Recording the Drums- Setting Up the Mics

After successfully tuning my drum set, the next step was to set up the mics so that  they could pick up that sweet sounds that my drums were making. First of all, I needed to make sure I had all the right equipment. Luckily, I had previously gotten hold of a "CAD Pro 7" Mics from some rando off craigslist, as well as mic stands from a sale at Guitar Center. The only thing stopping me from recording myself before was that fact that I had no idea what to do; but thanks to "Recording Drums: the Complete Guide", I believe its finally time to set these mics up.

After reading the book I now understand that there are specific mics from specific parts of the instrument. Snare mics, Tom mics, and Bass drum mics all seemed extremely self explanatory; but there was one type that I didn't understand until now: overhead mics. Overheads mics are meant to basically capture the sounds of the cymbals in your set and are much more sensitive than any other mic. Major(the books author)  describes them as "the unifying element in any drum sound"(Major 22). He goes on to say "Don’t think of them as cymbal mics, but more as 'everything' mics. If placed correctly, the overheads will capture the entire drum kit, in phase and with the same basic frequency balance and tone."(Major 23). This made me think because before he was just saying that they were made for cymbals but now he is adding that you can record the rest of the kit with them too. I searched the internet for thoughts on the concept and apparently depending on the kind of sound you are looking for, the overheads can be set up for just the cymbals or the full drum kit. I decided that since I have mics already made for the toms and snares and such that I want my overheads to focus more precisely on the cymbals. I went back to the book to find Major's best configuration for my set up. At first I was going to use a mic setup called xy but that looked hella stupid and since my drum set has to look as dope as possible, I went for the second best called "Up Down" position.

Measuring to make sure the Overhead mics are even

 

I thought I was done after setting my overheads to look like this, but Major says that for it to not mess up the recordings, the mics have to be set symmetrical from a set point of the kit, which means that they have to be the same distance apart from a place that I choose the be the center of the sound in my recordings. For the center of my sound I chose my snare drum because I want it to be centered in the middle of my recordings and have the toms and cymbals placed off the to left and right. I then measured the distance from each overhead to the snare to make sure they were equal. Setting up the rest of the mics was super easy because I'm super smart. Major said that a lot of adjustment will be made after you here the recording of the instruments played back so I guess ill have to wait until I get my mics hooked up to the computer some how. 

By the end of the book I'm hoping to do a drum cover of a popular song and post it, so if you want to you can comment any song I should do a drum cover for and hopefully i can do it!