Chapter 3
IN THIS CHAPTER
Exploring microphone techniques
Miking drums
Miking amplified instruments
Miking acoustic instruments
You can do all the right things to get your Pro Tools software ready to record tracks (see Book 3, Chapter 1 for more on that topic), but it won’t mean diddly if you don’t know how to set up your mics properly.
As you’ll soon find out, the location of a microphone in relation to your instrument or a singer has a huge impact on the sound of your recording. In fact, just a movement of an inch or two or even a slight turn of the mic can bring out different characteristics in the sound. The art of placing mics is one that you will undoubtedly spend a lifetime discovering.
In this chapter, you discover the fundamentals of using microphones to get a good source sound. You explore tried-and-true miking methods along with some practical miking tips and tricks that you can use right away. You also examine the use of compression and mic placement to control and eliminate transients — the usual peaks in the instrument’s sound.
Regardless of the style of microphone you use — or the type of instrument you record — you can use one or more of the following mic placement techniques to capture the sound you want:
This section introduces you to the four traditional mic placement strategies employed in recording. I cover the characteristics and purposes of each of these four methods and get a look at how each relates to a particular tonal or sound quality. I also discuss how you can combine these strategies.
Spot miking (also called close miking) involves placing your microphone within a couple of feet of the sound source. People with a home-recording setup use this technique most often because it adds little of the room (the reverb and delay) to the recorded sound. Figure 3-1 shows the close miking placement.
Spot miking tends to create a less natural sound and can compromise the quality of your recordings if you’re not careful. It can also offer advantages if you record multiple instruments in one pass or if your room doesn’t sound good. Here are some things to consider when using spot miking:
When you use distant miking, you place mics about three or four feet away from the sound source. (See Figure 3-2.) Distant miking enables you to capture some of the sound of the room along with that of the instrument. An example of a distant miking technique is using an overhead drum mic, with which you can pick up the whole drum set to some extent. Coupled with a few select spot mics, you can record a natural sound.
Distant miking has its pluses and minuses. Here are some things to remember if you use this technique:
Using ambient miking places the mic far enough away from the sound source so you capture more of the room sound (the reverb and delay) than the sound of the actual instrument. (See Figure 3-3.) You can place the mic a couple of feet away from the source but pointed in the opposite direction, or you can place it across the room. You can even put the mic in an adjacent room (although this is an unorthodox technique, I’ll admit). The distance that you choose varies from instrument to instrument. For example, a flute would need a little closer mic than a double bass would.
Ambient miking definitely has its place, but using this technique requires forethought. Consider the following when you use this technique:
Stereo miking involves using two mics to capture the stereo field of the instrument. You can use a variety of stereo miking techniques as well as some pretty complicated ways of using two mics to record. The three most common approaches, however, are X–Y (coincident) pairs, the Blumlein technique, and spaced pairs. You can also find stereo mics that do a good job on their own of capturing the stereo field of an instrument.
Stereo miking has the advantage of capturing a natural stereo image. When you listen to performances that were recorded with well-placed stereo miking, you can hear exactly where on the stage each instrument performed. Of course, there is an art to such wonderful stereo miking. You can’t just randomly set up a couple of mics in a room and get a good stereo sound. Capturing a stereo image with two mics requires some careful planning.
X–Y (also called coincident) stereo miking uses two mics placed next to each other so that the diaphragms are at almost-right angles (anywhere from 90–135 degrees) as close together as possible without touching one another. X–Y stereo miking is the most common type of stereo mic setup and the one you’ll probably use if you do any stereo miking. Figure 3-4 shows a basic X–Y setup. Notice how the mics in this figure are attached to a special mounting bracket. This bracket makes positioning the mics easy.
When you record using the X–Y technique, keep these points in mind:
Keep some distance between the mics and the sound source. The X–Y technique has no benefit over a single mic if you place your mics within a couple feet of the sound source.
You simply don’t have enough space for a stereo image to develop until you’re at least 6 feet from the instrument or group of instruments. In fact, I recommend being at least 10 feet from the sound source before using the X–Y stereo miking approach.
The Blumlein technique is named after Alan Dower Blumlein, who patented this approach in 1931. Blumlein stereo miking involves placing two figure-8 mics in much the same way as the X–Y pattern (at right angles to one another with the diaphragms as close together as possible). The two mics are mounted on separate stands, one above the other.
The advantage with this technique is that the figure-8 mics pick up signals from both the front and back. This produces a very natural sound. You also don’t have to contend with any proximity effects (enhanced bass response that comes from being close to the sound source) because figure-8 mics don’t produce this effect. Figure 3-5 shows this technique. (For more on figure-8 mics, see Book 3, Chapter 2.)
Here are some suggestions for when you should use this technique:
Get a sturdy stand that can handle both mics. Using two stands to hold both mics makes moving them around (to find the sweet spot in the room) a real pain in the you-know-what. You can easily find mic-stand adapters that hold both mics. These can be an invaluable investment.
Spaced-pair stereo miking places two mics at a distance in front of the instrument(s) you want to record as well as at a distance from one another. This approach can work well if you record an ensemble that takes up a fairly large amount of room. Figure 3-6 shows a top view of a typical spaced stereo mic setup.
If you want to record an instrument in stereo and don’t want the hassle of fiddling with setting up stereo pairs, you can use a stereo mic. Stereo mics basically have two diaphragms in them and use a special cord that allows you to record the output from each diaphragm on a separate track. This type of microphone acts like an X–Y pair, so follow the guidelines and suggestions that I offer in the section “X–Y pairs,” earlier in this chapter, when using one of these. Take a look at an inexpensive stereo condenser mic in Figure 3-7.
Often you’ll want to use more than one mic. The possible combinations are almost limitless: You can use several spot mics on one instrument, you can use a spot mic and an ambient mic, you can have a distant mic and a spot mic, or… . Well, you get my point.
As exciting as these possibilities can be, keep the following points in mind to get the best sound when you combine multiple mics:
Be aware of phase relationships. Each mic interacts with all the other ones when you record, and you need to take the time to set up each mic so that it doesn’t interfere with any others. This means honoring the 3:1 rule for stereo mics (see the section “Spaced pairs,” earlier in this chapter). The only way to ensure that your phase is good is to record a snippet of a song (or a whole song if you want) and then listen to your tracks.
Listen to each mic individually and then together to see whether any frequencies drop out. If frequencies drop out, finding the problem mics will take some detective work. You need to play pairs of mics that you recorded until you find the problem; then you need to adjust each mic until the problem goes away. If you do this enough, you’ll get pretty good at placing mics and making phase relationships work.
Be aware of bleed between mics. This is mainly for bands that want to play together while still maintaining as much isolation as possible. A string quartet rarely needs isolation because all the instruments blend well together live; this blending is integral to the overall sound. However, a rock band with miked amps usually needs enough isolation so that you can do some tweaking to each instrument when you mix.
In addition, a band that plays well together and can nail the performances can have more bleed — whereas a band with a marginal player or two (you know whether you have one in your band) who has to perform additional takes or punch-ins to fix a weak performance requires much more isolation. Doing a punch-in to a live, bleed-filled performance (for instance, if your bass player flubbed a few notes) can sound wrong in the mix.
The single most difficult part of getting a good sound with a microphone is dealing with sudden, extreme increases in the sound signal. These blips are transients, and they happen when a drum is first struck, when a vocalist sings certain syllables (for example, those that begin with P), and when a guitar player picks certain notes. In fact, because you can’t always control the amount of force that you apply to an instrument, transients can happen any time — with any instrument — and without warning. (Highly-trained musicians produce fewer transients because they have a greater mastery over their muscular movements.)
Run the signal through a compressor when recording.
A compressor is a piece of hardware (not included in your Avid interface) that controls the dynamics of your signal to keep your levels from getting too high.
Back in the days of 16-bit digital recording (in ancient times, oh, ten years or so ago), you wanted to record at as high a level as possible without going over the maximum of 0 decibels (dB). The idea was to ensure the highest-possible fidelity by using as many of the available 16 bits as possible. If you recorded at lower levels, you used fewer bits, resulting in lower fidelity and higher noise levels.
Now, in the advanced age of digital, your best bet is to record with 24-bit resolution. Those extra 8 bits gained since the olden days free you from having to record at the highest level possible. In fact, you can put your max levels down around –12 dB and still end up with great-sounding tracks. Giving yourself that kind of room (called, logically enough, headroom) allows an instrument’s transients to be recorded without causing problems with your converters.
A microphone that’s too close to a loud sound source (or pointed too directly at the point of attack) can easily pick up extreme transients. In most cases, all you have to do is to pull the mic away from the instrument a little or turn it ever so slightly so it avoids picking up too high a signal. (I cover mic setup thoroughly in the “Setting Up Your Mics: Some Suggestions” section.)
Compressors are processors that allow you to control the dynamics of a signal — extremes of loudness or softness — and boy, are they ever versatile. You can use them on the front end while tracking (recording) instruments to ward off any stray transients. You can use them to level off an erratic performance. And you can use them to raise the overall apparent level of a mixed song. In this section, you explore the first use of compression: the control of transients. (You can find out about the other ways to use compression in Book 6, Chapter 3 and in Book 7, Chapter 2.)
The compressor is an invaluable tool when you record digitally because it enables you to record at high levels without worrying as much about digital clipping. The only problem is that the careful use of compression is an art that normally takes a while to get the hang of. Don’t worry, though. In this chapter, you get some guidelines for using compression. And in Book 6, Chapter 4, I offer quite a few conservative compression settings for a variety of instruments to get you started.
Compressors have a series of dials that allow you to adjust several parameters:
When you start to record, you discover an almost infinite number of ways to set up your mics. I can’t go into them all here (as if I really knew them all, anyway), but what I can do is share the miking approaches that I use and have found to work for me. Okay, they’re not just my approaches; they’re pretty common ways for miking a variety of instruments.
Regardless of the type of studio you have or the style of music that you record, you’ll probably record vocals at some point. And unfortunately, vocals are one of the most challenging instruments to do well. First, you have to find the right mic for the person who’s singing, and then you need to try different approaches in order to get the best sound out of him or her. Fortunately, you’re in luck. In the next few sections, I lead you through the (sometimes complicated) process of getting good lead and backup vocal sounds.
To get the best recording of vocals possible, you need a dead room — a room with no reverberation. (Book 2, Chapter 1 has some tips on how to deaden your room.) Recording vocals in a dead room gives a sense of “presence” and allows you to add compression to the vocals without making them sound distant. (That “distance” results because the compressor raises the level of the background noise, particularly the reverberation from a live room that bounces the sound around a lot.)
The easiest way to deaden your room for vocal recording is to hang curtains, carpet, or blankets around the room, or to use the absorbent side of the reflector/absorber panels that I discuss in Book 2, Chapter 1. Try to cover the area in front — and to both sides — of the vocal with sound-absorbent materials. (If you use the reflector/absorber panels described in Book 2, Chapter 1, you’d better use stands because the panels are only four feet tall.)
You have a lot of options for miking vocals. The type of mic you use dictates where you place it. Here’s the gist:
Dynamic mic: Dynamic mics sound best when you place them close to the singer’s mouth. The effect that you get is gritty. (Huh? Okay, by gritty, I mean dirty. That’s no help either? Let me see… .)
Dynamic mics produce a midrange-dominated sound: The high frequencies aren’t reproduced well. You’ll find that when a singer sings with the mic right in front of his or her mouth, the sound lacks even more high frequencies because of the proximity effect. That is, close range enhances the low-frequency response. What you get is a deep, bass-heavy sound that’s often described as gritty or dirty. This type of sound can be great for matching the mood of some styles of rock and blues music.
To set up a dynamic mic for this purpose, just put it on a stand so the singer can get his or her mouth right up against the windscreen. With this type of singing style, I recommend a compressor setting that pumps and breathes — that is, you can hear the compressor working. See my discussion of compression in Book 6, Chapter 4 for a recommended setting.
Large-diaphragm condenser mic: Large-diaphragm condenser mics are those most commonly used for vocals. These mics can clearly reproduce the entire audible frequency spectrum, emphasizing the low mids (200 to 500 Hz) slightly at the same time. What you get is a nice warm, full-bodied sound. (That sounds like I’m describing a wine.) The proximity effect (how close the singer is to the mic) determines how nice and warm-bodied the sound is. The closer the singer is, the deeper and richer the tone can be.
When you set up a large-diaphragm condenser mic for vocals, place the mic in such a way that the nasty sibilants (the sound from singing S and Sh sounds) and pesky plosives (pops from singing P, K, and T syllables) don’t mess up your recordings. To deal with plosives and sibilants, you can either use a pop filter (see Book 2, Chapter 1) or have the singer sing past (instead of right into) the mic. If you want the singer to sing past the mic, you can
Small-diaphragm condenser mic: Small-diaphragm condenser mics create a much brighter, airier sound than their large-diaphragm cousins. You don’t get the low-mid warmth of the large-diaphragm beast, so a small-diaphragm mic probably won’t be your first choice as a vocal mic unless (for example) you’re recording a female vocalist with a soprano voice and you want to catch the more ethereal quality of her higher frequencies.
You set up a small-diaphragm mic the same way you set up a large diaphragm mic.
Ribbon mic: A ribbon mic is a good choice if you’re looking for an intimate, crooner-type sound. (Think Frank Sinatra.) The ribbon mic is thought to add a silky sound to the singer’s voice, produced by a slight drop-off in the high frequencies (not as severe as you’d get from a dynamic mic). To my drum-abused ears, ribbon mics have a kind of softness that large-diaphragm condenser mics don’t have. The sound is more even, without the pronounced low-mid effect.
If you use a ribbon mic, you can set it up the same way you set up a condenser mic. You just need to be more careful about singing directly into a ribbon mic because the ribbon can break if you sing, speak, or breathe too hard into it.
To record backup vocals, you can either track each part separately (using the same mic placement techniques that I describe earlier), or you can have all the backup singers sing at once into one or two mics. If you go for the latter method, you can use a stereo pair of mics, a figure-8 mic, or an omnidirectional mic.
If you use a stereo pair, I recommend setting them up in a coincident X–Y pattern. Have the vocalists stand next to each other, facing the mics at a distance of about three or four feet. Either large- or small-diaphragm mics work best for this setup. Check out Figure 3-9 for a neat top view of this arrangement.
If you choose to use a figure-8 mic, the singers can be placed at opposite sides of the mic (see Figure 3-10). The advantage of this setup is that the singers can look at each other while they sing, which helps keep the vocals tight.
An omnidirectional mic can also work well for backup vocals. In this case, the singers stand in a circle around the mic, as shown in Figure 3-11.
Miking your electric guitar is a personal thing. Every guitar player, it seems to me (although I don’t play guitar, so what do I know?), spends an awful lot of time getting his or her “sound.” If you’re a real guitar player, you undoubtedly take great pride in getting your sound exactly right on tape — er, disc. You likely spend countless hours tweaking your amp and adjusting the mic to get it just right. On the other hand, if you’re not a (harrumph) “real” guitar player, you might just want to record the part and get it over with. Either way, you can start looking for that perfect guitar sound by placing your mics in one (or more) of the ways that I outline later in this section.
Whether you play through a small jazz chorus amp or power-chord your way through a six-foot Marshall stack, the room that you play in has less impact on your sound than it does if you play drums or sing. For the most part, look for a room that is fairly dead — a room without natural reverberation. You can always add effects later.
Guitar miking involves mostly spot mics, so your only consideration when recording a guitar and using an amp is how your neighbors feel about the noise, er, your most excellent guitar playing.
The type of mic you choose depends largely on the type of sound you’re looking for. For example, if you’re looking for a distorted rock guitar sound with effects, you can get by just fine with a dynamic mic. If you favor a clean sound, a small-diaphragm condenser mic might work better for you. If you’re going for a warm, full-bodied sound, try using a large-diaphragm condenser mic.
No matter which type of mic you use, you get the best sound from your amp speakers by putting the mic about 2–12 inches away from the cabinet, with the mic pointing directly at the cone of one of the amp speakers (specifically, the center of the speaker, which is that cone-shaped thing in the box). You can see this positioning in Figure 3-12.
You might want to experiment with how far the mic is from the amp and the angle at which you point it. Sometimes just a slight movement in or out, left or right, can make all the difference in the world. You can even try pointing the mic at different speakers (if your amp has more than one) because each speaker has a slightly different sound.
If you can’t quite get the sound that you want from your amp with the one mic pointed at the speaker cone, try adding a second mic about three or four feet away — also pointed directly at the speaker cone — to get a more ambient sound. This arrangement might also give your sound more life, especially if you have a room with natural reverberation. If you add a second mic, however, remember to watch for phase differences between the mics and make adjustments accordingly. (I discuss phase cancellation earlier in this chapter.)
When you mic an electric bass, getting a good sound can be a real bear. Your two adversaries are muddiness (lack of definition) and thinness (a pronounced midrange tone). These seem almost polar-opposite characteristics, but they can both exist at the same time. I outline the best way to avoid these problems in the following sections.
The sound of an electric bass guitar can get muddy awfully fast. Your best bet is to choose a room that doesn’t have a lot of reflective surfaces (such as paneled walls and wooden floors) that bounce the sound around. A dead room is easier to work with. Don’t make your room too dead, however, or it just sucks the life out of your amp’s tone. If you can get your amp to sound good in your room, placing the mic properly is easy.
Because the bass guitar produces low frequencies, a dynamic mic or a large-diaphragm condenser mic works well. I personally avoid using small-diaphragm condensers and ribbon mics for an electric bass, but try them if you want. Who knows? You might end up with an awesome bass track.
Mic placement for the electric bass is similar to the guitar; you place a single mic 2–12 inches away from one of the speakers. Sometimes, with bass, you can angle the mic and let the speaker’s sound kind of drift past the diaphragm. Potentially, it’s a great sound. For a bass, skip the distant mic (which generally just adds muddiness to the sound).
At the risk of offending banjo, dobro, or ukulele players, I’m lumping all guitarlike (strummed or picked) acoustic string instruments together. I know, they all sound and play differently, but the microphone-placement techniques are similar for all these instruments. Allow me to explain.
Because all these instruments have a resonating chamber and are played with the instrument facing forward, you can pretty much use the same mic placement for any of them. You use different types of mics for different instruments, and I get to that in a minute.
For recording acoustic instruments, the room plays a role in the sound that you end up recording. Unless you have a great-sounding room, you want to minimize its impact on your instrument’s sound. You can do this in a couple of ways:
For example, if your studio is in a spare bedroom with carpeting and that awful popcorn stuff on the ceiling, you can put a couple of the reflector panels around your guitar player and the mic. This adds some reverberation to your guitar. Any unwanted reflections from the ceiling or walls are shielded from the mics because the absorber sides of the panels are facing the rest of the room.
I prefer to use condenser mics when recording acoustic instruments. The type of condenser mic you use depends on the overall tonal quality that you want to capture or emphasize. For example, if a guitar has a nice, woody sound that you want to bring out in the recording, a large-diaphragm condenser mic is a good choice. On the other hand, if you’re trying to capture the brightness of a banjo, a small-diaphragm mic is a better choice.
You can position your microphone in a variety of ways, and each accents certain aspects of the instrument’s sound. Even a slight adjustment to the mic can have a significant impact on the sound. You might have to experiment quite a bit to figure out exactly where to put a mic.
To help with your experimentation, listen to the guitar carefully and move the mic around (closer in and farther out, to the left and right) until you find a spot that sounds particularly good. You need to get your ears close to the guitar to do this.
Here are some suggestions to get you started:
There’s nothing like the sound of a skilled horn player. Sure, you can use a synthesizer or sampler to play horns, but it’s not quite the same. Luckily, horns, such as trumpets, trombones, and saxophones, use similar miking techniques, so if you want to mic horns, you don’t have to understand a ton of different techniques.
Because of the high volume levels of most horns and the fact that you mic them fairly closely, you don’t get a ton of impact from the acoustics of the room. Unless your room sounds really bad (for example, a small spare bedroom with carpeting and a low ceiling), you can deal with any room sound that bleeds into the mic.
If you have a small room that adds an unwanted sound to the instrument, surround the horn player with acoustic panels; the setup is similar to what I describe in the section “Vocals,” earlier in this chapter. You can experiment with using either the reflective or absorptive side of the panels to record the sound that you want. Generally speaking, err on the side of a more dead room — you can always add reverb later.
For most horns, a decent condenser mic — large- or small-diaphragm — works well. If you want a richer tone, a ribbon mic is the way to go. In fact, whenever I mic horns, I pull out a ribbon mic first, and it usually stays out until the session is over.
You can place the mic from 3 inches to a foot or more from the instrument, depending on the instrument and the sound you’re looking for. For example, a trumpet, because of its high sound-pressure levels (SPLs, or volume), would sound best with the mic a little farther away than the placement for a tenor sax. This is especially true with ribbon mics, because too much pressure can blow the ribbon.
Most horns generally sound better if the mic is placed just to the side of the bell (the part where the sound comes out). This keeps the SPL that the mic picks up low enough to avoid distortion and not blow your precious ribbon. For some of the louder instruments, choose a condenser mic with a high SPL rating and/or a pad switch, or move the mic away from the instrument a bit. (A pad switch reduces the amount of sound — usually by 10dB to 20dB — that the mic’s internal circuits process, allowing you to have a louder signal without distortion.)
If you want to record more than one horn instrument at a time (a couple of trombones, for instance), you can use a figure-8 condenser mic and position each horn player on either side of the mic. As an alternative, use one or more mics a couple feet away from the players.
If you’re lucky enough to have a real piano to record, you’ll probably want to record it live rather than use a piano patch on a synthesizer. The following sections give you suggestions on how to effectively mic a piano.
Pianos can be tough to record if your room doesn’t sound great. Because of the size of the instrument — especially if it’s a grand or a baby grand piano — you need a large room with a high ceiling to get the best sound. If you have an upright piano in a living room, for example, you may find it easier to just record a piano patch (sound) on a decent synthesizer.
If your room doesn’t add to the sound of the piano, use a closer mic placement than you would if your room sounded great.
Condenser mics are a must for recording piano. Either small- or large-diaphragm mics work well. Your mic placement depends largely on the sound you want. Here are a few examples:
Stringed instruments — violin and fiddle, viola, cello, and acoustic bass — can be a lot of fun to mic. They have a rich tone and produce an almost unlimited variety of textures. Each instrument has a different tonal spectrum, but because they all have the same basic shape and design (f-holes, strings, bows, and so on), they can all be thought of similarly. You can try any of the techniques that I describe for one of these instruments on the rest of them. For example, try the mic technique from the cello on the fiddle and see what you think. Your options are many, so experiment and use what you like.
As with any other acoustic instrument, the room can have profound impacts on the sound that you capture. Unless you have a really nice-sounding room, try to isolate the instrument from the room’s sound. In this case, spot miking is the best choice. On the other hand, if you have access to a great-sounding room or concert hall in which to record, by all means add room mics or use a stereo-miking technique.
My favorite type of mic for classical string instruments is a small-diaphragm condenser unit, although on occasion I reach for a large-diaphragm condenser mic. A dynamic mic may produce an interesting effect, but it doesn’t capture the most natural sound.
You can place the mic for each of the string instruments as follows:
If you’re like most musicians, getting great-sounding drums seems like one of the world’s great mysteries. (You know, along the lines of how the pyramids were built or how to cure cancer.) You can hear big, fat drums on great albums but when you try to record your drums, they always end up sounding more like cardboard boxes than drums. Fret not (hey, at least I didn’t say that in the guitar section) because I have solutions for you.
The single most important part of getting killer drum sounds is to make sure your drums are tuned properly and that they have good heads on them. (Okay, that’s two things.) Seriously, if you spend some time getting the drums to sound good in your room, you’re already halfway to the drum sound of your dreams. There isn’t space to go into detail here (especially if you play a large kit), but if you want specific drum-tuning guidance, you can do a search on the Internet or (ahem) check out a copy of my book, Drums For Dummies (Wiley).
After you get your drums tuned as well as you can, the next step is to take care of any rattles that might be coming from the stands or mounting hardware. Tighten up any loose hardware and move any stands that may be touching one another. You might need to make some small adjustments to the pitches of your drums if they’re causing any hardware to rattle.
If you still have some ringing or unwanted overtones, you can deaden the drums slightly. Cotton gauze taped lightly on the edge of the head (away from the drummer) is often enough. If you want a really dry sound on your snare drum, you can use the wallet trick: Have the drummer place his or her wallet on the head. (Use the drummer’s wallet — it’ll probably be lighter because it probably doesn’t have any money in it.)
When the tuning of your drums is perfect, you’re ready to start placing some microphones. You can choose from an unlimited number of miking configurations, only a few of which I can cover here. (It would take a whole book to cover them all.)
The room influences the drums’ sound more than it influences that of the other instruments. If you’re looking for a big drum sound, you need a fairly live room (one with lots of reflection).
I know you’re thinking, “But all I have to work with is a bedroom for a studio, and it’s carpeted.” No worries; you can work with that. Remember, if you have a home studio, potentially you have your whole home to work with. Here are a couple of ideas to spark your imagination:
The mic of choice for most recording engineers when recording a kick drum is a dynamic mic. In fact, you can find some large-diaphragm, dynamic mics specifically designed to record kick drums.
No matter where you place the mic, you can reduce the amount of boominess that you get from the drum by placing a pillow or blanket inside the drum. Some people choose to let the pillow or blanket touch the inside head. I prefer to keep it a couple of inches away from the inside head, but sometimes it’s okay to let it touch the outside head.
That said, you can place your mic in several ways (all conveniently illustrated in Figure 3-14):
A snare drum is probably the most important drum in popular music. The bass guitar can cover the kick drum’s rhythm, and the rest of the drums aren’t part of the main groove. A good, punchy snare drum can make a track, whereas a weak, thin one can eliminate the drive that most popular music needs.
Because the snare drum is located so close to the other drums (especially the hi-hats), a cardioid pattern mic is a must. The most common mic for a snare drum is the trusty Shure SM57. The mic is generally placed between the hi-hats and the small tom-tom about one or two inches from the snare drum head (see Figure 3-15). Point the diaphragm directly at the head. You might need to make some minor adjustments to eliminate any bleed from the hi-hats. This position gives you a nice, punchy sound.
If you want a crisper tone, you can add a second mic under the drum. Place this mic about an inch or two from the head with the diaphragm pointing at the snares. Make minor adjustments to minimize any leakage from the hi-hats.
If you have the available tracks, record each snare mic to a separate track and blend the two later during mixdown. If you don’t have the available tracks, blend them until you have the sound that you want. You can also try reversing the phase of the bottom mic. (Some preamps have a phase switch for each channel, or you can reverse the phase by choosing AudioSuite⇒ Other⇒ Invert from the main menu.) Some people prefer the sound of the bottom mic this way.
Tom-toms sound best when you use a dynamic mic. For mounted toms (the ones above the kick drum), you can use one or two mics. If you use one mic, place it between the two drums about four to six inches away from the heads. (Figure 3-16 shows this placement option.) If you use two mics, place one above each drum about one to three inches above the head.
If you want a boomy sound with less attack, you can place a mic inside the shell with the bottom head off the drum.
Floor toms are miked the same way as mounted tom-toms:
Hi-hats are generally part of the main groove — as such, they’re important enough that you want to spend some time getting a good sound. You’ll probably have problems with a few other mics on the drum set picking up the hi-hats, particularly the snare drum mic and overhead mics. Some people don’t even bother miking the hi-hats for this reason.
I like to mic hi-hats because, to me, these cymbals often sound too trashy through the snare-drum mic. If you mic the hi-hats, make sure that the snare-drum mic is picking up as little of the hi-hats as possible by placing it properly and/or using a noise gate (a dynamic processor used to filter unwanted noise).
You can use either a dynamic mic or, better yet, a small diaphragm condenser mic for the hi-hats. The dynamic mic gives you a trashier sound, and the small diaphragm condenser mic produces a bright sound. You can work with either by adjusting the EQ. I usually add just a little bit (4 dB or so) of a shelf equalizer set at 10 kHz to add just a little sheen to the hi-hats. Book 6, Chapter 3 covers EQ in detail.
Place the mic about three to four inches above the hi-hats and point it down. The exact placement of the mic is less important than the placement of the other instrument mics because of the hi-hats’ tone. Just make sure your mic isn’t so close that you hit it instead of the cymbal.
You want to know one secret to the huge drum sound of the Led Zeppelin drummer, John Bonham? Finesse. He understood (I’m guessing, because I never really talked to him about this) that the drums sound louder and bigger in a mix if the cymbals are quieter in comparison. So he played his cymbals softly and hit the drums pretty hard. This allowed the engineer to boost the levels of the drums without having the cymbals drown everything else out. Absolutely brilliant.
Because the drums bleeding into the overhead mics is inevitable and the overhead mics are responsible for providing much of the drums’ presence in a mix, playing the cymbals softly allows you to get more of the drums in these mics. This helps the drums sound bigger.
Small-diaphragm condenser mics capture the cymbals’ high frequencies well, though many digital recordists like the way a ribbon mic mellows the cymbals. You can mic the cymbals by placing mics 12 to 18 inches above each cymbal or by using overhead mics set 1 to 3 feet above the cymbals (see the next section).
Most of the time, you want to have at least one (but preferably two) ambient mics on the drums, if for no other reason than to pick up the cymbals. These (assuming you use two mics) are overhead mics, and (as the name implies) you place them above the drum set (usually by means of a boom stand). The most common types of mics to use for overheads are large- and small-diaphragm condenser mics because they pick up the high frequencies in the cymbals and give the drum set’s sound a nice sheen (brightness). You also might want to try a pair of ribbon mics to pick up a nice, sweet sound on the overheads.
To mic the drum set with overhead mics, you can use either the X–Y coincident technique or spaced stereo pairs. Place them one to two feet above the cymbals, just forward of the drummer’s head. Place X–Y mics in the center and set up spaced stereo pairs so they follow the 3:1 rule. (The mics should be set up three to six feet apart if they are one to two feet above the cymbals.) This counters any phase problems. Point the mic down toward the drums, and you’re ready to record. Figure 3-17 shows both of these setups.
Hand drums can be anything from the familiar conga to unusual drums such as the North African tar, Middle Eastern doumbek, or Brazilian Pandeiro. Because you might encounter many types of hand drums, this section gives you some general guidelines when recording any hand drum.
Your selection in mics depends on the type of drum and its tonal characteristics. For example, conga drums occupy the middle of the frequency spectrum and produce a loud sound that a large diaphragm condenser mic can capture well. Or if you want a tighter, drier sound, you can use a dynamic mic. If you choose the dynamic mic, the mic colors the sound of your recording.
If you want to record any number of the smaller, higher-pitched hand drums, use either a large or small diaphragm condenser mic and skip the dynamic mic altogether.
Mic placement also varies considerably among the various hand drums. Listen to the sound of the drum and find a place where you like what you hear. For the most part, placing the mic anywhere from one to three feet from the drum creates the fullest sound. If you want a lot of attack, you can place the mic closer. You lose some of the drum’s depth, however, when you place the mic closer than one foot.
Miscellaneous percussion instruments, such as shakers and triangles, are nice additions to many styles of music. These instruments sound best with a good condenser mic. I choose a large or small diaphragm mic, depending on the characteristics that I want to pick up. For instance, a shaker can sound great with a large diaphragm mic because this mic brings out the lower frequencies of the instrument slightly and softens the overall sound a bit.
Most of the time, the room doesn’t have a huge effect on percussion instruments because you mic them closely. If your room does get in the way, use the acoustic panels in much the same way that I suggest for vocals earlier in this chapter (partially surround the mic and musician with baffles).
Both large and small diaphragm mics work well for percussion. The main thing to remember when recording percussion instruments is that they can have a high SPL (Sound Pressure Level, or just plain volume), so you might need to pad the mic, move it back, or turn it sideways from the sound source.
As far as mic placement goes, I like to put a single mic anywhere from 6–18 inches away, depending on the size of the instrument. For example, because maracas are loud, I put the mic back a bit (18 inches), whereas with an egg shaker, I find that 6 to 8 inches often sounds best. But when I record an agogô bell or an Afuche, I like to have a little room in the mix to give the instrument more depth. In this case, I mic from a couple feet away.