How To Mic a Drum Kit For Live Sound
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- Опубліковано 9 жов 2019
- Drums can be really challenging to get right at the source. There's a bunch of mics around the loudest instrument on stage. Watch to see how you can capture them and get great tone before the signal hits the mixer.
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This is the type of engineer you want for your church or for your live shows. So much passion for sound quality, love all the content you put out. God bless you brother
One thing to add is that the closer the overhead mic is to the cymbals center, the less cymbal sound you will get -The further the mic is from the cymbals center (closer to the edge of the cymbal) the louder the cymbal will be... Cheers and thanks for the no BS detailed information and multi-angle filming!!! All of this applies for in the studio, as well -Exact same principals apply. Except in the studio you get a little more into room mics and different overhead techniques and stuff, but yeah -All the same stuff. This is pretty much all you need to know right here...
I just love the way you present information. Thanks for sharing!
You’re very kind! And you’re welcome!
Yes me too.👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👏👏👏👏👏👏
Holy cow, this guy's videos are some of the best engineering information I've found on the internet. All the information is presented in a very accessible way and I get the impression all his videos would be rewarding to watch more than once, as it spans information that's relevant to the beginner and people who've done sound for a while. You have a new subscriber and a big fan, my friend.
Wow, thanks! You're too kind Aaron
Drum mic'ing can be such a pain. It takes the longest to set up in the studio. I like how you explain each option for each mic on the drum and how that changes the sound your capturing from each. Thank you for a great utorial on live sound setup!
Thank you!
"If you do jazz in your church... Maybe I should come to your church" lol
How about latin jazz? Cause that's how we play.
Yaaaaaaaaaasssssssss!!!!! Ping me your location. Or just send me multitracks to use for a video 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
I LOVE your energy!! Thank you
Thanks Baysik! Happy to help
My favorite recently adopted thing is using a Sine-wave generator as a sort of low-end "trigger" on the kick. The Behringer and Midas consoles have this, I'm sure other digital ones do too. What you do is gate a sine-wave and have the gate side-chained to the Kick mic channel, and when it opens the gate, it plays the sine wave (I like 56hz) for a short burst while the gate it open, giving you that almost unattainably low end punch that we're all looking for! Then when combines with an aux-fed sub setup, you put that "Kick Low" channel as I call it to the subs and the "Kick Hi" to the mains. If you wanted to get extra fancy you could use more of a blend than that if you need the extra dynamic range, but for us, just doing that is so much better than a traditional kick mic setup I don't find that necessary.
That is fun! Then your release time becomes the "how hip-hop do I want this to sound" knob
Yes! I always look forward to your videos! Awesome content and you have exactly my kind of humor as dry as the sahara desert Haha
Keep up the great content!
Sahara desert.... ha!
This was incredible. Thanks.
Hey you're very welcome Kene! Happy mixing!
This is extremely well made and was very helpful!
Thanks Reno! Hope you get great drum sounds!
I have been struggling to get my church's drum mics set up well and this helped so much! Thank you for your great vids man, you earned my sub.
Happy to help!
Great work. we enjoyed you're video :) thank you
Great info! Got a lot out of this video. Thanks!
Great video! It's so easy to forget about phase when soundcheck time is limited.
For real. It’s way more tempting to twist knobs on the eq instead of trying the polarity switch
Most excellent! I have learned. Thanks!
Great to hear!
Very cool. Great info and nice editing. Kudos!
Much appreciated! I'm still a video novice, so that means a lot!
That video was Great! super informative! thank you
You’re welcome! Glad it was helpful!
Definitely, it is the most useful video among all other of this topic
Thanks Eternal Cold! Glad you think so!
Great vids sir, i love that fllow and knowledge.
Thanks!
Beautiful well done
Thank you! 😊
Love the info n sense of humor!
thanks drumbone71!
Quite fantastic........ very helpful
Glad it was helpful!
Dude this channel is amazing !
Thanks DOT!
This is handy stuff, off to record on Wednesday, miccing drums is my weakness, clips like this are gold.
Glad I could help! How did your session go???
I used an E604 for a live snare a couple weeks ago and it was recorded. I mixed it later in my DAW and the bleed was much better than with an SM57
fantastic & Amazing
Thanks CHAIWAT film!
Great Video
I like your videos. You're very funny too. Your humor reminds me of the 1980s culture that I grew up in and that you still have that, which is great.
Thanks 😃
Those toms sound great mixed with the whole kit
👍🏼 thanks Nathan!
Awesome content
Great content and presentation Thanks
My pleasure! (Does that make you crave Chick-Fil-A?)
I dunno if you just said it backwards, but actually when a mic's pointed more across pointed at the middle of a drum, you're going to get more stick attack, and punch/definition, and pointed more towards the rim will give you more tone, sustain, resonance, pitch, and less attack.
Thankyou..! And God Bless you.
You’re welcome! And God bless you too Vihanga!
Always great, thanks so much. Jesus bless you.
God bless you Duha!
Man that drum kit sounds so fucking crisp. Great video, thanks for taking some edge off my first live sound gig.
As a church sound guy, I can say for sure that the drummer is my nemesis all the time (jk we're best friends but yea, y'know what I mean lol)
I think this is so far has been the best video I've seen yet. I have a PreSonus DM-7 kit and I have not had the pleasure of using it yet but I would like to get two of them so that way if I have extra snares extra crash extra time extra anything even if there is an artist that has a double kick drum setup I can be prepared but I like to pan everything when I did have an odor set about 10 years ago I always like to pin everything according to its position and I always like to Mike every single piece and slightly pin everything in the position of where it would be at so it would be as much of a stereo effect as possible I do notice that people might have let's say a 10-piece drum set but only 7 mics so you're hearing a hi-hat and a crash on the same channel instead of septic channels because you don't have enough mics for the kit but like I said this has been the best video I've seen so far
Thanks a bunch! I've learned so much in just a couple videos of yours. Also thanks for not being a big jerk like lots of sound guys. Funny, yes, but not joking. 😁
Thanks,
Have you done any videos covering the FOH booth and how you use the SSL in your setup (instrument/mic connections, fader layout, outputs, etc?
I haven't yet, but that's a great idea! Thanks J Harris!
Great presentation you make it sound interesting 😆
Thank you, Ivan!
Gonna Subscribe to this guy. They are so very informative with a sense of humor.
Thanks for the sub!
Good info 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Glad it was helpful!
Oh man, now I can never just put a mic in front of our basedrum en boost lows, cut mids, boost highs, compress compress compress to get that great basedrum sound ever again haha. Thanks for the video this will help us so much come next shows!
I have never seen this video, till now it was recommended. I wish I saw this when I sending you some samples I’ll have to show you one of the setups at a church I’m at with 3 mics on drums.
Bummer that it took so long! Glad it can help you get dialed in faster
@@AttawayAudio yes!
I like the measurement guides for the height and distances for overheads and snare mics.
Like this presentation. I am a singing drummer, in church, and in what I lovingly call the Aquarium. I just bought a Shure Beta 56A for my vocals. What set up would you suggest for my overheads.
Travis! I believe the names Travis and Soultone are synonymous. Certainly recognize the white ice DWs from years gone by.
wow this is detailed and solid. mahalo
would you go so far as to say it's "da kine"?
NICE BRo AWESOME!
Thanks 🔥
is it weird that I got excited on how you presented this topic lol? I enjoyed this so much and its also very useful too :)
Not weird at all 😀 as long as you don’t show up at my house
Attaway Audio lmao!!!
Thanks !
Great Content....
Thanks Rich!
thanks it help a lot God bless
You're welcome! God bless you too Shig!
This is great, James. I have a question tho: how do you pan the set? Your perspective, or drummer's perspective?
For live sound at FOH, always audience perspective. I struggle with tom fills that are backwards 😂 For monitors, always drummer's perspective, same reason.
5:00 something is up with that middle SM57. It has way less high frequency content than the other two, in both poaitions you demonstrated
I like to mic the bottom of rack Tom’s and snare. These get no polarity reversal. The floor Tom’s on top but do get reversed.
This works on kits where the drummer tunes the resonant head meticulously. Side benefit is the mics don’t get hit. I get really good cannon sound from toms.
A great video, thanks! I'm playing Roland VAD506 with TD-27 drum module, both at studio and live, but I've been thinking that maybe I should swap the hi-hat and symbals to acoustic ones. Should I get individual mics for the HH and each symbal or would overheads still be the way to go? The electronic snare, kick and toms make quite a snappy acoustic noise which I wouldn't want to mix with the symbal mics. And which kind of mics should I look at for the overheads and/or invidual symbals and HH?
Super 😮
I typically don’t use overhead mics in live settings like churches because the cymbals are already super super loud without microphones + I get enough cymbal bleeding through the other mics.
I'd like to give you another option for kick drum mic. Turn the mic backwards and mic the inside of the front skin, just watch your phase as can become tricky. Cheers Pete. PS. good job on the advice, very accurate.
Thanks Pete!
Thanks James, great video - i notice you've dragged the kit out of the booth (I'm guessing just for this video) would you mic the kit in the same way of it was in the booth? many thanks
Yes, exactly. I just needed space to film it.
I hate those things.... so much reflection causes timing issues
I always liked X/Y overhead. Any opinions on that?
what output would you use? what do you connect all the mics to in order to project the sound?
This video Deserved that like
Way better than a "pity thumbs up" 🤣
Love the videos. How would U setup your drum set on stage? Do you put the classic drum shield? Do U add acoustic panels all around ? Some sorte of drum 🥁 box so if you have a small stage it won’t bleed in mics. Drums are so much louder than the rest of the band and always bleeds out of the stage into the crowd!! What’s your take?
Big topic! But it usually comes down to what the church leadership wants. I mix at some churches that only want some deflectors for the cymbals, and others that want a fully-enclosed drum kit. I've gotta just roll with it. And I'm a 9 on the enneagram so that's helpful
Attaway Audio Hi here’s a UA-cam link of the worship team at 2h25:20 juste after a french sermon. Yep 👍 we’re from Montreal 🇨🇦 and this time my little brother is not at mixing but leading worship and got to sing in three languages in one of the songs... I’d say it’s a mix of hymns and contemporary music and I think we represent the typical 2020 church! There’s already a plexiglass shielding then drum from the rest of the band and better control of bleeding without compromising good sound quality is the idea ! Thanks ua-cam.com/video/UMcbwhsenCI/v-deo.html
This excellent video answered my question about using gates on drums (don't do it!). Do you find the same to be true for vocal mics? We have 5 singers in our group--of course, not all are singing all the time. Could a gate on each vocal mic help reject spill from other instruments? Or will this have our sound guy 'chasing the technical' as you describe so well? Many thanks for your comments!
If I use them on vocals, I make sure the range is low (-5 or so) so the jump isn't drastic, and I try and keep the threshold low enough that breaths don't get cut off either.
Gates are very annoying if you are on inears.... noise floor cutting in and out all the time
Nice video, very helpful!
Which model of mini mic stand is this?
Thanks Uriel! I think this is the mic stand here amzn.to/3aMs1ow
@@AttawayAudio ¡Gracias!
THANKSZZ
Hey James! Question for you! Complete the sentence, “What you need to watch out for when mic’ing completely enclosed(caged) drums is - _____________” I feel that ours feel big and boomy, lacking a bit of clarity. Almost as if they have been put in a muffled box, go figure haha….! Not sure if you have quick go to tips for the aquariums out there.
So do you personally recommend mic'ing top and bottom snare? And kick in/kick out? Or do you find them unnecessary?
If I’ve got the inputs available, definitely all of it. There’s a huge advantage to having all the tone differences available at the move of a fader, depending on what the song needs, or how the room acoustics change when the hot water bags (people) arrive
Hi..your videos are very helpful .. thaks for that . I am a new FOH engineer (120 people room for Greek music) ,and a singer . I love Audix mics and i use the OM11 for my vocal . I am ready to buy 3 pieces Audix i5 to use them on acoustic guitar , mandolin , cello and other acoustic instruments , and a Audix OM6 for female vocals . In my ears the i5 has more clarity and high details than the shure 57 or beta 57 , and i want that . What is your opinion about those mics ( only for acoustic instruments , i have no drums ,snare , bottoms ) . Thanks ... and keep make videos...
Those are great mics! Really it’s about what fits well on the input. Thanks for watching!
i always had a hard time setting up Kick drum mic mixing, really can't produce what i like to hear. The quickest easiest solution i found was to use a drum module, use an acoustic drum trigger. Presto, it's quick & i like what i hear (kick & toms only). I put drum mics though on the snare, hihats & cymbals. It works for me who often need rushed set up.
Sound ninjas make it happen 🙌
Jajaja poor, Nick jajaja 😂 it was a great lesson, thank u!!! 😳
you bet! and yes, I've forgiven Nick 😂
which microphone do you recommend for a hi-hat? thanks for the coolest vidos!!!
Small diaphragm condensers are all pretty good. Some people like the Audix i5 for a chunkier sound, but I love the Shure SM7b
I really like the Beyer M260.
akg 451B
Used those, KM184, CM700, 23F, SM81, P30 plus many more small condensers. The hypercardioid ribbon sounds more like the real hihat to me.
Question: If you are spot micing cymbals, would you still make sure that they are equidistant from the snare??
No, but you will have to phase align the tracks with the snare in your daw.
@@NinthDensity Right - Thank you for that. I actually figured out a pretty nifty setup where my cymbals are equidistant from the snare, so no moving around of the waveforms is required!
Great tips. BTW - how did you get Kevin Bacon in the studio? (11:03)
4:56 when you get to the third and higher elevated mic it kinda just makes the same sound as the first mic. I’m guessing angle matters too.
Would you place the mics the same way for a studio recording?
Pretty much, although I have more options for overhead mic technique in the studio since I'm not dealing with so much noise and have more control over the reflections. There are other tricks for mic'ing drums in the studio too, but that's for another day 😁
How about a video for us drummers who home record with limited gear?
I have a 4 channel audio interface, 4 mics and Logic on my MacBook, I've found inserting samples for snare and kick gives the sound of a six mic setup......
I love recording, but focusing on live sound videos at the moment. Happy music making!
I like the third mic on the snare it gives that fat crisp sound
All of your's tutorials it's valid to outside live shows?
reducing cymbal bleed in the snare drum is an absolute must right now. any pro tips??
Tighter pattern on the mic, higher cymbals and hi-hat, anger management for the drummer
So, I get don't want a spaced pair point inward, but I don't get quite why you don't recommend an XY pattern for OHs. Care to expound on that?
Sure! Stages tend to be noisy, so the more you have the mics pointed out and further from the source, you get a greater proportion of “noise” that’s on-axis to the mics. That’s my opinion at least. You can feel free to try it, especially if you’ve got a nice drum booth. But the reflections from the shield might be a problem today.
Seems like in a cage is a no go. I think theres no better stereo image than an xy
Is there a way to run your drum mics through a small mixer at the kit and then use a single output to the main soundboard? The result is the sound guys only have 1 channel on the main board for drum volume and effects?
Yeah it definitely limits your options. It’s doubtful that your drummer will turn up the snare by the right amount when he switches to the cross stick and then back again
@@AttawayAudio I am actually the drummer. I would like to be able to set the kit as a package before it gets delivered to the sound board. The sound guys at our small church are very inexperienced and I need to keep it simple for them.
It could work short term. But eventually they’ll need to do it themselves to GET experienced 👍🏼
That's the way I set up drums at many churches. 16 channel mixer behind stage. Group Toms together (roll off eq where needed), overheads, and preprocess snare and kick mics. Then I group and send 4 channels to main board (snare, kick, toms, overheads). There, the final touches can be applied (slight eq, compress, gates, reverb). It saves on channels and keeps the kit very consistent without a lot of extra mixing channels or worrying about dca groups at FOH.
finally the "right way" to mic a drum set :) -- so in the end you use a Beta on the snare?
Yup! A little more hat rejection.
@@AttawayAudio Saw (I now know what it is) a MD 441 is this video amongst plenty of other non-typical miking ua-cam.com/video/rRC7LKaVRTk/v-deo.html
Oh yeah on the side snare! Great find Jason!
Try Beyer Dynamic M201 on the snare. Great!
Im having trouble with cymbal bleed into the vocal mics. Any videos or suggestions?
You can get darker cymbals, have your drummer ease up, get shields, and have your singers stay close to the mic.
what console are you sitting in front of in this video
How come i dont hear any difference at 14:10 and further when polarity is switched? I listened to it with headphones, but could not hear any noticable difference... has this something to do with ears aged 54? (beginner live soundengeneer)
It's subtle. It's only noticeable on the extreme low-end. Are you watching in 720 or higher? If not, those low frequencies won't be there from the file-compression. Way to go starting something new after 50!
“If you can’t get the snare drum to sound right with a 57… it’s not the 57’s fault. It’s your fault. 🤷🏽♂️🤨” best quote of the entire video for me 😂😂😂😅 bout time someone says it lol. I’ve asked my church why the 57 sits in the mic box while we use some other random mic on the snare top. They told me because one of the other guys said it was better than the 57… I’m like 😐… no. 57 has always been tried and true for snares. Not saying it can’t work well with other mics, but… yeah he said it 👆🏽
How do you think about micing toms from below?
Yes! But only if you've also got a top mic, and have the channels for it. Flip the polarity (or not) to see which is beefier, but it adds a TON of nice bottom end to your tom sounds. You can also gate it using the top mic to key the gate, just so you don't get too much sympathetic ringing.
if you can you should make a tutorial where you delay your snare and maybe toms, kick with overheads to get maximum phase :) when you use overhears for full kit.
I've tried it before, but I don't do it. I actually prefer the texture from mic placement having varied timing. Do your guitar players hit every string at exactly the same time? Or do your piano players hit every note at exactly the same time?
What microphones are you using for overheads in this video?
Shure KSM137
Quiero lo mismo que toma este amigo antes de hacer los videos! :)
mucho coffee
@@AttawayAudio i want the same coffee, same brand and size! Good vid btw.
Parisi Organic Peruvian Medium roast... on sale at costco 🤣
The answer for tom & kick gating: key filter. Low-pass at 100 or below for the kick, nothing else will trigger it except maybe the low toms but the threshold is easier to set. For toms, use either a bell set at the most prominent freq in the drum, or a low-pass for the low toms and get the threshold just above where the kick won’t trigger it, but the tom will…
great advice! thanks mate
What board are you sitting in front of?
We use a Shure VP88 as an overhead mic creates a wide stereo image and eliminates all phase incoherencies.
Mid-side is a really sweet technique! That's a great mic for it
I was NOT ready for that Mike Vick joke 😂
😂
Do you have to use XRL inputs when miking drums or can I use both 1/4" and XRL? I only have 8 XRL inputs.only miking the kick and snare
Usually a mixer will have XLR inputs for a mic preamp, but might also have line-level inputs that are 1/4"... your drums won't have enough signal without a preamp, so I'm afraid you'll have to use two of your channels, or get a bigger mixer.
I'm really sorry to ask this!! I can't understand this Part 14:17 polarity IN/OUT what does that mean ??? Can You Explain a bit??? Thanks, Brother!!!!
Polarity is the absolute push/pull of a signal. So when two mics pick up the same sound, some frequencies will be pushing/pulling at the opposite way at the same time and canceling out. So when we flip the polarity, the mics combine to emphasize or cancel different frequencies.
Glad to help! Don’t apologize!!!
@@AttawayAudio thanks a lot brother!!!
You bet!
Snare and toms - how do you pan those?
Snare down the middle. Toms... you can go hard left & right if you want, or just a little, but audience perspective.