum with very little muffling and higher pitched toms and snare. That's an entirely different animal and many recording and live FOH engineers have no clue as to where to even start. And trying to get a drummer to tune and muffle up a Jazz kit like a rock kit is simply wrong for the music and is not an option.

[marcoreactionary]

“It sounds like you’re hearing both sides of the drum, because you are.”

[marcjosephmusic]

Your quite a cat Rick and mostly the reason I don't do videos... you've covered it all, impeccably haaa. I sincerely appreciate all the tech perspective and icon interviews. Also your personal experiences w record companies etc... very insightful. THNX.

Q here is...I notice your waveforms are very full/large. Borderline peaking at spots. So what are your feelings on this ? I tell kids "in the old days we didn't have waveforms to look at" had to use your ears. Now in the digital age " WE SEE THE MUSIC" and I find engineers are obsessed. So what waveform view are you set to ? Knowing they can be artificially expanded to any size inProtocols, what is the relativity to reality ? How do you reference that ? Does/should waveform size reflect actual DB ? Do yours here ? Obviously if it sounds distorted and looks flat up top (like "blocks view") then it's an overdriven signal. But if small waveforms, are you getting enough gain structure? Please Share thoughts.

Props on yet another stellar video, well timed. As a Drummer/ Producer I'm intrigued ! Keep the Love n knowledge flowing dude !! THNX again

[wattage]

I'd really like to see a video on how to record a shit drummer. Been having to do this for over a decade now and have a fair few techniques but it'd be interesting to see how others approach the soul destroying task of recording someone who can't even put a hihat clutch together.

[johnballs]

I don’t even record music, I just like hearing Rick talk about it.

[evanmatthiesen]

Great video- one thing I had to learn over time that its not just about flipping phase, often two signals have the same "type" of phase but they are just out of alignment with each other. In fact, the opposite phase phenomenon is usually only encountered when micing bottoms of drums, and behind open back guitar cabinets. 90% of the time, Im zooming in and nudging waveforms to fix phase problems, not flipping the phase. A waveform thats 50% off axis with another will sound just as out of phase when flipped.

[jensharald]

I know the stuff already, but just wanna compliment you on this fabulous tutorial you've made! The topic litterally cannot be condensed into a more concise and clear and accessible video. 14 minutes with an hour of info.
With such a great player and kit and setup, it's also an awesome demonstration (and reminder) of how great a sound you can get at the source!

[mellobotstudio]

My hat is off to the creative engineers out there who can comment a compliment without stroking their insecure ego.

[MdhLV]

This is pure gold. We are so lucky to have access to this level of detailed knowledge and experience recording drums. Until you’ve spent countless hours trying to get good balanced live drum recordings you don't understand just how valuable this is! You'll recording something and compare to another drummer you admire and wonder how the heck did they get that drum sound. This is how! And it isn't something you can learn from a textbook. Maybe you can figure it out on your own but it will take decades of trial and error. Thank you Rick from the bottom of my heart for making this video!

[kevindube]

This is incredibly helpful. I’m only a few years into mic’ing & mixing live drums and it’s the straightforward detailed videos like yours that are the most helpful to get a grasp on technique. Appreciate ya!

[vbarrto]

Rick shows how hard work is recording, produce music is.
Produce music is like play different (another or all of them ;-) ) instrument, with knowledge, passion, discovery-journey thing.
Very exciting and productive.
There should be more videos about creation process of the music (art overall, movies etc) to show people what they paying for. For hard work and dedication/passion.
From "A" to the "Z". It gives awareness for all those easy grabbing/sharing art stuff.
Its normal, standard work to live from (for all of them, artists) and should be payd and appreciated.
Thankful & Greatfull.

-Bart

[SPINNINGMYWHEELS]

Cool talk but could have served a good purpose to talk about minimal mic'ing of drums as well. 1 to 3 mics is a great challenge that can reap amazing results. Mic'ing the bottom of the snare is not necessary for a really slamming sound. But creativity is the fun part so go nuts if you want !

[FullContactDrummer]

First of all...how great would it be to have access to your mic cabinet? I have a rather large kit, I'm running 20 mics when I record. I'm going to add one more to see if it's worth it. I actually use 421's on my snare. I did a mic test, video on my page, and of all the mics I had, the 421 was the best. However, the 57 was surprisingly close. I also used a Sennheiser e604 and e904. Anyway, I close mic all 8 toms with e604. I have kick double miced with e901 inside on a brick about 20 mm from the batter head and a e902 outside about 8 inches from where the reso head would be if I had it installed. All that is under a blanket. Snare 1 is double miced (421 over a 57), snare two is not. I have my two over heads (AT2035), hats and ride (ATM450) two 57's as stereo room mics, and an AGK P420 condenser about 6 feet in front of the kick. I had someone say placing a ribbon mic with the AKG mic and picking up the sound coming in from the side is a nice sound. Once I get my studio up I'll be trying that and shooting a video.

[tinman]

Would love to see a video for a 'budget' rig. I'm rocking a bunch of SM 57-58's, a D112 and a couple of cheap, large diaphragm condensers through a MOTU 8-pre. No outboard gear... just plugins. I record because I love it but am trying to get the best sound I can.

[agmsmith]

Transformerless 57s are terrible for drums, especially snare. The transformer rolls off the top end above 5KHz on the 57. If you remove the transformer it opens up the top end and makes the 57 very bright... which is BAD because the 57 is OMNI DIRECTIONAL above 5KHz. So you will have TONS of bleed from hihat and cymbals in the snare mic.

[genodamico]

Rick! I’ve been watching your stuff for years and it always inspires me. Musically speaking, you are the man I’d like to be when I am grown up! (I am 30 but I’ve got time to grow up again.)
Your breadth of knowledge on music and the industry is staggering, and you are an inspiration to us all.
Thank you for what you do!

[rawhead]

As an audio engineer I must admit, that this is a good entry into drum recording knowledge...Within the years, you will get more and more wisdom but in the end, always trust your ears and dont get lost in the technical jungle ...

[peteshifter]

Man, you kinda double the tom volume by adding the bottom track. Of course it sounds bigger! Any comparison in audio must be done without volume in the equation.

[derekpink]

Jack’s got a great groove to his playing. Some meaty chops too.