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Micing Drums

Folmeister

Folmeister

Knowledge is Good - Emile Faber
May 7, 2003
2,538
352
62
Tomball, Texas
home.netcom.com
#1
Good Lord, help me!
Due to the simple fact that I made the mistake of owning a PA, I have become the sound engineer for my group. The bane of my existence is amplifying drums. I don't know if it is our drummer's specific kit or my cluelessness, but I have a world of pain from excessive feedback and ringing overtones. I have tried to read everything I can on the Internet, but I am still struggling here. I need your help!

The kit is not big, only a five piece, but the drummer insists on having almost all of his drums miced. The mics are decent Shures with rim clips. When individually miced all of his drums vibrate sympathetically with each other and all of the other live instruments. Most of the crossover frequencies are high-mid frequencies that produce unpleasant overtones that ring and I can't EQ them out. I have asked that he put dead-ringers on each drum, but he complains that they make the acoustic sound unsatisfying (his bass drum actually hums/vibrates on its own). I am thinking that individual mics need to be replaced with area mics. One roughly placed around the snare and high-hat, and another close to the floor and rack toms. Is there any advice that those more familiar with live sound can offer me? Here are some specific questions that I would appreciate being addressed:

1. If I use the rim clips, is it best to do that from the top? Is it adviseable to try micing from the bottom of the drum?

2. Does a drum kit that cuts well unmiced (lots of mid-centered tones like my drummer's kit has) mic well? What do the best mic-friendly drums sound like?

I am frantically doing as much research as I can, but I have a gig on Friday and could use some practical advice in the short-run. Thanks!
 
#2
We've looked at the set up your drummer has, but have not gone that way.
We use
3 mics on a 6 piece kit w/ 6 cymbals.
1 on the kick.
1 on under the snare and hi hat, kinda inbetween.
1 ambience mic overhead for the toms and cymbals.
Works fine, we gig about 7 times a month FYI.
 
#3
You need to gate the toms and snare; banks of noise gates are available. I highly recommend the ACP88 from Presonus, if you have the money. Good compressors, good gates for drums, and you may have channels left over for other stuff. Do NOT gate your overheads, they're what make the kit sound like one instrument.

The sound of rock/pop drums are nothing like the sound of acoustic drums; I've heard beautifully tuned acoustic kits that sound great, or awful, depending on how they wer mic'd, eq'd, or compressed. I've also known more than one drummer that detunes drums so that all you can hear is the smack of the stick on head, and they sound great with no gate, they just feel odd to the player.

Don't mic the underside of a drum without micing the top, unless you're going for an effect; part of the drum's definition comes from the mic picking up the stick on the batter head.

Again, kits resonate; close miked kits should be gated. Don't be afraid to do things with EQ knobs that you wouldn't do with other instruments, either, i.e. crank them one way or the other.

An alternative is the kick-and-overhead method, but those don't work in close spaces or noisy stages without a drum cage of some sort IME. Lots of drummers don't like the lack of thump in their toms that results from an overhead-only approach.

You could also tell him to buy triggers and a brain, too, or else, just turn them down. But a bank of noise gates sound like the solution in your case to me.
 
#5
As Walter said, a gate (or a few) will help. I'm a sound guy for a friends PA company. I find that a lot of drummers are just like a lot of guitarists. They have to have "their tone" on stage. So they don't like to do much with mutes or dampers (don't know if I'm using the right terms). They want the toms to ring for days because it sounds cool at home. It's hard to get around. Play him some recordings of his favorite music and see if the drums sound anything like the ringing cans he's playing right now. Good luck!
 
#6
JackANSI said:
Also make sure your drummer knows how to tune a kit. a good 75% of drum micing issues I've had came down to clueless drummers.
Click to expand...

I'd say closer to 95%.

You shouldn't need to gate and compress the hell out of everything. You shouldn't really even need to dampen the drums that much if they are tuned properly.

If the kit is not well tuned you can throw gates and compressors and EQ's at it all day long. After a while you might manage to get from 'unusable' to simply 'passable'.
 
#7
One of the really nice things about using digital mixing consoles. Gates/comps on every channel. Agree 100 percent on a well tuned kit not needing alot of gateing. Gates can somtimes not be useable based on drummer dynamics. Sometime they hit hard, sometimes they barly tap them. Gates use a threshold that may not be able to be set for this kind of drumming. Best solution is to get the drums tuned. Something I learned recently, from a professional drum tech, tuning typically is done from the bottom heads. Im not sure about that, but I dont play drums.
 
#8
All great advice! I agree that a lot of the focus is on tuning and I have been trying to get that across for a long time. Unfortunately, that resulted in the removal of dead-ringers and even more uncontrollable sound. Here is another issue. Since I have been micing the bass drum, the drummer has become addicted to having a huge kick sound all the time. That is possible during rehearsal, but when we gig the FOH goes to the FOH and we end up messing up the monitor mix trying to get him a kick sound that gives him what he wants. Aside from surrounding him with 18" bins (which is not even a possibility for many reasons), I am thinking about a Buttkicker system. Do these work like I hope they do?
 
#10
A huge mistake drummers make is thinking they need individual mics on every single drum to play a small place. It's craziness. What you do is hook up all the mics, but turn most of them off except the ones you need, and don't tell him. He'll never know the difference.

Also, don't get overly hung up on ring. Ring gives the drums body, and you can't hardly hear it when the whole band plays.
 
#11
JimmyM said:
A huge mistake drummers make is thinking they need individual mics on every single drum to play a small place. It's craziness. What you do is hook up all the mics, but turn most of them off except the ones you don't need, and don't tell him. He'll never know the difference.

Also, don't get overly hung up on ring. Ring gives the drums body, and you can't hardly hear it when the whole band plays.
Click to expand...

I'll keep that handy little trick quietly to myself! :D I don't mind ring, but when it's so loud it tends toward feedback or makes the whole tone unpleasant it's a hair-puller!
 
#12
JimmyM said:
A huge mistake drummers make is thinking they need individual mics on every single drum to play a small place. It's craziness. What you do is hook up all the mics, but turn most of them off except the ones you don't need, and don't tell him. He'll never know the difference.
Click to expand...

Agreed. In really small "storefront bars" we have stripped it down to one mic in the kick, one mic splitting the difference between snare and hat, and two overheads... and that has covered the kit fine.

Also, don't get overly hung up on ring. Ring gives the drums body, and you can't hardly hear it when the whole band plays.
Click to expand...

Agreed again. Nothing worse than a set that's stuffed with towels and pillows and has the heads taped and padded to within an inch of their lives. Then you wind up trying to use EQ and all kinds of effects to put the balls back into the sound that you could have been getting naturally.

Speaking of EQ, using it on the kick drum in particular is uber important. The problem is when you get a sound guy that EQs the kick into a cannon before you've even played a note of bass. Result = Epic kick drum sound and teeny weeny bass. Good soundmen recognize the two instruments must be mixed as a unit and get levels and EQ on kick drum and bass at the same time so each has its space.
 
#15
JimmyM said:
That's partially a function of tuning, but I'd say it's more a function of having too many mics.
Click to expand...

Or not eq'ing them properly. You can get alot of ring/sustain/feedback out of toms and such with just eqing the channels properly.
Properly meaning damage control. Nothing will really fix a poorly tuned kit, but you can minimize the problems.
I have got great drum mixes with:
1.kick
2. OH
3. OH
Often times will single mic 2 toms. Its all about comprimise.
A dedicated drum "thumper" of some kind is always a good idea. I use an old 4-15 cumminity box, powered with one side of a marco-tech 2400, but I'm lucky HEHE.
 
#16
Sounds like the drummer doesn't know how to tune his drums. In a small room I would only mic the kick. Do you have a 31 band EQ for the PA? If not you should get one and then you may be able to cut the frequencies that are causing the overtones.
 
#18
modulusman said:
Sounds like the drummer doesn't know how to tune his drums. In a small room I would only mic the kick. Do you have a 31 band EQ for the PA? If not you should get one and then you may be able to cut the frequencies that are causing the overtones.
Click to expand...

I compromised with the 16-band, but that is tied up with the vocal monitors. Don't get me started on singers who go instantly deaf once their mouth opens to sing!
 
#20
GregShadoan said:
Or not eq'ing them properly. You can get alot of ring/sustain/feedback out of toms and such with just eqing the channels properly.
Properly meaning damage control. Nothing will really fix a poorly tuned kit, but you can minimize the problems.
I have got great drum mixes with:
1.kick
2. OH
3. OH
Often times will single mic 2 toms. Its all about comprimise.
A dedicated drum "thumper" of some kind is always a good idea. I use an old 4-15 cumminity box, powered with one side of a marco-tech 2400, but I'm lucky HEHE.
Click to expand...

Ooof! You are lucky. O.k., I think I like your three-mic formula. Can SM57s do the overhead well?
 

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