By Chuck Kirkpatrick

MY LAST WORD ON RECORDING DRUMS

I'd like to quote from an article I read years ago about songwriters and recording. "How many people walk down the street humming a snare drum sound?" That made me laugh for days. Then I thought of the countless hours my fellow engineers and I spent screwing with mic selection, placements, head dampening....all for the sake of getting a great drum sound, with little or no thought on what we were really supposed to be doing; recording MUSIC...recording SONGS!

To this day, I steadfastly maintain that the worst feature ever invented for a recording console was the SOLO button. Using this button was akin to using a magnifying glass to paint a picture with your eyeballs a half inch from the canvas. People look at pictures, not at brush strokes. A 'drum sound' is the sum total of all the mics used, their placement, their balance, and most importantly, the space occupied by the drums and the mics during the recording. At first, we engineers thought that using more microphones - one for each element of the drum kit - would give us more control over the sound. Indeed it did. What we forgot was that drum kits are heard by most people as a WHOLE, at a nominal distance from and in a defined acoustical environment - which probably has more to do with the overall sound of the drums than any of the kit's individual elements themselves. And yet we drove ourselves crazy, soloing up every mic placed just inches from each element of the kit, just to hear all the ringing, buzzing weirdness that had always been there anyway and an integral part of the overall drum sound itself. Out came the gaffer's tape, the blankets, the wallets, what-have-you....in an attempt to make all that stuff go away.

I will never forget a day in the early 1970's when I walked into a well-known Los Angeles recording studio and saw the studio drum kit. To my amazement, every square inch of every tom tom top head was completely covered with gaffer's tape, as if the heads were made of tape alone. "Keeps 'em from ringing....".

Such was the era of disco and drum sounds in general. It got the point where snare drums were being made to sound like deadened floor toms...or large boxes of sand being hit with brooms.

Thank God we got through that, and things began to go the other way with more ambience becoming the norm. Still, the multiple mic technique prevailed because we had to have that control. But did we ever stop to wonder what it must have been like for the drummer who spent countless hours behind his kit and was used to hearing it from where he sat and then hearing it back on tape the way we thought everyone else should hear it? Must have have been a bit strange, but God bless 'em, they trusted us engineers.

Volumes have been written by hundreds of engineers about their drum recording techniques and few two are alike. There does seem to be a common thread where general placement is concerned; two overheads, kick, snare, hat, toms, etc. There are those who use two, even three mics on a single element (top and bottom of snare and toms). Add to all that, the room mics. Things begin to differ where mic choice is made; condenser, dynamic, or ribbon...large or small capsule. Then comes choice of mic preamp; tube or solid state. Add to all this the effects; EQ and compression. The choices are endless, the variety of techniques even more so. And when a song becomes a chart hit, every engineer wants to know what was used during the session...which mics, what preamps, which compressors. Well, at the end of the day, none of that means dooky-poo. The SONG was a hit, not the damn drum sound. One might argue that Ringo's drum sound on the early Beatles' stuff was pure crap. And in those days, the EMI lab-coated engineers had no clue how to record rock and roll drums. But boy did we ever go crazy trying to get that drum sound! Then came the drum machines! That was the end of recording as I knew it, and pretty much my career as an engineer the day I got thrown out of a session because I couldn't make the producer's machine-generated drums sound bigger. The machine was taken direct into the console which did not have any knobs on it marked "bigger". In hindsight, I suppose I could have fed a signal to the studio monitors and then mic'd the room and fed that back into the board, mixing it with the direct. But I was so against this drum machine thing and what it had done to the sound in general.....and this well-known producer was a drummer!

Thank God we got through that era and real drums came back. But with our ears now conditioned to more modern sounds, we began to find it even more painstaking to get our precious drum sound. The saddest thing I ever saw was on a session that I was hired to play guitar. I watched as this young engineer struggled for over 30 minutes trying to get a drum sound until the producer finally lost patience and said "That's enough...we're recording now...take ONE...". The poor kid had no idea what he was doing because I don't think he had ever recorded a real drum kit before much less even knew what one sounded like. All he'd ever worked with was drum machines!

To get to the technical side; the biggest problem that arises from using multiple microphones on a single instrument - and we will from now think of the drum kit and all its separate elements as such - is something known as phase shift. Phase shift really isn't a bad thing. It's how and why we are able to hear in stereo! It's how we are able to, with our eyes closed, be able to locate and point to with our finger, the source of a sound.

Close your eyes, put both your arms outstretched in front of you with your hands a couple feet apart, and snap the fingers of each hand. Left, right, left.....you can 'see' with your ears (and brain) which direction the sound is coming from, yes? Now, stuff something in one ear and do same. The one 'good' ear hears the sound regardless of where it comes from, but you cannot tell exactly "where", can you?

Ever see those ripples (small waves) emanate outward in perfect concentric circles from where a rock is dropped into still water? Sound is the same thing only much faster and invisible....just ripples of air coming from the source of the sound and hitting our eardrums. Back to the rock in the water thing. If there are a couple of corks floating on the water but at slightly different distances from where the rock first hits, they are going to be bouncing up and down at slightly different times from eachother. And at a certain difference in distance, these two corks may bob up and down exactly opposite eachother and be what we sometimes say in the audio world, "180 degrees out of phase" or to put it more simply, totally canceling eachother out.

Remember the gadget you could buy that would 'remove the singer from any recording' so you could be the singer? This was a simple device that electrically 'split' any audio signal you put into it, and took one of the two signals and reversed the phase 180 degrees. Anything that was "center" in the stereo mix was removed by virtue of "phase cancellation". All stereo recordings are traditionally mixed with the vocalist in the center, and this gadget would pretty much make anything in the center go away. Unfortunately that included the kick drum and the bass on most recordings, or anything else that was panned to the center! And if you fed it a mono signal, you got pretty much of nothing out of it whatsoever.

When we record drums, we don't want anything to really 'go away' (other than the mechanical noises and excessive ringing of heads). But by virtue of so many microphones in so many different places, phase shift is going to happen. And it is going to have the most pronounced effect on the two most important elements of the drum kit; the kick and the snare. These two elements are the 'constants' in any modern recording and they are the foundation. The cymbals and toms are primarily for accents. So here we have a drum kit with 8 or 10 mics, all of which are going to be picking up snare and kick in amounts relative to their distance from those elements. The smack of the snare will arrive first at the snare mic which of course is closest to that element. However, the same sound wave (or 'ripple' in the water) will continue on to the hi-hat mic, all the separate tom mics, and then the overheads, all arriving at slightly later times. All those microphone diaphragms are going to be moving back and forth from that 'ripple' but not in sync with eachother. And this is why many engineers will tear their hair out trying to understand why, after spending an hour on their big fat snare sound, all of that 'fat' goes away when they un-solo the snare mic. Fortunately, the remedies are many, and the fact that the separate mics them selves can be adjusted and tweaked can solve most problems. Reversing the phase of some of the mics can often help. However, this phase change will also affect other mics on the kit and subsequent sounds of those elements. It's important to stress the fact that the bottom end is most affected because of the longer wave length of the low frequencies. High frequency phase cancellation goes almost un-noticed simply because of the amounts of harmonic overtones and the shortness of the wavelengths.

Ideally, the best (and most natural) drum sound would be obtained by the use of a single microphone! There would be no phase cancellation. And a well- placed mic would pick up all the elements in proper proportion. But given the popularity of stereophonic recordings and the ability to present sound in a two dimensional (3 with Surround) image, it is necessary to use at least two microphones to achieve some 'width'. A few years ago, a microphone manufacturer offered a three-mic system for recording drums, claiming that was all you needed for the most natural sounding drums. In my opinion they were right on. Two of the mics were to be used as over heads, and the third on kick. The system worked, but you had to spend a lot of time with placement with the overheads to capture all the elements in the desired proportions.

Overhead microphones are the single most misunderstood, mis-placed, and mis-used of all the ones on a drum kit. I never cease to be amazed at the ignorance of some engineers who hang two microphones ten feet above a drum kit that are only inches apart and aimed downward exactly parallel to eachother. This placement will yield no stereo separation whatsoever and even more so will 'collapse' the stereo image of the overall kit and the room! If you're purposely going for a mono drum sound, use ONE mic! There may be a varying opinion as to what overheads are really supposed to do. In the disco close-mic era, the overheads were mainly to pick up the cymbals. Present use of overheads has become more for the purpose of capturing the kit as naturally as possible, with the individual element mics used to lift whatever needs to be brought up in the overall mix. With properly placed and properly angled overheads, it is quite possible to get a great sound with just these two mics.

It is of utmost importance that the two overhead mics be placed so that their capsules and diaphragms are at a 90 degree angle relative to each other. Without two more paragraphs to explain why, I will simply state that this angle yields the widest stereo image with the least amount of phase cancellation. As for the distance between the two overheads, this may vary by a few inches, even a foot or so. But maintaining that relative angle is critical. The ORTF system requires a distance of 7 centimeters between the two mic capsules and a placement angle of 120 degrees. The theory is that this angle and separation distance most replicates how human ears percieve sounds. Many might remember the model human head with built in mics that was used years ago to record certain things. That was based on the ORTF theory.

Let us begin our session with a simple 3 tom drum kit. We'll use one kick drum mic, one snare mic, a single mic on each tom, and our two overhead mics. Choice of mics here is not important, and everyone has their favorites. I like to place my overheads directly over the drummer's head, just high enough so he doesn't bump them when he stands and back far enough so he can't hit them. I usually space them about 6 - 8 inches apart and angled 90 degrees relative to eachother. Start by opening up the overheads. We must absolutely make sure that our overhead mics themselves are electrically in-phase by checking with the console switches. The difference will be most dramatic and obvious. The stereo 'picture' should be quite natural, as the drummer himself would hear it where he sits. The floor tom is usually the one element that needs some help, and if need be, one can move the overhead pair a little closer in the direction of that particular drum. Next, open the kick mic. While the drummer plays the kick, flip the kick channel phase switch. Hopefully there will not be a drastic difference.

Choose what sounds best, but be prepared to change it later on. Have the drummer just play a pattern and listen. You should have plenty of snare already as it is the loudest of all the elements. Have the drummer play a pattern that includes all the toms. At this point, you'll probably want to begin opening up the tom mics slightly to give the toms a little more 'meat', especially the floor tom. Try to keep it natural. Have the drummer play a pattern that involves all the cymbals, both rides and crashes. At this point, you'll decide whether or not the cymbals are a bit overbearing relative to the other elements. If so, start bringing up the tom mics, then the snare mic. At some point, you'll want to check the phase of each tom mic with the pair of overheads. This is where things can start to go crazy. Solo just one tom mic at a time with the pair of overheads. Flip the phase switch on the tom mic channel and notice any difference. I should be obvious which is correct. Do this with each separate tom mic. Hopefully, all the phase switches will be in agreement when you have finished.

I'm sure at this point, someone has said, "you forgot the hi-hat mic". In all the years I recorded drums, I rarely if ever used a hat mic. I always put one up for the drummer and/or client to see, but I never opened it. To me, a close-mic'd hi-hat sounds like absolute crap....and the hi-hat gets into every other mic by itself anyway, especially the overheads.

Okay, we've got a rough balance of the drum kit. Now to address the PANNING of these individual mics. Kick is almost always dead-center. The overheads are almost always panned hard left-right. This does NOT mean that we'll hear that stupid full left-to-right tom turn that every 70's record seem to have. Nobody hears a drum kit that way unless your sitting with your head under the drummer's ass! What's really critical - and most misunderstood - is the panning of the individual tom mics. And here is my trade secret voodoo method.

Solo up just the overheads. Have the drummer strike tom #1. Look at your stereo buss meters and observe the left-right difference. There really won't be much, and that is natural. Now, solo the #1 tom mic (un-solo the overheads!) and observe the left-right meter indication again. Turn the pan-pot for the #1 tom mic until you see the EXACT same relative difference that you saw with just the overheads! While the drummer hits just that tom, switch back and forth from solo overheads to solo #1 tom. the left-right difference should be identical. You may have to change the input level of the single tom mic to better see the difference. That's fine - you can always re-balance later....but most importantly, you have established the proper "image" or placement of that #1 tom in the kit mix. Repeat this procedure for each tom. The end result will be a drum kit with what might seem a 'narrow' stereo image compared to what you may have heard on other recordings. But keep in mind that the drum kit is just part of the ensemble and should not dominate the entire stereo picture. When we go hear a band, the drummer's toms are not set up the full width of the stage! If you find it necessary to widen the picture slightly, then pan your tom mics outward accordingly.

I find it necessary at this point to address the subject of drum mic'ing where live sound in concerned. I have gotten into more than one heated exchange with sound men on the use of overhead mics on stage. I personally do not believe in such an application, and I will back my opinion and theory by directing your attention to Sir Macca and his drummer Abe Laboriel, who uses NO overheads on his kit. The fastest way to ruin the bass sound on a live gig is to allow it to leak into other mics, and drum overheads because of their placement, their distance from the kit itself, and usual proximity to the bass amp are going to be a sponge for all that low-end slop which gets mixed together with the bass amp mic/direct, and sent out to the house. Engineers who find it absolutely necessary to use high-placed overheads would be wise to "chop" or roll off everything below 800 - 1000Hz with board EQ. Laboriel uses mics placed under the cymbals where they will capture much more of the element than any leakage from elsewhere.

In closing (thank God, you say?), it's still all about the song. Nobody has ever complained about the drum sound on a hit record!