If you’re like me, you are constantly challenged when it comes to recording great sounding acoustic drums. And for good reason. With so many elements to the kit, it is consistently the hardest instrument to capture with punch, power, and realism. But did you know that recording a mono drum overhead will help you get better sounding drums, faster?
No Phase Issues With Overheads
The biggest problem with stereo miking drum overheads is dealing phase issues. More specifically when your sound source is hitting two microphones at slightly different times you get tracks that are out of phase and create some cancellation of the sound source, resulting in thin weak recordings. Of course this can be avoided with careful placement and measurement. A great way to start is the recorderman method or the Glyn Johns technique.
But what’s even easier is to simply throw up one overhead mic to capture the entire kit, rather than two. You have absolutely no phase issues because you aren’t trying to capture an instrument with two mics, but with one. I know it sounds obvious, but this is a no brainer when you want punchy, clear, and artifact free drum overheads.
You Can Use Your Best Mic
When stereo miking anything it is best to use a matched pair of mics, or at least the same model. This is because you are treating the two mics as one capturing device. But what do you do if you don’t own a nice pair of mics? Many people go out and buy a drum mic bundle. Although there’s nothing wrong with this (I’ve done it) you’re likely getting a good value so the overhead mics aren’t going to be the highest quality.
If you already have one nice microphone that you use for vocals, let’s say, why not use that as your drum overhead? Don’t compromise on sound quality just so you can get a stereo drum overhead, use your best mic on the most challenging instrument and you’ll likely get a better sound as a result!
Mono Drums Can Sound More Focused
One final great reason to record with a mono overhead is that in the end, a mono drum recording can sound way more punchy in the mix. Now this isn’t to say that typical stereo drums DON’T sound punchy, but as it relates to creating clarity and separation in your mix with panning, nothing beats putting the drums up the middle and panning other things out wide.
The drums will sound like they do in real life, coming from one location in space. This helps the brain to focus on the drums and feel them as a powerful instrument. If you haven’t tried this, do it. It can sometimes be just what your mix is needing.
Going Somewhat Stereo
And if all mono drums sounds a bit too boring to you (even though no one will know it’s not stereo once they are a few feet away from the speakers) you can always go somewhat stereo by panning toms a bit out from the center and running everything (especially the overhead) through a stereo room or plate reverb. This will give your tracks a bit of space in the background will keeping the attack and main tones of the kit coming straight out of the center.
Comments
I’ve been using a mono overhead on my last few projects and my drum sound is 10 times better because of it. I actually like the mono drums better. They do sound tighter and more “real.”
I’ve actually been fighting with my overheads lately, and kinda wanting to pan them closer and closer to center. I like the idea of using a mono overhead, and still panning toms out wide(r) for some ear candy.
He’s right, the main part of the kit I like to here in stereo are the toms. Which can be close miked. I like kick and snare up the center and mono could help make those more focused. The only thing is I kind of really do like stereo cymbals, it sounds cool when I hit 2 crashes and here them left and right. Thinking I should try this mono idea out and if I really like how it sounds it may be worth giving up those cool stereo crashed for it.
Mono drums sound like classic recordings–love ‘em. Especially come mix time. The usual caveats apply–make it sound right before the mics go up, gotta have good drummer, blah blah blah–but as long as a “vintage-y” drum sound works with your music, really, it can’t be beat. More time spent making music and having fun grooving, zero time spent hunting down stray resonances and phase issues. Making great-sounding records does NOT have to take for-freaking-ever. I used to think if I wasn’t spending a lot of time and using every mic in my locker, I wasn’t trying hard enough!
Hmm, wonder what a M/S overhead would sound like. Could be cool without losing the focus that mono gives.
When you use a mono overhead, do you supplement with close mics for the kick and snare similar to the Glyn Johns method?
If so, have you ever tried micing the snare from below? I know a lot of engineers like to add a mic to the bottom of the snare to capture extra fullness as well as a bit more of the wire sound. I imagine that would be a good way to supplement the crack of the snare that you’d get with the mono overhead, but I don’t have a kit to record so I can’t test right now.
Yes, the mono overhead would be in addition to close mics.
I tried this last time I recorded drums, with 2 room mics (about 4 meters away) in X/Y as well. That way, I got both good transients, stereophonic room-mojo AND phase consistency.
As long as you don’t need your cymbals to be super-wide, this technique really rocks!
Yes, the stereo room mics would be filling out the ambience a bit. Nice.
Where do you find is roughly the best place for a mono overhead? I’ve been told directly above the snare (similar to the first mic in the recorder man set up) is good.
You have to try and listen back
It will totally depend on the kit, the player, and the mic. But yes, I like to place over the snare to start.
[...] a read if this is a problem you’ve encountered of recent: Why A Mono Drum Overhead Is AwesomeRelated [...]
Graham I just want to thank you for these awesome tips. They are tremendous help for newbies like me. I think reading through what you offer through this site has probably attributed to some very early successes. I can’t wait to try this technic in the next session with my band.
You are welcome. Glad it’s helping!
Hi Graham. Just thought I would come back and share my experience trying out this tip. I have to say this is such an awesome tip! The result was fantastic and couldn’t be more simple to implement. Before we were using 2 overheads and I always felt the cymbals were just maybe too much. After listening back to a live recorded track during rehearsal, we all agreed the mono overhead is the way to go. Thanks again for what you give us newbies!
Nice! So glad this worked out for you guys.
Great Blog ! Mono makes so much sense now that you have walked us through the process. I have been experimenting with individually tuned absorbers for the bass, snare, and tom tom. They are freestanding units 3 ‘ high. Mono should pick up the drum sound change due to lower pressure at the mic. much better than stereo.
Thanks, again. Great info.
Cheers
Mike
Hey Graham,
It is good to read that there is someone encouraging the people not to give a damn about that “THEY do it stereo, so I gotta do it, too”.
I think it was Jake who said that he liked that cymbal-left/right image.
Here is my tip, at least I’m doing this all the time:
Layering. When tracking the drums is done, ask the drummer to hit the cymbals alone and use those single hits as samples on separate tracks. those can be panned to left and right and mixed in to your taste to get a nice stereo cymbal image without losing the punch of your mono OH mic.
Great suggestion!
Cool Idea! thanks!
Gragam, could you briefly explain “stereo reverb”?
Simply put a reverb plugin in a stereo buss or aux. that’s what I mean.
Oh sorry i misspelled your name, embarissing… Graham*
No harm done
Hmm okay, do you usually put reverb on a mono bus?
Some people do. I usually put it on a stereo track.
Hmm I’ve been somewhat bothered with having too much cymbals in my overheads lately. I often use the Recorderman technique and it sounds good on its own but in the mix there’s often too much cymbals and i feel like I loose energy if i turn the OHs down… But if I remove the OH over the shoulder and go Mono with the other one it sounds great… Next project I have (in two days) I WILL go with a mono LDC!
I know what you mean. Let us know how it turns out!
Ohhh yes, I know that problem!
As I am a kind of experimental recording guy I try to avoid mixing problems by adapting the technique I use. There´s no law forcing you to record drums all at once. Dismount the cymbals and record the kit without them (let the drummer hit the air;-)). Then, track the cymbals seperately. Now you can set the level of the cymbals independently. Actually, you could record the natural bleeding of all mics though I´m not sure if the benefit is that big.
[Personal note: While Graham is a "ProToolian" -and a great one- , I come with the Reaper
In Reaper you can enable "free item positioning" so that you don't even need seperate mix tracks for your afterward tracked cymbals. Just place them where they belong to. While the cymbal hit fades out all the other stuff recorded before in that track plays on.
That comes in handy when you really want to record all the bleeding because you keep the original number of tracks and everything runs through the same FX chain.]
Screenshot:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21793838/Screenshot%20reaper.PNG
Graham’s tips work wonderfully with any DAW
Mad scientist recording! I love it.
Wow yeah, i can see how that could be useful and kinda cool, would make you able to compress the overheads quite alot and keep the cymbals nice. Would be cool to try that kinda thing but I feel like I need to gain confidence in myself as a mixer and recording engineer and also put out good sounding mixes to make a band feel like that kind of experimintation can be cool because they trust me. Otherwise they might say i waste their time and money on things that doesnt sound good.
Graham is the best source to become a great mixing engineer
Just explain why such experiments are necessary. They want a great sound? Fine, they gotta be flexible and open-minded. If the are sceptical trust me; They see what you were talking about when they hear the mix. Cymbals under control…
That’s kind of you. I’m trying to at least be a solid source. Plenty more out there!
[...] drums tend to sit straight up the middle in much modern music. In fact, so many people fail to see just how awesome a mono drum overhead is. It rids you of any phase issues, can give you a punchy “centered” view of the kit, and [...]
Nice post. Just something else to be aware of, but using a single mono overhead does eliminate phase issues between the two overheads (since now there’s only one overhead), but there could still be phase cancellation between the one overhead and the snare mic, the overhead and the kick mic, etc. So you should still check the phase between the overhead and those close mics by flipping the phase and seeing if the low end sounds fuller.
Also, if you do choose to use two overheads (or two room mics), be sure to use a piece of string or mic cable to get the mics an equal distance from the snare drum, which will help minimize phase issues, as the snare seems to be the worst part of the kit to suffer from it.
Hi! This site is TITS!!! Thanks Grahm you rock. I own one M-Audio Profire 610 which has only 4 inputs, and i have 4 mics: 2x T-Bone SC 400, 1x Beyerdynamic M 422 and AKG D-12. Please tell me how to mic the drums with only what i have, the optimal setup. I will track death metal drums for a band and i decided to use 1 overhead mic. The AKG D-12 is for kick.
Like you said, D12 on kick, M422 on Snare, and since you don’t have any Tom Mics, in this case I would use the Recorderman Overhead setup (stereo), which will cover the whole kit, and should give you plenty of Toms.
A good way to go for sure.
Hi Matic, hi Graham
I found my own way of miking a drumkit (with 4 mics). You know, I realised that the most important drum “voices” are played from the middle to the left (K,S,HH). When it came to panning the OHs I didn`t dare to make the image too wide (l/r) because that would make the snare sit slightly on the left. I thought about a way how to balance the stereo image of a drumkit just by placing the microphones differently, not by reconstructing the whole drumkit. Well…I think I made it. As I don’t know if you are interested in the setup I won’t describe it now. Just let me know and I try to describe it. It’s a geometrical approach. (and it is even mono compatible!)
This is a good moment to talk about my new mic setup
There’s a short sample I played myself, just a few seconds. Forgive the bad playing, I’m not a drummer
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21793838/4MicDrumsetup%20.mp3
Oh I forgot to mention that:
There is no compression, no EQ – it is just the raw recording.
Your geometric approach sounds similar to the Recorderman setup. You use a piece of string to measure both mics to ensure they are equidistant from both the kick and snare to avoid any phase cancellation. It looks a little weird, but works really well.
yes you’re right, though it’s not recorderman. It rather reminds me of a modified ORTF with another angle and distance. Actually, I would see it as a mixture of NOS and ORTF.
i have drummers, at least for my stuff, record with superior drummer and electronic drums. i have had multiple drummers and it is easier to get a consistent drum sound with sd2.0. is it possible to “fake” this technique using a drum program, do you think? they do have an overhead mic channel. i am sure it is not going to be the same thing as the real deal.
[...] the bottom snare mic on every song and panning the overheads in super narrow. In the future I would probably drop to a mono overhead, one snare mic, and maybe even one kick drum [...]