In this free video tutorial for Production Expert, James Ivey once again makes a visit to Woodworm Studios in Oxfordshire UK to visit Engineer and Producer Mike Exeter to record drums for a track that James and Mike started work on earlier in the year for our series on recording electric guitar. This time they look at getting the best kick drum sound using two microphones.
Mike starts by putting a Shure Beta 91A into the mic and sitting it on the damping material inside the drum. Then instead of putting the WA-47 Jnr outside the kick drum resonator head, Mike chooses to put it inside the drum so as not pick up any unwanted flap from the outer head. This also aids with keeping the two mics perfectly in phase which is all-important for a nice solid sounding kick drum.
Apologies that the quality of the sound on the conversation in this video is not up to our usual standard. We had an equipment failure on the day and had to resort to the camera mic but we felt the content was worth running nonetheless.
You can also check out this next video in which James reviews the Shure Beta 91A in one of his earliest reviews.
In the next tutorial in this series, Mike and James talk about an interesting technique for getting a clean, clear and un-cluttered tom-tom sound.