A Professional Guide to Recording Drums In Your Studio

Before You Hit Record:

Ok, you have read my previous blogs on what you'll need to set up your studio, and your ready to get the band in and hit record. Let the fun begin right? Not so fast good sir. Every experienced engineer knows that the drums are essential to a professional recording. They are the backbone of the song, and if they sound bad, your whole mix will fall on its face. A great drum recording will be punchy, deep, and right for the song. Its not as easy as just throwing some mics up on the kit and hitting record. You gotta use experience, talent, and your ears. Oh yeah, and reading articles like this will get you there much faster than making all those mistakes on your own.

I highly recommend investing in some back line drum gear for your bands if you are working in a project studio. Chances are, most of the guys you record are not signed to any type of label or gear endorsements, so their gear is going to be cracked, warbled, used and abused, and that does not make for a good drum sound. You can find a decent four piece kit in the paper or ebay for less than $800 on average. A lot of parents out there buy a brand new kit for their kid who thinks he wants to be a rock star, only to find out that its harder than it looks, and the kit ends up on the classifieds for half the cost of what they paid for it, and its only six months new. You don't have to get all the hardware, cymbals, snare, pedals etc..., you just gotta get a basic tom and kick package to start. You can start adding the other stuff to your gear locker later.

But wait Jimmy....why should I spend money on gear that drummers should bring in working already? Because you are going to be working for next to nothing monetarily when you start out, and time is money. The faster you get good drum sounds, the more money you make to invest back into your studio and your own wallet. My own two experiences made me take the leap to buying a used, but professional kit. Skip ahead if you want here.

Grandfather Drum Heads

So its like my very first project that someone is actually paying me for. Its a local punk rock band with moderate talent. I agree to do ten songs for three hundred bucks. What can I say. I was still learning the trade myself. Anyways, we start recording the drums and the drummer asks me if I can make his toms sound any bigger. He was right to ask. They sounded like garbage cans. I mic'd them up with my best mics, eq, compression, and nothing worked. Any which way you sliced it, nothing helped. Poopy sound in, poopy sound out I always say. The band is getting a little frustrated at this point, and looking at me as if I'm the new guy. Suddenly his bass player asks how old the drum heads are, and they guy explains that he hasn't changed them in five years. We were all shocked, and I think one of his band mates even hit him in the back of the head. Side note here. You should change your heads every 3 to six months depending on how much and how hard you play. If there are any dents in the top (batter) head, they should be replaced, especially for recording. At least that comment took the pressure off of me, the engineer, and put it on the drummer for not taking the time to spend $50 to put new skins on his drums. I made it a point to request that drummers hit the music shop for new heads before they showed up at the studio, or I was going to charge them for doing it for them.

Dude, your cymbals are on fire!!!

Funny story number two, and there is a lesson here. This guy brings me in his drum kit and its all out of whack. The kick drum is sideways like a marching drum, with a hole cut in the shell for the mic. (Don't cut holes in the shells of your drums). He's got a link system set up with two beaters hitting it on both sides, so essentially, he has two batter heads and no resonant head. Problem two. Finally, I hear his crash and ride cymbals. They sound like garbage, very zingy, not much overtones. They also look burnt and tarnished. I ask the guy if those cymbals were like his dad's or something from when he was a kid, and if they were of some sentimental value. He then went on to tell me that he threw them in a bonfire. My apprentice and I stopped dead in our tracks and both exhaled a simultaneous, WHAT?!. Yeah, a live sound guy had stopped him at the end of a show once and told him that his cymbals were really wet sounding, so he threw them in a fire to dry them out. It took every fiber of my being to not lose it, as well as punch him, and my apprentice had to leave the room after I saw his face turning red as he gasped for the will not to burst out laughing. The first lesson here is, don't be an idiot and throw your drums in a bonfire. That is not going to make them sound better. I went out and bought my Pearl Studio Kit the very next weekend to make sure that never happened again.

Moving On

Now, I know your next question. What if the guy doesn't want to use your kit? Pick your battles. I usually use the rule that if his drums are working, tuned, with new heads, then by all means use it. These type of drummers take a lot of pride in their craft and will be picky about their individual tone. Don't mess with that dynamic. Don't use your kit every time just because you are in love with it. Think of your kit as a backup to those that come in with old/ripped heads, cheap drums, fire laden cymbals, etc.... Trust me, you will probably end up getting the later nine times out of ten if you record in a project studio market. I will say that in either case, you should learn how to tune an entire drum kit, even if your not a drummer. I have only recorded three guys that know how to tune a kit properly out of the hundreds of drummers I have recorded/produced. Pick up the video by Bob Gatzen, or find a number of his videos on youtube. I will post my tuning methods in a later blog. A device called a drum dial can also be a useful tool for whipping a kit into shape in a hurry.

One last point before we move on to the good stuff. You will want to have a couple things laying in your drum locker. Get yourself some gaffers tape (or any tape for that matter), some moon gels (little rubber-like devices that sit on your drum/snare heads), and a drummer first aid kit (filled with extra felts, rubber gaskets, kick pads, and snare wires). Also get yourself a can of WD-40 for those squeaky foot pedals. These little things you will use all the time. Remember, the guys you are recording have had their gear in a car or trailor for the last couple weeks, and most likely not in good cases. They are going to need a little TLC.

Headphones for the drummer are an important part of the recording experience. You want something that has a lot of isolation, and a great deal of bass and clarity. If the guy can't hear his kick drum, he is going to lose the beat and get upset with you. I use the Beyerdynamic 770 pro headphones, but there are a great deal of cheaper units out there that are equally usable. Just make sure they have a good isolation rating and a decent sound. You can also experiment with the in ear type phones. They provide even more isolation and are a bit cheaper. You just want to make sure that you change the ear sleeves for each drummer, due to hygiene issues. Most of the time my drummers prefer these over regular phones. Check out the E3's by Shure.

Again, The Room Is an Instrument

The key to any good drum sound is the room it was recorded in. If you are stuck in a small room, you are going to have some problems getting a big sound. Have no fear, for there are a few things you can do. As stated in my blog on mix room acoustics, acoustic principals apply to the drums as well. Try to put some bass traps in the corners and some baffling on the side walls and ceiling. Diffusers can also be of use here. These devices can be bought from companies like Auralex, and disperse sound in many directions. You don't want sound waves bouncing around your room in linear, yo-you like patters. That's bad. A good trick in a small room is to get some plywood sheets and stand them up against the side walls of the room. Kick the bottoms out about a foot and now you have a room with angled walls. This works great and you ensure that you don't get the weird anomalies that occur in rooms with parallel walls. It looks like hell, but it won't matter when you play back the drums and they sound killer.

Making Your Own Drum Riser/Hoverdeck

Try to get the kit off the floor. My drum room is in a basement at the moment. Sure there is hardwood down over the top of a concrete foundation, but its still a concrete foundation. Concrete floors make drums sound dull and lifeless. They also transfer sound energy into other rooms in your studio through the concrete. This is not desirable. I built a makeshift hover deck out of some MDF board and rigid foam and styrofoam. You can make one too by buying two 4x8 sheets of MDF or plywood, 2 sheets of styrofoam in the insulation isle, construction adhesive, and an 8x8 piece of commercial carpet. Cut the styrofoam into four inch wide strips while still leaving the lengths at four feet. Glue these to the bottoms of the plywood sheets, leaving a three inch gap between each strip. When dry, slide the two sheets together and put your carpet on top. You now have an 8x8 drum riser which will keep that kick drum nice and punchy, whilst also keeping sound from transferring through the floor from room to room. This contraption also helps if your on a regular upstairs floor level, because it drastically cuts down on the noise transferring to your neighbors apartments. If all this sounds out of your mechanical range, then you can buy the hover deck from Auralex for around $500 for roughly the same size.

Drum Placement

So you've got the room picked that you want to record in, and all the wall and floor treatments are in place. Our next step is to find a good place in that room to set up the kit. I highly recommend placing the kit at an angle, with the drummers chair more towards one of the corners. Make sure you give him enough side wall room to place his hi hats, china, and still have enough room to get in and out from behind the kit. The main thing to remember is that drums sound horrible in the middle of square bedroom-like areas. It has to do with sound waves and science, so I'm not going to get into it here. Ask me in further detail if you want. Just don't put the drummer square, dead center, in the middle of the room. It will sound like crap. Putting his head and body in the near corner will also bring up that low end beef to his ears, and he will love you for it.

How Does it SOUND in the room?

The very last step before you move on to recording is to close your eyes and listen to the guy play in the room. Does it sound ringy? Are there squeaks from the pedals and hardware? Are there any extra vibrations in the room buzzing about, such as windows and furniture? Are the drums in tune? Does the sound coming from the kit emulate the sound thats right for the song?

If its ringy, get your moon gels out and or tape, and dampen up those heads. Not too much now, because we still want a natural sound. Get rid of those squeaks with the DW-40. Kill the buzz by removing unneeded furniture or dampening the windows. Get your drum dial out and check the heads to get them in tune with each other. Play with different snare and kick drums if you have them available until the tone is right for the song.

Now get your mics out and get ready for the next article.