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Opinions on drum mic'ing

#21
personally i like a little snare through FOH even in smaller venues, if only just to boost the mid 'punch' a bit without adding too much volume. depending on the tightness of the snare itself, i find they can lack a bit of body unmiked, even if they are loud...

kick, for sure.

everything else - meh.

an engineer gave me a good tip the other day for small-venue drum miking:

- run overhead mics (as well as any close-miking required).
- add reverb
- run a wet-only signal out of FOH (ie just the reverb).

...apparently it is a good way to get that 'big', wet stadium sound without blasting the place out. if you did need more volume on toms etc you could always introduce a little dry signal.

disclaimer - I haven't tried this!
 
#22
Not sure for live, but in the studio I use 3 mics for a standard rock kit. One in front of the kick, one on the left and one on the right, above the drummer. The sound guy controls the volume on the fly as needed. It works, and it works well. Every now and then we'll have something that doesn't sound right, or the kick is a little low for the sound we're going for, and we overdub the kick with a drum machine for a little extra kick (lol).
 
#23
If we play at a local bar and I'm running the PA I mic the bass drum and sometimes the snare. And thats only if we play loud. If the drummer wants more I say "you run the PA and do what you want". If the venue wants more then I let the soundman do what he wants. If we are recording then I set up as many mics as there are channels.

Sounds like your drummer is a bit immature. If you play enough gigs he will sooner or later say "man I need to cut this kit down to size". Best drummer I ever played with could play so quietly we could rehearse with out a PA (he could also bash and crash like any good drummer.
 
#25
James Judson said:
Sounds like your drummer is a bit immature. If you play enough gigs he will sooner or later say "man I need to cut this kit down to size".
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Not much chance of that. He's in his 40's and has been playing all of his life. The drum kit is an extension of his ego. They are unjustifiably massive. :D
 
#26
AndyLES said:
I mic everything...and use only what I need. Some rooms, I may only need the kick, while other times I'll need the Snare/toms/OHs as well.

Better to have and not need than need and not have. You never know when you need to route something to, say, in-ear monitors, a recording rig, etc.

Either that, or the place fills up with more people than you thought would come and then all of the sudden the extra bodies soak up the sound.
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This. Of course, my drummer only has a kick, snare and 2 toms so we can mic all of those and the hi-hat and still only use 5 channels.

We only run overheads in exceptionally large rooms, or outdoors. Otherwise the cymbals come through just fine without mic'ing. We always mic the hat though cause that tends to get lost (and so I can get it in my IEM).
 
#28
testing1two said:
Let the drummer mic anything he wants to but ultimately the person mixing determines if those mics get turned up. If the drummer is mixing, you have much bigger problems.
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+1

This seems to solve the problem nicely. Let the drummer feel loved and make the sound man earn his dough - but ultimately it will be the sound man who determines what's coming out of the speakers.

Otherwise, I agree with the 'less is more' crowd - IMO and IME, the kick and a couple overheads should be MORE than adequate for a typical small bar (75- 100) - MORE than enough. You need to get that kick thumpin' - but doing the whole kit is serious overkill.

Kick + Snare = 99.5% of the beat anyway.
 
#29
Do you actually mic the drums for small bars, say 100 people? I am always wishing for a way to turn the drums down, not get them louder.

True, the kick could probably use a bit of help..... but I don't want to add to the volume :(
 
#30
That's how I feel. We generally don't have a soundman - it's me and the guitar player, and we run sound from the stage.

I think the kick drum is more than enough, personally.

seanm said:
Do you actually mic the drums for small bars, say 100 people? I am always wishing for a way to turn the drums down, not get them louder.

True, the kick could probably use a bit of help..... but I don't want to add to the volume :(
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#31
It seems like most of the smaller indoor venues we play, we're actually bringing up the kick and toms to match the level of the snare. Our drummer hits pretty hard and his snare is by far the loudest piece of the kit. So we always mic it but there are gigs where it's barely turned up at all and that's basically just to trigger the reverb. The rest of the band seems to like the snare a bit hotter than I prefer, but over time we've reached a compromise on that point.

Another thing I would strongly recommend is having your kick drum mic hard-mounted inside the drum. Several mounting systems are available and they can be self-installed by anyone who's halfway handy (my drummer installed his himself in a couple of hours). #1 it ensures the exact same mic placement every time (which is especially important if you're running your own sound from the stage), #2, it speeds up setup (just plug in the mic cord and you're set), #3 the chance of losing the mic (or having it walk away) is greatly reduced and #4 it gets a mic stand off the stage which cleans up the look of the stage and keeps anyone from running into it and also eliminates the annoyance of having the kick mic "creep" out of the drum over the course of the set. I play with several drummers pretty regularly and the ones with the consistently best kick drum sound invariably have the mic hard-mounted.
 
#32
In my last RnR bar band (Cheap Trick, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc...) - playing bars of that same size, we mic'd the kick and had a single mic for the snare + hi hat and that was MORE than enough. The kick got routed to it's own special monitor that sat right in front of the kick drum - snare and hat went trough the mains and all of that was just to put a little bump in the booty not to pit ears back.

My rig and both guitars went straight throw - no PA support at all. The only thing (other than the snare + hat) were the vocal in the mains of the FOH.

This was more than enough for that genre and venue size for us.
 
#33
In small rooms with a hard hitting drummer, the last thing you need is overhead mics. Cymbals are usually more than loud enough acoustically. However mic'ing the drums can be beneficial because you can add some reverb to sweeten the snare and bring in some bottom from the toms and kick. :)
 
#34
knumbskull said:
...apparently it is a good way to get that 'big', wet stadium sound without blasting the place out. if you did need more volume on toms etc you could always introduce a little dry signal.

disclaimer - I haven't tried this!
Click to expand...

I've done this - I'd put the mic UNDER the snare, compress it, and send just the reverb to front of house...nice big rock snare without blasting everyone's skull. 'Tis a good compromise.
 
#37
I have been in similar situations. I used to play with a drummer that mic'd everything no matter how big or small the venue was. However since he was also singing he was not what you would call a heavy hitter(he realized early on that the harder he hit, the harder he would have to sing)

There has been other combinations, micing only the kick, micing the kick and snare, using only overhead mics. I think that there are 3 variables to make the right choice.

How loud is your drummer?

How loud is your band?

Where are you playing or how loud should you be playing?

If you had a soundguy I would definitely suggest to mic the whole kit and keep their volume low or even off so you can afford have more options, but since you are running your own sound this can be quite a hassle so start with the kick and maybe the snare on a low volume and then add toms and so on. Cymbals should be last on this list since they are loud enough but maybe not the hi-hat.
 
#39
It really bugs me when you can't hear the hi-hat. Especially as a player, but even just out in the audience. I see bands mic'ing the snare (which many times is plenty loud even without amplification), but ignore the hi-hat. That's backwards, IMO.

The better approach in smaller venues and if mics/channels are limited, is to mic the hi-hat relatively close, from the top, pointing towards the snare and not mic the snare. If you do that, odds are there will be enough bleed to still capture the snare, plus the hat will come through nice and clear.
 
#40
jaywa said:
It really bugs me when you can't hear the hi-hat. Especially as a player, but even just out in the audience. I see bands mic'ing the snare (which many times is plenty loud even without amplification), but ignore the hi-hat. That's backwards, IMO.

The better approach in smaller venues and if mics/channels are limited, is to mic the hi-hat relatively close, from the top, pointing towards the snare and not mic the snare. If you do that, odds are there will be enough bleed to still capture the snare, plus the hat will come through nice and clear.
Click to expand...

The hi hat is tricky. It can be obnoxiously loud and also overly subtle. Compressing is an option but you lose dynamics.
 

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