M-Audio manual Choosing & Using Microphones

Close-Miking Drums. Much of today￿s music focuses so strongly on the kick, snare and hi-hat that being able to mic these components of a drum individually is fairly critical. At a minimum, you also need a pair of overheads to catch everything else in stereo. In a perfect world, you have enough mics and channels to mic each element of the kit individually￿with the exception of the cymbals (hi-hat excluded) being captured by the stereo overheads. Cardioid or super-cardioid is ideal in most cases to isolate the elements of the kit from one another.

•Kick Drum. If the front head is on the kick drum and there is no hole in which to insert a mic, simply place the mic close to the front head. Placing the mic inside the kick drum provides more flexibility. Placement near where the beater strikes the head produces a tighter, punchier sound, while moving further out makes the sound larger and deeper. It is common practice to experiment with various methods of padding inside of the kick in order to increase punch and reduce boom. Use as large a diaphragm as possible. (In fact, some of the best kick drum mics are oversized dynamics such as the EV RE20.) You may need to switch on the mic￿s built-in pad if the sound pressure is overloading the electronics of either the mic or the preamp.

•Snare. Snare drums are one of the few places where dynamic mics are routinely used in the studio. One of the reasons for this is that the snare mic is the most likely to be hit by errant drum sticks. That said, you can certainly use a condenser, especially in more subtle applications such as those involving brushes. Standard practice is to angle the mic down toward the drum at about two inches from the rim. Moving the mic further in provides more attack and less body￿something that is true for most drums. Snares are sometimes dampened with duct tape, wallets and other mechanisms if they are too lively. Some engineers routinely place a condenser under the snare drum as a second mic in order to capture the sizzle of the snares themselves.

•Hi-hat.Most engineers place a mid-sized cardioid condenser facing down at the outer edge of the hi-hat.This position tends to produce more of the sound of the stick striking the cymbal, where moving it further inward captures more of the quality of the bell. In either event, orienting the cardioid diaphragm downward helps to reject bleed from a neighboring overhead cymbal.

•Toms. As with the snare, tom-toms are often the domain of dynamic mics like the Sennheiser 421 because of the possibility of being hit by drum sticks. Here again, condensers are perfectly valid in controlled situations. Miking the toms individually provides the flexibility of balancing, panning and EQing them separately in the mix.

•Overheads. A matched pair of condensers is the generally preferred method of overhead miking. Mid-sized capsules are used more typically than large capsules in this application due to the smooth high frequency response.

Placement of the mic in relation to the beater head determines much of the tonal quality

The edge of a drum provides more tone, while the center provides more attack

Miking the edge of a hi-hat yields more sizzle,

while moving it further in results in

more of the bell sound

Mid-sizedcardioids in X-Y configuration over the kit is the most common method of overhead drum miking

Choosing & Using Microphones 30