Mar
4
Written by:
masterblogger
3/4/2011 11:43 AM
In our January issue, we asked you for your favorite kick-drum miking
tips, and published our favorite tip (props to winner Ken Lee, below!)
in the March issue. But we got so many great submissions, we thought
we’d share them all with you! Check out the goodies below, and let us
know if you try them! And don’t miss the March Question of the Month:
How do you get the best take out of a vocalist? Send your tips to eqeditor@nbmedia.com. The winning submission wins a rad Zoom Q3 portable recorder!
Now for the tips…
I
like capturing not only the impact of a kick drum, but also its tone
and character. I noticed that recording engineers often go about
positioning the snare and tom mics differently, rarely or never placing
the mics inside, so I thought I'd try applying this toward a kick drum. I
place a large diaphragm condenser in cardioid in front of the kick
drum, but instead of directly in front and perpendicular to the kick
drum, I place it so that it is close to the outer rim, with the
microphone aiming across the front, much like how someone might position
a floor tom mic. I'll aim the mic closer or farther from the side of
the kick to try and balance out the woodiness of the kick and the skin
tone. If the bleed from the cymbals and other drums is too much, I will
sometimes take my wooden dining room chairs and wrap acoustic foam
around it to form a sort of tunnel, placing them over the kick mic, and
use sound treatment panels to surround the mic to minimize the bleed.
You can also minimize bleed by building a tunnel such as the kind used
by Bruce Swedien. This microphone technique tends to work for quieter
sort of music, such as ballads, jazz, or simply when the drummer is not
wailing on the kit. It's not always right for the song, either. There
are times in which a dynamic inside the kick drum is indeed the best
answer. But when it works, it brings a smile to the drummer's face.
Drummers rarely hear the musical note of their kick drum on recordings,
so if you can capture this, the note, the woodiness, and the fundamental
character of the kick drum, you'll have made a friend for life. And a
pretty good recording as a bonus.
Ken Lee, Blueberry Buddha Recording Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Hi
folks,Here is my answer to the readers’ poll for micing a kick drum for
tracking. I use a combination of overheads (Sml. Dia.Cond.'s) located
over the drummer's shoulders aimed straight out (on horizontal plane
emulating drummers ears) and a Senn.602 at the hole in the resonator
head. i aim the mic directly where the beater strikes the front head,
but off to the side so that the air blast doesn't pound the mic. this
way, more actual kick drum is gotten rather than a blast of air. if
needed, i'll use a pop filter to break up the kick's air blast. also, i
just did an album of gongs (up to 60 inches wide & 55lbs). it was a
very ambient set of sessions?w/mics/preamps very hot to pick up
subtleties.The dogs next door wouldn't stop barking (good dog, bad
owner) so i went to the store and got some fresh cow bone. i figured
after day 2 that i only needed to give them 1 bone, as the dog w/out the
bone would be paying attention to the other dog w/the bone. the more i
record professionally, the more i discover it's not about technical
knowledge-it's about being better w/people and situations around them.
It's about creating a nice place to be, somewhere comfortable that's not
like a sterile Petri dish (acoustically "perfect") or a trashy living
room ("too" lived in...) Be well.
Greg Creamer
Here's my
tip for miking kick drum. Ok it's simple, there's a sweet spot on most
kicks on the beater side right near where the kick pedal hammer hits the
kick drum head. I Place a good dynamic roughly 3-5 inches away from the
beater head... a few inches to the right of your foot pedal. The height
should be somewhere between 8-12 inches off the ground. If you listen
with headphones while looking for the sweet spot, there's a certain
distance from the beater where the attack and the "roundness" evens out
and you get a nice "B" sound (as in the sound of the letter B). Then
once you find it, you can add other mics to taste like maybe your
typical "mic in front of or in hole" setup and maybe your ambient mics
but you can get the main MEAT of your kick out of just that one mic. It
doesn't even have to be a kick drum mic, just a good regular dynamic.
But you gotta find the precise distance for it to work... which depends
on the kick drum itself and especialy the tuning. The sound you can get
sounds like a good sampled and processed kick drum like you would find
from a good synth/sound module or plugin. Have fun! Try it! Love it! Now
give me my Q3... LOL
Cheers,
Dennis Morton
Often when
tracking drums I try to convince bands to go to tape. Keeping this in
mind I will usually use the original AKD d12E 4 or 5" down from the
center of the kick and about a foot to 18" away. Then I will use a
Beyerdynamic M88TG using the band as the guide and lining the band of
the windscreen up with the resonant head of the drum inside the mic
hole. Depending on what else is being tracked in the room will depend on
whether or not I will use sound blankets to build a kick drum fort. The
AKG D12E will usually go through the Telefunken V76 and the
Beyerdynamic will go through the Neve 3104.
Danielle Depalma
The
first thing I've learned about mixing up a kick is one of my principles
in recording; make sure the source sounds good to my ear in the space.
That may involve tuning the drum as often drummers have tuned for thier
last gig. You first take all padding out and listen, then check the
outter head is tighter then beater head if you want tight response, or
looser if you want woofier sound. Then place padding to dampen to your
taste. I place my Shure Beta 52a facing the beater just in front of the
hole on outer.
Rudy Talavera
Then about 1' back I place a
Yamaha sub-kick which gets a lot of the low resonance. I usually run
both mics thru Neve 4 band modules and cut around 400 to 630 hz and find
the click of beater mic around 2.2k and boost this 1-3db. I will move
the mics if something sounds carved out. Print both tracks and blend in
the mix using subkick to fatten lowend rather then eq it... Check out
some of my recordings at www.jacksonwetherbee.com thanks!
Dave Malekpour
What
my drummer calls the Bube and Tox method. Crystal Geyser water bottle
case box, taped to a flexible 2 gallon trash can. One end opened
completely, the other with a small square hole for U47 cut in. Placed in
front of kick head with offset hole. A AKG D12E just inside hole.
Amazing low frequency boost in the right freq. Photo @ www.new-sun.com.
Christopher Scott Cooper
Depending
upon the drum and the sound that's needed, the effect that's desired
would require different methods. What I prefer to do is place the mike
as far away in the room as possible to achieve my favorite sound of the
late, great Mr. John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. If one desires a
punchy/tight sound, place the mike closer with tight heads. If you
choose a big boomy sound, loosen your head and place the mike starting
at 10 feet away, and watchout!
Greg Hart
Hello there, my
favorite way to mike a kick drum: I use 2 mikes, usually an Audix D6
halfway inside the hole in the front head and a Yamaha Subkick outside
the front head. The Subkick runs from the preamp through a Radial Phazer
and the phase in relation to the D6. While those two mikes mack up the
bulk of the kick sound, I also generally place my room mic(s) close to
the floor (around a foot high) about 8-10 feet in front of the kick
drum. This seems to keep the overall sound of the kit a bit more
balanced.
Terry Clark
My favorite way to mic a kick drum is
actually a technique that has resided only in my head. Since I can’t
afford to actually use this technique, I imagine using the Yamaha
SKRM100 Subkick low frequency capture microphone, but augmented with an
Audix D6 with a rolloff on the lows – both panned dead center, but
perhaps with a bit of experimentation using a bit of echo on the Audix. I
can’t help but think that this would be a killer combo.
Roger Cloud
I
use a Shure Beta 52A Kick Drum Mic, placed into the hole of my Kick
Drum Head. My original Kick Drum head had no hole, so I replaced it with
a head that had the hole. The hole is positioned off center, and to the
right of the beater. I have placed the mic directly into the hole. (See
Picture #1). I place the mic as far into the hole as possible (without
touching the sides of the hole), so that I will get less bleed from the
other parts of the set, once the entire set is being played. So, the mic
is facing the beater head directly but it is off center from the beater
itself. I have experimented with different angles for the mic in this
position, but to my surprise I found less tone variation than I
expected. (However, repositioning the mic, and trying different angles
is a great way to experiment, and there will eventually be a change to
the tone, good or bad.) This is how I got to this particular mic
placement. So, with the mic placed directly into the hole, I get a nice
clear Kick tone with a distinct, but not sharp, beater attack. Picture
#2 is attached to show the beater side of my Kick Drum. I have a small
blanket placed in the drum for dampening. The room that I recorded in is
a small bedroom size room. I have also included a small .WAV sample of
the recording I got from using this mic placement. The recording is dry
and has not been enhanced with any audio efx (EQ, Compression, etc....)
Room
and Recording Information: 1. Pearl Drum Set 2. Drum set is set up in a
small room 3. Shure Beta 52A Kick Drum Mic 4. Connected to M-Audio 2626
Audio Interface, and then recorded into Cakewalk Sonar 8.53.
Linda Ponte
My
favorite way to mike kick drum is the same way I use to mike most of
instruments - where they sound good in the room. That's usually
cardioid, from a distance equivalent to the instrument size. How can you
go wrong? Worried about leakage? Get over it!
Close-miking was
invented for particular needs and situations, don't make it your first
option, don't copy what others do, that's a path to mediocrity in audio.
Dennis Zasnicoff
Probably
will sound insane, but works for me. When I need to get a certain
background sound, like a backup vocal or a weird sound effect .when I am
doing the recording I put my sm57 mics into the speaker itself. I take
off the tweeter cover and with some foam I shove the mic about halfway
through the opening ,and with turning down the mic input I record the
speaker output to my digital recorder. End up with a distant faded sound
that works for me. Crazy, but it's different.
Rick Smith
I
basically experiment, depends on room, player, DAW, and specific
requests, what mics I have, do A-B-A etc. and if it works don't try to
fix it more! even locate-isolate (if possible) EQ helps too, but in a
home-hobby studio, $ drives a lot of decisions.
David Kasminsky
Last
track I used where live drums were used, I had my brother send me the
drum tracks he worked on and we complied them in with the vocal tracks.
The singer I collaborated with had her husband do the mix down on all
the tracks and then the master. 3000 miles away I might add. I did the
Keyboard tracks on my workstation. I sent them a 2-channel mix of the
keys. The vocal and drum tracks were all done remotely. We all
collaborated long distance on this one. The track is called "Love
Forever."
Vic DeMarzo
For live, I throw any ol' shure drum
mic on it, run it through a low-pass and then an ART tube comp. and then
ride the knob for the sub to keep it in check for the mood of the song.
And for studio, I'll spend time getting a good sample of the drummers
kick if he likes it and use that, or otherwise hunt down a sample I like
and just trigger it.
Halden Gunning