Drum Kit Miking
A dirty drum sound is usually tuning, phase and bleed before it is the microphone.
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Let the kit sound right first
A muddy drum recording is rarely the microphone's fault. Old heads, a loose snare wire, a cymbal hanging too low over the snare: no expensive condenser fixes any of that. Spend half an hour changing heads, tensioning the wires and damping the hardware that rattles, then have the drummer play at normal force. That half hour buys more than the whole signal chain.
One mic per job
| Position | Distance and angle | Usual trouble |
|---|---|---|
| Kick | 2–5 cm inside the port, off centre | Air blasts, pedal noise |
| Snare top | 3–5 cm above the head, aimed off centre | Too close loses the shell |
| Snare bottom | 5–8 cm under the wires | Kick bleed, wire hiss |
| Hi-hat | 10–15 cm above, angled outward | Snare bleed |
| Toms | 3–5 cm above the head | Neighbouring drums and cymbals |
| Overheads | 40–60 cm above the cymbals, symmetrical | Uneven height, phase fights |
| Room | 2–4 m out, 2 m up | Low-end pile-up in corners |
Closer is not automatically better. Put a snare mic 1 cm from the head and the shell depth disappears; aim a kick mic into the airflow and every beat turns into a low thump. Treat the distances in the table as a starting point: with a heavy hitter, back every mic off two or three centimetres to cut bleed without losing the attack.
Phase and gates, in that order
Every mic hears the kit at a slightly different time. Compare polarity between each close mic and the overheads, then nudge the waveforms into alignment. Only then does a gate make sense. Gate too early and the bleed gets chopped into mechanical breathing. Keep kick release above 100 ms, and leave the room mic ungated; a little dirt is the point.
The room mic is not optional
A room mic supplies the size of the kit as one instrument. Put a single one 2 to 4 m in front of the drummer, above cymbal height, and compress it hard enough to bring the midrange forward. Check its polarity against the overheads too; when it is inverted, the low end collapses first.
When not to add mics
Jazz, retro rock and small rooms often sound more complete with one mic or a single overhead pair. The drummer balances the kit and the engineer just captures it. The opposite is true when the heads are tired, the cymbals are harsh and the room is small and hard: more microphones only amplify the problem with more bleed, harder phase work and another track to fix at mixdown. Fix the kit, the room and the playing first; if that fails, replace the shells with samples rather than spending the day chasing phase.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Along the same line
Sources
- Eargle, John，The Microphone Book（Focal Press）— 鼓与打击乐拾音
- Bartlett, Bruce，Practical Recording Techniques（Focal Press）— 鼓组摆位与串音
- Mike Senior，Recording Secrets for the Small Studio（Focal Press）— 小房间鼓录音