Recording Drums

Have you ever tried to record an acoustic drum kit? You may have experienced that it is quite tricky to get a decent sound on to tape (or onto your hard drives). First you need a proper room, then you need a bunch of microphones, an equal number of preamps, and ideally an equivalent number of tracks to record onto simultaneously.

Just picking the right mics and placing them in a proper positions can be an art. Here is a video (sponsored by someone who seems to work for PreSonus) where you can learn a couple of tricks on which microphones to use for drums, and how to place them.

There is also an explanation on how to do an equalizaion of the tracks after they have been recorded in order to get a richer sound.





Notice how 2 mics are used to record the snare, and how the bottom mic needs to have its phase reversed to avoid noise cancellations. This setting must be taken into consideration whenever 2 mics are used on a drum each one on the oposite side of the drum.