Drum miking is an art form you might be missing. How many drum mic’s do you really need? Do you have that many mixer channels to spare? Are you feeding your drummer the right mix? Four microphones might be all you need.
My current stage setup includes an acoustic drum kit with eight microphones. Eight? Mmmm, that sounds about right. The larger the room, the more control you want over the drums. What I mean by that statement is that in small rooms, you can get a lot of stage volume out of your drums without microphones. I occasionally work in a small venue with ZERO drum mic’s…and it works because the room is small enough.
The eight microphones are easy to fill up when you have microphones for the kick, snare, individual toms, cymbals, high-hat, and then the overhead microphones. This gives great control of the whole drum kick and allows me to emphasize different parts of the drum kit depending on the needs of the song. But what about when you don’t have enough channels or enough mic’s or wonder if you really even need that many in your room?
Welcome Glyn Johns
Glyn Johns is a recording artist who has worked with many of the big name bands from the classic rock era. He is even attributed to giving the Eagles their distinct sound. One of the innovations in drum mic’ing came from him and is called the Glyn Johns technique.
The Glyn Johns technique uses only FOUR microphones for capturing a full drum kit. I’ve even it seen using three but for today, we’ll use four.
- The first dynamic microphone is placed 6-to-12 inches from the resonance head of the kick drum. Gotta mic the kick!
- The next two mic’s are used as overhead microphones. The first of these should be about 4 feet over the snare and it should capture the full sound of the drum kit. The second overhead isn’t really on overhead at all but the idea is the same. Place it to the right of the floor tom, about 6 inches above the floor tom head and pointed directly at the snare drum. Consider it a side-fill mic that gives you a different kit sound. Use condenser microphones for these two “overheads.”
- Finally, mic the snare a few inches above the head.
You now have two overhead microphones that capture the full drum kit and you have control over the kick and snare. When mixing, you’d bring in the overheads, mix those for the best blend, and then add in the kick and snare for filling out the mix as needed.
How does it sound? I found this unique video of someone playing with the Glyn Johns technique to a Paramore song, minus the drum tracks. Enjoy.
Monitoring
What about the drummer? Pipe out an overhead to his monitor. Then, as needed, bring in the kick and the snare. The key to making this work is in having the overheads capture the full kit sound. You don’t want them to be too heavy on one kit piece.
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Does it matter how big the kit is? IOW’s how many drums i.e. 4 piece vs. a 7 piece?
By that I mean three rack toms, two floor toms vs. 1 rack and 1 floor?
Thanks!
– John
It’s really a matter of how much could you want and how much you NEED. For example, if you want to be able to punch up the toms, then I’d go with individual mics. But if the band plays songs where the drum kit is never highlighted in a song or figures prominently into the hook of the song, then go individual. Have a practice with just the drum and start with four mics and add more until you get what you want.
Can this technique be used in a live setting? Won’t the overhead mics pick up all the other stage noise…guitar amps, for example?
Alan, a good set of condenser microphones, used for overheads, will pick up only the drums given that most drums are behind a drum shield or within a drum cage. As far as guitar amps, part of properly setting up a stage is making sure amps aren’t pointed toward other microphones.
What about without a drum shield? As a drummer and sound tech, I cringe whenever the idea of getting one is brought up. Dynamics and proper stick selection goes a long way.
That being said, our church has 3 floor wedges (if an electric guitar is used we mic the amp off stage) and the stage is boxy and not very deep (maybe 15’d x 20’w and 30′ ceilings) . On a whim I used an SM57 pointed between the snare and HH and an SM58 above the ride and toms as somewhat of an overhead. (The church doesn’t have any condensers but is open to buying some it needed.) It worked well enough for what we needed but the amount of gain required to bring out the brushes made me nervous. Would condensers as overheads be okay to use with the floor wedges or would more SM57s placed around the kit be better in that situation? (Looking to get the DMK57-52 kit to start.) This would be simply for amplification, not recording.
Thanks for your help!
All depends on where the sound from the floor monitors bounces off. If you can avoid that, possibly by pointing it left-to-right, then you should be ok with overheads. That being said, if you use brushes, then I’d probably use as much close miking as possible. If I was in your situation, I’d start with a single condenser for an overhead. If that works and picks up the brushes on the drums, then great. If not, close mic everything and you could still use the condenser elsewhere on the kit.
Sounds like a good place to start. Any suggestions on a good budget condenser? (Mind you we don’t have any at the moment, only dynamic mics.) I’ve seen you mention the MXL-603S on another post and I’ve also seen the Samson C02 get good reviews. Would either of those be adequate. is one better than the other or would I be wasting money buying too cheap?
The room I work in is so small that this has been my mic setup for the past 3 years. When I work with someone who is really heavy on the skins and cymbals I just don’t use the overheads, and sometimes don’t need the Snare Mic. When someone has a great deal of control instead of volume I can get a wonderful mix, and even add a little reverb to rim-shot snare on slower songs. I don’t see myself using more than 4 drum mics in this facility ever again…
A quick question on the last point about the drummer’s monitor:
I want to understand the thinking behind putting some drum mix in the drummer’s monitor so i’ll ask the naive question: isn’t the drum kit already loud enough for the drummer to hear? Is this IEM-specific or is it something to do with hearing all the sounds come from the same direction?
Paul, it’s a very good question. Regardless of in-ears being used or not, they need to hear the drum kit pieces in the right relationship to each other as well as the other instruments and voices. For example, the drum kit is plenty loud but if they only had a floor wedge, a cymbal-heavy musical passage could cover up the kick drum just from sheer volume. Place them in a drum cage and they need the in-ear route.
That is a good question and one I struggled with as a drummer was the mix. For me, I’m a fairly light player and we use an aviom system where I use ear buds and without any drums in my mix, all I hear is band and vocals and I tend to play a lot louder then. With a mix I can hear myself really well and can adjust my dynamics much easier when I’m hearing it in the mix as opposed to trying to do it just hearing the band in my ears and me just hearing the ambient kit.
I haven’t used “Glyn Johns” myself, but whenever I have seen it described, there is one more detail: measure the distances from the center of the snare to mic 2 and mic 3 (the “overheads”) and make sure they are equal.
One drum micing technique that I’ve found is great is the Recorderman technique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X_kMItRI2s
Gabe, thanks for the great drum mic link!
How many drum mics do I need? more! =D
Honestly though, I was pleasantly surprised by the sound of this set up. In the posted video, I was not in love with the sound of the toms, felt like they got lost at times. Here is another demo video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtkgV93oOI This is the three mic technique without the close snare mic.
Seems like a great mic technique, especially for those with limited inputs or mics. But it seems very dependent on having a good natural sound to your drum set.
Thanks for the tip. I will have to use this next time I have to mix with less inputs.