AA2 - Week 4 - Drums

The effluent drum kit in EMU was the focus of our attention for this week’s exercise (1). Mrs. John Delany and I teamed up once again, but this time we required someone who can hit things with sticks- John and I are just far too timid. Luckily Matt Mazzone jumped in at the last minute, which sped things up a bit. The ’sweet spot’ of the Recording Space seems to be in front of the bass trap next to the Studio 1 window, much like we had in the AA class, however our testing found that facing the drum kit more towards Studio 2 on somewhat of an angle gave a crisp room sound. Here is our eventual microphone selection and placement:

Kick: Shure SM52; dead centre
Snare: Shure SM58; above
Snare: Shure Beta57; below
HiHat: Neumann KM84; above, aimed at body
HiTom: Shure Beta56A; placed on inner edge, aimed into centre of drum body
MidTom: Same as HiTom
Floor Tom: Shure Beta56A; placed on inner edge, aimed towards the side
Overheads: Neumann KM84s; spaced wider than kit width
Room: Neumann U87; in front, equal distance from walls as to kit


For this recording I took the opportunity to test out something different- a wide spacing of overheads. The result was a definitive stereo difference between the ride and crash, and quite nice in my opinion. As expected, the basketball- I mean kick drum- was quite average sounding, but John and I decided that we got 'a great recording of a crap sound'. The snare came up good in the mix, but only after the above mic was turned down slightly to get rid of some of the inherent plasticy ringing.


The toms were quite even sounding, probably thanks to the use of similar mics for all 3. Overall there seems to be a slight lack of substance for the toms, and at the time of the recording this was the best sound we could achieve. If I was to do it again I would try different microphones- I don't like the idea of the one-size-fits-all Beta56A. I was quite happy with the sound of the hihat while in the studio, however the soon-to-be-ending problem of the Tannoy speakers providing inaccurate bass reflex resulted in a somewhat thick sound. The room mic worked fine, and gave quite an accurate representation of the room sound. The only insert we used was compression on the room mic, so as to maintain the full 'dynamic' of Matt's drumming.

In the end I was relatively pleased with the sound of the recording, but not the sound of the drum kit. It's kind of like recording a singer who can't sing.

Drums with room mic MP3 408KB

Drums without room mic MP3 409KB

1. David Grice. "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 4; Drums & Percussion" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 20th March 2007.