Sometimes the best place to mic up your kick drum is the last place you’d expect.
That’s what happened in a recent drum tracking session. We wanted a really punchy, deep, and airy kick drum sound, but with two mics in place it just wasn’t cutting it. The drum sounded better in the room than it did hitting the mics, and no matter what I did to those two mics it didn’t get better.
What happened a few minutes later led to a surprising discovery and a very backwards kick drum mic technique.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Awesome! 10/10 lesson
Hey Graham, wouldn’t this be similar to the fat mic technique you used on your last record? I know this one is place completely in front of the kick, but wouldn’t it be a similar sound? I’ve been meaning to try the Fat Mic out on my next drum recording, but maybe I’ll play with the position a bit, I’m just a bit worried about phase issues.
Similar concept, just different placement. So in a way, yes!
Biggest difference would be that this is primarily meant for the kick drum, where as the fat mic is used as another all around drum sound.
That’s brilliant and very clever, thank you!
That microphone technic is really interesting. I wonder if you wouldn’t have an even better sound by using overhead microphone or adding a sort of plate / hall reverb ?
Very nice! I like that “fat full’ sound you mention with all three pieces mixed in together. Thanks for the tip and sharing!
Graham,
Once again you bring a really useful tip to those of us ‘in the field’ that can put right into practice! I have actually been using a 57 on beater side of the bass drum for the snap and attack of the beater combined with a reverse wired 6.5″ speaker on the other side to capture the thump. I find this works pretty well, but it also has a lot to do with the player – some drummers are really aggressive with the bass foot and others are softer and use a little more finesse… I will try adding a LDC next to the speaker to get another flavor. As always, thanks for the tip and inspiration!
God Bless!
Did something like this once, at least similar, by adding a side chained gated white noise generator triggered by the transients of the kick. A lot of times you hear about “sub” sine wave being added to kicks (a la 808’s), but you can also add high frequency white noise too. The 80’s snare sound was made up of this primarily, but used on a kick too, you can get a very similar sound, adding “air” – and the plus is, one less mic, no phasing issues, and still tailor to taste. The extra mic certainly adds beater slap though, which is great too!
I remember my lecturer telling us about this mic technique, although he used it to reinforce the snare as well as the kick. He called it the “fun mic” technique because of how great this technique can make the drums sound. I recommend at least trying this because you can be pleasantly surprised by how punchy but natural the whole kit can sound (depending on mic choice and placement)
Outstanding, my man! That’s really using your ears!
Very interesting solution, and the final result sounds really good from where I am sitting. Awesome to have an actual, you know, drum kit and so forth! I’ve been using programming and MIDI and all that stuff for yonks … using an actual drum kit would be brilliant, but would also require a whole new set of skills that I do not yet have. Oh yeah, and my drummer, who lives in Japan!
Would a couple of room mics instead have produced a similar result? Seems you were going for the natural, ambient room sound of the kick to begin with. Just wondering; again, this is well out of my ken of knowledge. Does having the different mics in different placements give you more clarity at the outset, or simply more control during the mixing process?
M
Well done bro.
Hey, did you say the engineers on one of the Adele albums did this to get a great sounding kit?
James
Greg Wells does the “fat mic” technique I showed a while back http://therecordingrevolution.com/2014/02/10/the-fat-mic-drum-technique-video/
Really awesome technique! One thing that was done with a couple of engineers that were working in a studio I was interning at was, you have your standard in and out mic and then, further back, about half way point between the room mic and the kick, you place a ribbon mic. This is to catch those low frequencies that the out mic wont necessarily catch. It adds a really nice fat low end to the mix. There are some really interesting ideas out there. Thanks for the video!
Graham, I’m glad you posted this technique. It sounds much better in the mix straightaway. In other words, whenever possible get the sound you’re after up front without assuming you’ll fix it in the mix later. Not only could it be a time waster, you may never get the sound you’re after.
Being a drummer, I know the drum kit is not a collection of independent pieces. Rather, it’s one complete instrument. So sympathetic vibration (the snare rattle) is the name of the game. It’s not a bad thing.
Graham also did a great thing by actually listening to the drums in the recording space. He may not have come up with this idea if he hadn’t done that. It’s important! Not only for ideas such as this, but also because the drums may be the most individual sounding instrument of them all. No kit – much less drummer – sounds the same. So please capture some of that uniqueness, lest everything you record starts sounding homogenous.
Cool!
This is the way to treat drums, the whole drum kit is part of the instrument. It’s not a collection of instruments it’s one instrument with different parts in it. But every part of the kit contributes to the sound. And that snare “rattle” adds almost like a distortion to the kick drums which make’s it more punchier and more present in my opinion.
Hey Graham, how often do you gate your drum tracks when processing the kit?
Hi Graham,
did you try to turn off the inside mic completely? I often find myself tempted to use all tracks recorded (mostly classical music recordings), while many of them don’t add that much useful information to the sound (though the mix gets louder). Instead they add phase-issues that tend to destroy the stereo image and perception of depth…
No, I kept the inside mic on this one. But yes, the more mics you use, the more potential phase issues you have.
very cool!
What a concept!!! Do I need a plug-in? No, I need to use my ears!!!!! Great, as always, Graham!!!!!!!!
Very interesting and it sounds really, really good!
I’ve discovered that recording the entire kit with a single mic in the middle of the room can sound fantastic, but your trick reminds me a little of one of the single microphone drum miking techniques used in the Daptone studio. (Sharon Jones & The Dap–Kings, Amy Winehouse.)
‘”It’s funny,” he continues, “People work so hard to get their drums to sound like they were recorded with one microphone. We just put one microphone out there’
‘Gabe Roth’s favoured single–mic placement for recording drums, with a Shure 55 between kick and snare; above, from the drummer’s point of view.’ (Photo caption)
‘Drums usually get one or two microphones, and that’s about double the number everything else gets. The RCA DX77 or the Shure 55 often goes on the floor next to the bass drum in such a way that it picks up the snare, as well. “From the drummer’s point of view, if you looked down between the snare and the kick drum, you’d see it about a foot or two away from the snare,” he explains. “The second microphone is often in the same spot as the first but adds different frequencies.’
See http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun08/articles/daptone.htm