Blending and EQ of Drum Kit Mics

I do for sure. Since I'm a drummer, I've gone on the quest looking for drumsound Shangri-La..

Now for one of my pet peeves.. I almost never have the overheads more than 2 drumsticks(about 2 feet) away from the drums/cymbals. The majority of the "sound" of the cymbals is the small overtones of the cymbal, not the big swishy sound you only get when you have overheads too far away. Too many folks mic far away looking for room sound from overheads, then they compress and EQ to try to get the sizzle and microdynamics back up to audible levels. All they end up doing is bringing up the room tone to unusable levels and almost always ends up a mid-range mess in my opinion. Then they try to convince you that room tone is awesome. It's not. Clean cymbals with a hint of ambiance are awesome. Room tone is just the excuse for poor recording practices.

If you want just the big swishy smooth sound, then room mics are the ticket.

Don't double up the sound by having two stereo pairs way far out. Apply the mics so that they cover the areas you want to reproduce, rather than just sticking mics everywhere and hoping for the best. (Not saying you are doing that, just saying in general..)

Another thing is don't stick the close mics too close. I'm guilty of this for years until I decided to try backing them up.

I find that well recorded drums practically mix themselves, so most of my work is getting the drums tuned and sounding good up front. I'll usually ask the drummers to deliver their drums the night before recording so I can go through and tune their drums, if they aren't willing to use the studio kit.



Some general tips:

Tom mics rarely get closer than 6" now. Point them between the place you hit and the edge.  NEVER point them perpendicular to the drum head.

Use hypercardioid mics for close mics. Some small amount of bleed is OK, but too much causes phase issues and EQ problems with other drums.  I don't care what others say,  excessive bleed is NOT your friend.  People who say bleed is ok are just being lazy and they'll end up doing too many edits, replacing the drums, gating or any combination of these things to try to make it right in the mix.  Do it right at the beginning.

Tuning is priority over mic or preamp choice for all drums! If you can't get the tone you want, then you aren't using the right drums, heads or you aren't tuning them correctly.  Even though I'm a drummer it took me like 12 years to figure this out.  

Certain drums like certain heads better than others. You cannot get a good tone from a mismatch no matter how awesome your mic/preamp/placement is.  I have a pile of heads that stands about 3ft high of all kinds of heads.  I'll try 4-5 different makes/models on new drums to see how they sound.  Usually it's some kind of remo head on snare/toms and an Evans model on kick for most drums.

When in doubt of the heads or if you can't try a bunch of different ones, go with a single ply but heavy head on toms and a single ply with a dot on snare.  Moongel to taste.  This is a pretty generic rock drum sound on most kits. 

Avoid the pillow in the kick drum at all costs.  Tune the kit correctly and it will sing you the song of it's people.  if you need, add a little damping to the batter head with a foam ring but not too much.

Avoid the gimmick heads(mostly evans) with all the strange rings/slots/holes and marketing hype.  they sound good to you in the room because they are dead, but mics hate them with a passion, unless you like that wet-cardboard sound.

Tune the drums for the song and tune the drums to intervals.

If you find you need to gate or cut out a lot of sections between hits, then your room is too small or too reflective for drums.



As for my room mics, I'm now using the U47 around nipple high and about 8ft back from the drums. I point it down so that it sees the kick and snare in the center. I seem to get a good balance of the drums here and a lot of room tone. I rarely have this higher than about -8dB from the overheads, usually just enough to allow the midrange to thicken a bit.

Once you have all this working, then now it's time to figure out which mics and preamps are best for their applications.

Snare: Audix I5/312.. Mic gets smoothed by the API and doesn't have the honk of the SM57.
OH: Gefell M930/1272.. Sparkle and definition for days.
Toms: ATM25/312.. Rounded attack and beef.
Kick: D6/312.. Scooped mic gets smoothed by the API and has a rounder attack.
Room: U47/312.. Natural sounding mic gets smoothed with a little beef added for more midrange thickness.

I don't use gimmick mics or fancy mic setups either. They tend to make more compromises than just doing it straight forward.

I haven't used top boost EQ on drums for years now. I used to use it on overheards to get that little sparkle I thought was missing. Using better mics and preamp designs has let me avoid that now. I found I was EQ'ing for losses. Remove those losses and you won't need to use it anymore.

Thanks you svart for taking the time to discuss your placement of "kit mics" , close mic placement, EQ advise and general tips. I appreciate it!

The biggest problem I have had with mixing drum's is the whole concept of Gearslutry and each drum having a great sound of its own but no sence of a "Drum set"
I am the biggest dynamic drum mic slut, but I shoot for at least 4 of a kind for an even drum sound. I find more and more I use a stereo pair ala Eathworks approach and use everything else as a fill mic except kick
If you can time align everything to the kick you can gain focus, besides the kick is going to leak into everything.
Years of live taught me you can't win a fight with leakage, so embrace it as best you can.
Nothing beats a well tuned properly set up kit, what ever tool you need to get there is worth it's weight in gold.
A great drum understands the little things like micro dynamics and what compression will do, a great producer engineer communicates with the drum what he needs and will be respected by the drummer if you work together rather than fight.

this seems a bit counter intuitive no? maybe a process of elimination is in order?