Advices for recording drums

When recording drums, everything depends on the sound you want to achieve, so one should stop searching for hard-and-fast rules regarding suitable recording rooms. Achieving a close, dry drum sound in a live-sounding room coluld be more challenging than making dry drums sound like they were recorded in an ambient environment. Medium-size rooms are sometimes harder to record in than very large rooms because earty reflections are so prevalent.

Properly designed large rooms with plenty of absorption and diffusion don't necessarily sound reverby. Since there are relatively few early reflections you can get well-focused and intimate drum sounds with a lovely sense of airy openness. Of course, you can use ambient microphones too, then when you add the ambience to the close mics you can achieve a big, roomy sound without losing detail or crispness.

Try enhancing the dynamics of mixes by keeping the drums tight and close in verses then adding the ambience tracks for choruses. For room ambience, omnidirectional condensers and ribbon mics work really well and you could try spaced stereo or coincident techniques.

Mono ambience is nice also, so try setting up a ribbon directly in front of the bass drum with the deaf side pointing towardsthe kit. Ambience mics often sound better placed in corners, just above the floor. This beefs up the bass and the cymbals won't dominate the overall balance of the kit. You can also change the apparent 'size' of a room by moving the ambience tracks forwards or backwards in time relative to the close mics. This is easy in most DAWs. Manipulating the recording in your DAW can be key to creaţing the impression of size arid space in a track.

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Advices for recording drums