Recording Drums with Minimal Microphones

Sometimes you might be limited in your number of input channels, or microphones available.
There’s several different strategies with each having pros and cons, and giving different flavours of sound.

First, we’ll discuss the microphones, because this remains the same for all the different methods. We’re going to discuss overheads, spot mics, and the kick mic.

Overheads- most common is to use condenser microphones with a cardioid pickup pattern. For jazz, or styles that aren’t played overly loud, large diaphragm condensers are generally preferred.
For loud playing such as rock and heavy metal, small diaphragm condensers (SDC’s) are often preferable, because they can handle high spl better. SDC’s also work very well for quieter styles such as jazz.

Ribbon microphones are also commonly used as drum overheads. They provide a warmer tone, and bring out the pop in the snare and toms a bit more, though they have less detail in the high frequencies. Ribbon microphones provide a more vintage style sound, whereas condensers have more detail, and could be considered more modern sounding.

If I had to choose between ribbon microphones or condenser microphones as drum overheads, it would depend on the situation.
Room acoustics- If the room acoustics are less than ideal, I would use condensers because the cardioid pickup pattern will pick up less of the room. Ribbon microphones are almost always a figure 8 pickup pattern.
- style of music. Since ribbon microphones tend to roll off the high frequencies, they are less “in your face”, and a bit smoother sounding. They capture the midrange frequencies better than condensers, but don’t capture the high frequencies as well.
Condensers will capture high frequency detail much better, which brings out the crispness, and is higher fidelity, but the midrange is a little bit thin.

Spot mics- these should be a dynamic microphone. Popular choices are the shure sm-57, or if budget permits, shure am-7b or Electrovoice RE-20. My personal “go to” is the iSK ICDM.

Kick mics- the kick drum is one of the toughest instruments to capture. It has very high spl, and it’s frequency range is from 35 hz to about 4000 kHz. Most microphones are not designed for this frequency range, and most microphones cannot handle the high spl, which is why there are specialized microphones just for kick drums.
Popular choices are the Shure beta 52, and the AKG-D112. Condenser microphones are hit and miss… but some do work quite well.
There is also a product on the market called the Yamaha Subkick. This originated when someone tried using a Yamaha NS-10 studio monitor as a microphone to capture the kick drum…. And it actually sounded really good, so they turned it into a product.