How to Record Drums

Drums are arguably the hardest instrument to record. They’re also extremely important: the quality of drum sounds can make a song sound powerful or weak. There are a number of different ways to record drums in a professional or home studio.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Drums
• Several Microphones
• Recording equipment

1. Record in a warm room. Most professional studios have a wood-paneled room for the drums. It creates a warm natural reverb. The room is blocked off from the rest of the studio so there is no bleed-in from other live instruments. In a home setting, experiment with the most optimal place in the room to set up the drums in order to achieve warmth and natural reverb.
2. Mic the drums. There should be four mics at the minimum. In advanced settings, every drums and cymbal is miked separately. The most important mics are for the snare and bass drum. There should also be one general room mic held aloft via a boom stand above the set. The bass drum mic should be inside the drum, not behind. A mic placed behind the drum can get very boomy. The other drum mics should be placed two or three inches above the drum head.
3. Record on different tracks. In a pro studio, each drum mic might also go to separate tracks—meaning a standard drum set could be on nine or more tracks. This isn’t quite an option if you’re recording on an eight track recorder. In this case, you could use an 8 or 12 channel mixer and plug the mixer into your eight track.
4. Whether using a channel mixer or recording on 10 different tracks, spend some time getting the drum sounds right. You’ll want them to sound as good as possible, rather than trying to fix it in the mix.
5. Set the gate. Gating can help curb distortion and ambient noise, cleaning up the drum track. It stops bleeding between the different mics, so the cymbals don’t show up on the snare mic, or vice versa. The gate cuts the sound of an instrument after it stops being played.
6. Set the reverb—do you want a wet sound like playing in a church, or a dry small-room sound?

Tips & Warnings

• Recording live drums isn’t an option if you’re recording in an apartment or quiet neighborhood. Either invest in soundproofing or record using electronic drums: software or pads.
• Panning different drums left or right can help with sound separation. Sometimes you could pan the entire drum set all the way right or left—as you’ll hear in many Beatles recordings.
• If you’re a drummer, think about wearing earplugs. Drums can lead to hearing damage.