There are all kinds of setups for recording drums with different microphones, but oftentimes your setup might come down to the gear you have. This extends both to the number of microphones you have as well as the number of inputs your recording hardware can simultaneously capture at once. Recording drums with two microphones in particular forces you to make some choices, so let’s cover the most optimized way to use them to best capture the sound of your kit.
Recording Drums With Two Microphones
I’m going to offer two configurations which work well if you’ve only got the options for recording drums with two microphones.
Option 1 – Kick Drum Mic and Overhead
This first configuration involves prioritizing one microphone exclusively for the kick drum and the other overhead in front of kit to get the entire sound of the kit.
Kick Drum Mic
I typically refer to the kick drum as the anchor for your entire mix which is why I generally recommend when you’ve got AT LEAST two microphones for recording drums that you dedicate one to the kick.
Having a dedicated kick recording and track is that important – the kick establishes the timing and rhythm and to some extent the energy across the entire mix. It keeps your listener grounded in the mix and while other microphone setups and configurations will certainly pick up some of the kick, you won’t get the body and thickness that truly grounds the mix without a dedicated microphone on it.
I recently did an entire dedicated tutorial on how to mic a kick drum which walks you through the kind of microphone which works best for miking a kick, not to mention the best placement.
Regarding the best placement for miking your kick, it’s dependent upon whether or not you’ve got a ported kick, meaning one with the small opening to record at or inside the kick itself:
Overhead Mic
The other microphone should be set up 1-2 feet in front of the kit, overhead of the kit by another 2-3 feet facing down and slightly angled toward to the drummer.
This microphone picks up the cymbals in the hi-hat, ride, and crash(es), not to mention all of the drums of the kit in the snare, toms, and a bit of the transient punch of the kick.
A decent bit of compression, particularly glue compression, on this track helps to tie everything together and tame anything which would otherwise overtake the other elements.
Obviously you’re not going to get a gated, controlled, and relatively clean and polished sound of the drum kit with two mics in general; this inherently captures a much more energetic and lively sound, but the glue helps to smooth it out.
I like this first option for capturing the raw live energy of the kit by way of that overhead microphone, but keeping that anchor firmly rooted so that your mix never feels adrift which is always a risk when the drum kit’s low end (kick) isn’t well represented.
Option 2 – Drums Mic and Overhead
This is a tweak on the first option where we’re abandoning the kick specific microphone in favor of a more balanced sound.
We’re still using the overhead with the same configuration as I just mentioned; the difference is we’re swapping out the kick drum dedicated mic for a different, more compromising placement I’m calling the “drums mic”.
Drums Mic
The drums mic should be placed inches above the top of the kick, just in front of it in the space between the snare and toms.
This “nexus” spot captures in equal parts all of the drum specific elements of the kit in the kick, snare, and toms.
Essentially the tradeoff here versus the first option is you get a lot more of the body of the snare and toms while sacrificing some kick body.
The overhead microphone doesn’t have to do all the work in capturing the rest of the kit in this case, making for a better blended and balanced sound. It also yields a somewhat less raw sound in needing to rely on a single overhead microphone. Lastly and most obviously, it does a better job at representing the toms and especially the snare (which is a huge driver of the energy in the mix).
If you go for this option, I recommend that you use my tutorial on the kick drum sine wave trick:
Essentially this involves creating an extra track where you drop a simple low pitched sine wave to mimic the sound of the low end thud of a kick drum.
You can either loop this track or just stretch out one long sustained note to play throughout the duration of the mix. The key is attaching a gate that track which is controlled by the low end of the drums mic which focuses on the kick. You set the threshold on the gate so that whenever the kick plays, the gate opens and you supplement that kick with a nice roughly 60Hz surge to trick the listener into thinking that’s part of the kick.
It works remarkably well, and is a great way to get away with not having to dedicate an entire microphone to your kick if you don’t want to.
For what it’s worth, if you don’t have a dedicated kick drum microphone, meaning one which is well suited with a frequency response for capturing the low end of the kick, you may want to supplement your kick with this trick even if you used the first method where you dedicated a microphone to the kick.
I like this latter option between the two options for recording drums with microphones (meaning the “drums” mic and overhead) when you don’t want to sacrifice half of your microphones to just one element of your kit and are looking for that more balanced sound.
With this latter option, I’d especially recommend using some glue compression on the sum of the “drums” dedicated mic and the overhead mic, meaning some drum bus compression:
Speaking of which, also consider my guide on drum bus EQ to enhance the good frequencies of your drum bus and cut the ones which aren’t working:
Lastly, I recommend you check out my complete guide on how to process your drum bus for all of the production to use on this bus to get your drums sounding their best, no matter how many mics you used.
