When discussing how to record drums, I think it’s useful to have a look back at how exactly we got here with all of the options we have today. With a bit of experimentation you just might find that somewhere along this rough timeline there’s a method that works best for you.

Without going way back into the early primitive days, let’s look at pop recording starting at roughly the 1950s.

In the beginning of pop recording we started with usually a single mic over the kit and one in front of the bass drum. Remember, of course, that the band was recording live so that the drums were probably ‘leaking’ a bit everywhere.

As we progress, and especially as rock starts to become the ‘thing’, a closer more competitive and aggressive sound is desired and people start to add mics. Some people add a snare mic (sometimes under the snare), some add a mic on the floor tom side. Some people start to play with panning those mics. The bass drum front head is often removed and the mic moved in closer or inside. Padding is added inside the drum for a harder, deader, hit. Some people start to muffle the snare or toms; wallets and beer mats and tape starts to be employed.

As more channels on the desks become available people add mics to the things they want to be able to bring out, much in the way that classical music engineers start adding spot mics to their orchestral pickup. Some people add a high hat mic, some start mic’ing toms (again, sometimes from underneath!). As the industry moves more firmly into stereo releases, often a second overhead is added for spread.

And at the same time, as more tracks become available, we start to think about separation. Drums are put into booths, and the singer is more often overdubbed. But after a while, with the super-dead and close sound in vogue, people start to feel that something is also lost in the size and depth of the sound from having the drums so isolated, so room mics start to be added. Eventually, we end up with some people putting a mic, or even two mics, on every single piece of the kit and multiple room mic pairs and on and on.

But do you really need all that?

Less Is More?

More and more people are starting to realise the sonic benefits of fewer mics on a kit; better phase relationships, more of a unified single instrument feeling as opposed to disparate elements and so on. My typical “go-to”, set up for drums is a mic in the bass drum, a mic on the snare, and two mics picking up the overall kit, one in front looking down and in at the hanger toms and one on the floor tom side looking across. I consider these my whole kit left and right pickup and it’s extremely rare that I don’t have enough cymbals in that balance so as to require actual “overheads”.

I might add a room mic, or two, placed out in front of the kit and some distance away. But that’s almost always it for me. I find the toms sound fuller and more realistically ‘placed’ than with super-close mics, and the snare benefits from being picked up in the stereo picture even while being augmented up the centre by its close spot mic, and the whole picture is clearer and more phase coherent than with more microphones in play. It’s simple, and usually gives me all I need.

Now does this require a good internal balance from the drummer so that, for example, the cymbals don’t overwhelm toms in the balance? Yes. But I would argue that any good drum recording, using any recording method, really requires that. Jimmy Page has said that when recording those big, roomy, Zeppelin tracks if he heard in the control room that the ride cymbal was washing out the drums, he didn’t look for an engineering solution, he’d simply go out and tell John Bonham and the drummer would adjust his playing to fix it!

Now I can hear the chorus of some of you saying “but my drummer is no Bonham!” But the response to that surely should be: ‘Right. Your drummer should be a lot less precious about making changes for the benefit of the recording than a drum genius!’ As I know I’ve harped on before, looking for complicated solutions when a simple one exists is usually the wrong choice.

Recording Into A DAW Has Advantages

This isn’t to say that a simple approach completely locks you into being unable to adjust balances in the mix. One example that comes immediately to mind is that I will, if necessary, separate the regions on those stereo overall kit mics where the tom fills occur and simply clip gain them up as needed. The fact that, in today’s DAW world, we have so many brilliant options for manipulating sound after the fact should allow you to feel more comfortable with simpler mic approaches, not less so.

I’m not by any means saying the way I tend to start is the only way or the only “right” way. The situation, and what you’re hearing, should inform your choices in the moment. Just like that classical engineer who isn’t hearing enough flutes adds a spot mic on the flute section, if in a particular context you don’t have enough hi-hat then perhaps you add a hi-hat mic. My point here is that lots of times you don’t need that hi-hat mic (or more flutes).

By thinking about the history of drum recording, and adding mics when you hear they’re needed, as opposed to because you think, or read, you just should, you might very well find your drums sound better and sit better in the mix.