How to Record Drums: The Complete Guide

Do you want to record your acoustic or electronic drums? Perhaps you are wondering what equipment you need for that? Or do you want to know how to position your microphones around your drums?

Perfect, you are in the right place: we will cover all of this in this guide, which I have built to concentrate a maximum of information on the subject of drum recording.

This is a complex topic: there are many possible options for achieving a good sound recording (and thus avoiding a snare that sounds like on St Anger) — depending on the available equipment, the type and number of microphones, or their position around the kit.

Here are the topics we will cover together:

1. The necessary equipment for recording an acoustic drum
2. The room, an essential element of drum recording
3. Prepare your drums for recording
4. How to position microphones to record drums?
5. To go further…
6. How to record an electronic drum?
7. One option: have your drums recorded

Note: This guide is mainly focused on studio/home studio recording. However, if you want to amplify drums for a concert, for example, a number of pieces of information (like microphone positioning) will undoubtedly be useful to you.

The necessary equipment for recording an acoustic drum

Of course, to record your drums, you will need equipment — often a bit more, in fact, than for recording a voice or a guitar.

If you are already knowledgeable about standard (home) studio equipment, feel free to jump directly to the 2nd chapter of the article.

However, if you are a beginner or if you want to ensure that your understanding is correct — then I advise you to read what follows to avoid making a mistake in your purchases.

Microphones to capture the source signal

The recording process is quite simple: you have what is called a source signal that you will record on your computer.

In our case, the source signal is the sound of your acoustic drums.

It is produced when you hit your drums and cymbals with your sticks (unless you are using triggers, but we will talk about that a bit later…).

To capture this source signal, you will of course need microphones.

But not just any microphone: depending on whether you want to record the kick drum, the snare, or the cymbals, for example, you will not necessarily choose the same microphone model.

First of all, because some microphones are more suitable for drum recording: you need to pay attention to the “Max SPL” characteristic of microphones to ensure that they can handle high volume levels.

But also because there are different types of microphones (dynamic, condenser, or ribbon) and depending on the style of the piece / the sound color you want to achieve, you may lean towards different tools.

► On the subject, I invite you to check out my selection of the best microphones for drum recording.

The audio interface, a central tool

Your microphones must of course be connected to something that will link to your computer.

This “something” is an audio interface generally connected to your PC or Mac via USB and which will contain:

• preamps to amplify the signal captured by the microphones (very weak by default);
• converters to transform the captured analog signal into a digital signal understandable by the computer.

The problem with recording drums is that you generally use quite a few microphones.

However, 1 microphone = 1 mic input on the audio interface.

From this observation, you have several options.

If you are just starting out and do not have any equipment yet, it is worth looking right away at audio interfaces with many inputs, such as the Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 shown in the image above or, for example, the higher-end RME Fireface 802.

If, on the other hand, you already have an audio interface but it does not have enough inputs to connect all your mics, you can:

• either reduce the number of microphones (I will suggest a few solutions later in the article for recording your drums with one or two microphones);
• or, if you have an ADAT input on your audio interface, add a rack of additional preamps like the Focusrite Octopre or the Audient ASP800.

► To choose your interface well, I recommend looking at my complete guide on the subject.

What software to use to record drums?

Logically, once you retrieve the audio signals captured by your microphones on your computer via your interface, you will need dedicated software to actually do the recording.

This software is called a DAW (or STAN, Digital Audio Workstation in French).

Beyond recording, it is on this tool that you will be able to edit your tracks and mix them together by adding all sorts of effects (equalization, compression, reverb…).

There are many different DAWs, and some are even free like Cakewalk by Bandlab.

As for me, I use Studio One (in the photo above), so that is probably the one I would recommend you try first if you don’t know which one to choose.

► To learn more and see my other recommendations, visit my complete file on DAWs.

Preamps for better sound?

You may have already heard about preamps and that they are essential for recording.

That’s true, but technically you already have them in your interface on each of your mic inputs. So it is not an essential purchase to record your drums.

However, if you lack inputs on your audio interface — as mentioned earlier — you can add preamps under certain conditions, such as the Octopre.

But also, it is possible that you want to bring more color to your drum recordings.

Indeed, the preamps integrated into audio interfaces are often “transparent”, meaning they only amplify the audio signal without adding character.

Adding more colored preamps to your home studio can therefore be an option to personalize your sound a bit more and achieve higher quality recordings (that said, focus first on the quality of the sound capture and the microphones, that’s much more important…).

► Visit my selection of microphone preamps.

The room, an essential element of drum recording

When using microphones, it means capturing a sound emitted in the air.

And thus, the influence of the room in which the instrument is located.

It is therefore essential to pay attention to the acoustics of the room where you will be recording your drums.

The size of the room

The size of the room directly affects the sound.

This is true, of course, for any recording.

If the room is large, you will have a “big sound”, wide, that takes up space in the mix. You will have a real perceived dimension in your sound captures.

Conversely, if the room is very small, you will have a more intimate sound — often associated with a number of constraints: if the room is empty, you risk generating comb filtering issues in your recordings. To put it simply, the direct sound of the elements of your drum kit captured by your microphones will undesirably mix with the reflections from the walls, which are too close.

Therefore, for drum recording, I would generally advise you to place yourself in the largest room possible.

That said, I am a big proponent of experimentation: if it sounds better in a smaller room, no problem.

Typically, I would probably prefer to record drums in a small room but with furniture, curtains, and a wooden floor rather than in a large room covered in tiles…

But it all depends on the sound style you are looking for.

Controlling background noise

The advantage of drums is that it is an instrument that often makes a lot of noise.

As a result, your recordings will necessarily be less sensitive to various background noises that can often pollute recordings:

• Noise from the air conditioning running;
• Noise from electrical appliances in a nearby room;
• Noise from vehicles outside.
• etc.

However, especially during the softer passages of your tracks, your microphones are likely to pick up this kind of noise — which can then come out unpleasantly during mixing, after processing (I am particularly thinking of audio compression).

Consequently, before recording, it is generally a good practice to reduce these noises as much as possible.

Use acoustic treatments

Just as it is necessary to acoustically treat a room for mixing, it is generally necessary to treat the room in which you are recording.

This allows for better quality sound captures, less cluttered.

As much as possible, I therefore advise you to install bass traps in the corners of your room so that your low frequencies are as precise as possible (note that large rooms often have fewer problems with bass).

Additionally, you can also add absorbent panels to limit/control reflections in key areas.

In this latter case, working with removable acoustic treatments can be a good idea: this will allow you to adjust the acoustics of your room according to your needs. You can for example use absorbent panels mounted on wheeled stands, or conversely position wooden panels to increase the number of reflections if your sound seems too muffled.

Prepare your drums for recording

After the room comes the instrument, which obviously has a real impact on the sound.

Typically, you will have difficulty making extreme metal with a 14″x13″ bass drum.

The first step is therefore to define with sufficient precision the sound you are looking for — and to adapt your drum kit accordingly.

Of course, options are often limited in a home studio context, since it does require a real budget to have the luxury of choosing drum shells.

However, it is important to keep in mind that this choice of shells, heads, or cymbals is structuring for the quality of your recordings.

It’s difficult to achieve a modern sound with a kit that sounds very vintage, and it’s hard to get a bright sound if all the elements of the kit are dull.

Tip: for more interesting recordings, feel free to mix cymbals to create contrast, for example with a dark crash and a very bright ride.

Moreover, preparing the drum kit is also essential to achieve a good sound during recording:

• use new drumheads whenever possible, and don’t forget to tune them;
• put a pillow in the bass drum to reduce resonance duration and gain precision;
• use moongels to reduce the resonance of your snare drum (which can quickly become horrible to equalize during mixing…);
• if the style requires it, dampen your snare or toms using tea towels, like Ringo Starr from the Beatles in the photo below);
• etc.

How to position microphones to record a drum kit?

There are about as many possible microphone configurations for drum recording as there are sound engineers.

That said, there are different “standard” setups that can be good starting points — even fairly simple ways to achieve a good sound without too much hassle.

Each configuration is illustrated by an audio example, thanks to the good care of Cédric from Allo Drums, a professional drummer offering his own drum recording services (albums, music for visuals…). Thanks to him! 😉

► Download the audio tracks

So you can clearly hear what each microphone is for, and possibly do your own mixing tests, all the audio examples in this article are downloadable by clicking the link below:

[DOWNLOAD LINK]

Note: these tracks are for private use only and cannot be used, in whole or in part, for music production. Their distribution is also prohibited: please share the article if you want to talk about it with someone 🙂

Recording a drum kit with a single microphone

Contrary to what one might think, it is not always necessary to use 1000 microphones to properly record a drum kit.

With just one microphone, you can already do very interesting things and achieve a recording that respects the drummer’s playing.

For this situation, we will rather use a static microphone that we will position directly in front of the drum kit (as shown in the diagram just above), approximately at mid-height.

Then, it’s all about balance — that’s why I can’t tell you exactly how many meters away from the kit you should place your microphone.

The further you move away from the kit, the more you will capture the sound of the room. The closer you get, the more precise the bass response will be, and the more you will feel a sense of proximity to the drummer.

And it sounds like this:

List of equipment used for this recording:

However, note that there is an interesting alternative, especially if you only have one tom above the kick: try positioning your microphone just above the bass drum, aiming it more or less towards the snare drum.

Often, the result is very interesting and realistic.

You will find an audio example in the raw tracks available for free download.

Recording a drum set with 2 microphones

With two microphones, we can start to build recordings with a bit more detail.

In this configuration, I suggest keeping the microphone (#1) in front of the kit as we positioned it in the single microphone setup, but adding a second microphone (#2 — often a dynamic) in front of the bass drum to bring it out with more precision.

Let’s listen to what it sounds like in real conditions:

List of equipment used for this recording:

Notice that the kick is now more defined and a bit punchier.

Depending on the microphone and the bass drum, you can of course get very different results.

Also, I recommend testing different positions for this kick mic, whether in terms of distance or position relative to the center of the drumhead. One or two centimeters can make all the difference!

Recording a drum set with 3 microphones (Glyn Johns Technique)

For this 3 microphone setup, I suggest using a famous technique from the equally famous producer/engineer Glyn Johns, known for having worked with Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan.

The method is very simple to implement and truly allows you to achieve a good sound easily.

It involves using one bass drum microphone and two overhead microphones.

For the bass drum microphone (#1), similar to the previous idea, it’s up to you to decide where to position it based on the sound you are looking for.

However, the position of the two overhead microphones (typically condenser or ribbon mics) is crucial.

The first overhead (#2 in the diagram) should be placed between 1m and 1.5m above the snare drum — and right in the center of it.

Depending on whether you want more toms, more bass drum, or more hi-hat in your sound, you can of course slightly tilt this microphone accordingly.

Then, the second overhead (#3) is positioned lower, to the right of the kit, about 10 to 15 centimeters above the floor tom and is aimed towards the hi-hat.

Here is how all of this can sound:

List of equipment used for this recording:

Critical point of this technique: it is absolutely essential that the two overhead microphones are in phase.

To ensure this, it is important to make sure that the distance between the center of the snare drum and the two overheads is exactly the same.

Measure as accurately as possible, ideally with a tape measure — but you can also use a string or a cable lying around in your studio…

Finally, during mixing, you just need to adjust the pan so that the first overhead is completely to the right, and the second completely to the left.

And then just enjoy the sound! 🙂

Recording a drum kit with 4 microphones

A variant of the Glyn Johns technique.

With a fourth microphone on our drum kit, we can finally pay a bit more attention to the snare drum to better capture its cracking sound.

As you can see in the diagram just above, we have kept the three microphones from the basic Glyn Johns technique (#1, #2, #3) but we have added a microphone just above the snare drum (#4), pointing towards the center of the head.

Generally, this type of microphone is not heavily featured in the mix because the sound is rather aggressive. However, it helps to complement the snare sound obtained with the overheads.

Here is an audio example with this configuration:

List of equipment used for this recording:

Recording a drum kit with 5 microphones

Of course, it is possible to continue to enhance the Glyn Johns technique presented above by adding all sorts of microphones.

However, for a 5-microphone setup, I recommend testing this slightly more classic setup.

First, we keep the microphone on the bass drum (#1): believe it or not, except in certain genres, it is quite rare not to have a kick mic when recording a drum kit — even if it is not used during mixing if not necessary.

Then we add two microphones on the snare drum (#2 and #3): a “top” mic and a “bottom” mic, as shown in the diagram below:

Often, this is simply a Shure SM57.

The “top” mic will often be the one that produces the most interesting and directly usable sound. However, the “bottom” mic will capture the vibration of the snare drum’s shell, which will allow for added brightness and aggressiveness during mixing if needed.

This “bottom” mic will never be used alone: it will subtly complement the sound of the complete drum kit.

Tip: In fact, these two microphones on the snare drum are oriented in opposite directions. With each hit of the stick on the instrument, their diaphragm will vibrate in opposite ways.

During mixing, it is therefore advisable to invert the phase of the “bottom” microphone to avoid frequency filtering issues (notably loss of impact in the lows…).

Finally, all that’s left is to position your overheads (#4 and #5).

Most of the time, we will use:

• either an XY configuration, with two stacked microphones (often small diaphragm condensers) at an angle of 90° to 120°;
• or an AB configuration with two spaced microphones positioned above the cymbals.

Contrary to what is often seen, I recommend not positioning these overheads in line with the kit, but rather distributing them on either side of an imaginary line connecting the snare and the kick drum (take a good look at the diagram a bit higher to understand).

This will allow you to have a snare drum more localized at the center of the stereo image and will necessarily facilitate mixing.

Here’s how this configuration sounds with microphones in AB configuration (Coles 4038):

List of equipment used for this recording:

Recording a drum kit with 7 microphones

To conclude this series, I propose one last configuration this time with 7 microphones.

The logic is quite simple: we start from the previous configuration with 5 mics, but we add two “room” mics (#6 and #7).

Where the overheads will really capture the sound of the drum kit in its entirety, the “room” mics will, as their name suggests, capture the ambiance of the room.

They will help you, during mixing, to make the sound of the drums wider and more realistic.

Here’s how it can sound, thanks to the talent of Cédric from Allo Drums (note that in a real mix, I would probably have mixed the “room” mics more subtly, but for the example, it seemed interesting to hear them well…):

List of equipment used for this recording:

If your room is not very large, you can try to orient them towards the back wall rather than towards the drums to increase the sense of space.

However, if the acoustics of your room are not great, I recommend abandoning the idea of using this type of microphones and resimulating the acoustic space during mixing with a convolution reverb.

It’s not perfect, but it often does the job.

Reminder: don’t forget to download the raw tracks corresponding to the examples in this article to manipulate, mix, and clearly hear the difference between all the proposed configurations.

To go further…

It can be endless.

You can always add more microphones for more detail, flexibility during mixing, or sound customization.

However, to go beyond the configurations presented just before in the article, here are some additional ideas or experimentation avenues…

Complete the bass drum recording

Previously, we only used one microphone for the bass drum.

However, you can imagine using several to achieve a more complete recording.

For example, if you add a microphone inside the kick on a small stand or placed on a cushion, it will capture the attack of the beater more clearly:

The closer it is to the beater, the more attack there will be. The further away it is, the softer the bass drum will sound.

In comparison, a recording outside the kick will allow you to have something more centered on the low frequencies — and logically, the further you move the microphone back, the more you will capture the ambiance of the room:

Add a microphone on the hi-hat

By default, we capture the sound of the hi-hat directly in the overheads.

Thus, it may seem unnecessary to dedicate a microphone (and therefore a preamp channel) solely for capturing it.

That said, if you have the budget/time/microphone input available on your interface, having the option is, I think, interesting. It will allow you to manage the perceived proximity of the hi-hat during mixing by adjusting the level of the hi-hat microphone and the overheads.

And at worst, if it doesn’t fit afterward, remember that you are not obliged to use it in the mix!

Use a “mono room” microphone

Rather than using two “room” microphones, you can also decide to use just one.

For example, a nice ribbon microphone.

If this will not contribute to the sensation of a 3D stereo image (since it’s mono), the mic will still play a role in linking the elements of the drum kit — somewhat like parallel compression.

Don’t hesitate, by the way, to heavily compress this track…

Use a “trash mic”

To color the drum recording, it is common to use a “trash mic” as our English-speaking friends say.

Typically, this is a microphone that will give a saturated, lo-fi sound, and that we will often heavily compress to level the sound.

Many experiments are possible (like converting an old phone into a mic or using a cassette tape recorder), but you can also use a nice but lo-fi microphone, like the famous Shure Silver Bullet.

Or, if you like what’s made in France, the Fuzzyphone from Griffon Microphones is an interesting option that I highly recommend (in the photo on the side).

Try PZM (surface) mics

Using surface microphones (known as PZM) is also an option, especially as “room” microphones.

Indeed, since they are generally glued to a wall, they are a bit less sensitive to room reflections — or at least not in the same way as standard microphones.

You can also place them inside your bass drum.

Add triggers

Some will find it “cheating”, but in addition to a classic recording with microphones, you can use triggers.

I’m particularly thinking of the bass drum and snare drum when I say this.

The principle of triggers is quite simple: they are sensors that you attach to your instruments, and they send a signal to a module every time the drums are played.

This module then generally allows you to capture a MIDI signal that you will record, and that you will be able to assign to a pre-recorded audio sample.

Thus, with each hit, the sample will be played.

This is a technique widely used in modern metal, in particular, to gain precision on the bass drum sound which is heavily used with the double pedal.

How to record an electronic drum kit?

If you own an electronic drum kit, you may want to record it directly rather than renting a studio to record on an acoustic drum kit.

However, by default, using an electronic drum kit is not quite what I would recommend because it is more difficult to achieve a “real drum sound”.

That said, it remains an option — but in this case, there are two possible configurations.

Scenario 1: use the sounds from the module (not recommended)

Your electronic drum kit consists of different pads connected to a module that generates sounds.

Generally, these pre-recorded sounds are very game-oriented and not “production/recording” — which is why I would rather not recommend working with them.

That said, if you still want to use them (for example for a demo), you need to use the audio outputs of the module to connect to the inputs of your interface.

Often, in this configuration, you will only be able to retrieve a stereo signal. All the elements of the kit will therefore be mixed, which will significantly complicate the mixing phase.

Scenario 2: use a MIDI signal (recommended)

Another possible scenario: capturing a MIDI signal from your module (most electronic drum kits allow this, except for a few entry-level models).

The principle is simple:

1. you hit an element of the kit;
2. the module converts this information into a MIDI signal;
3. then it transmits it via USB or through a MIDI interface to your computer.

This allows you to use more or less high-end sample libraries, such as Toontrack’s EZdrummer — and thus have quality drum sounds.

However, it is difficult to achieve the realism and natural feel of a real drum recording, which often remains the ideal choice.

Note: one of the advantages of using an electronic drum kit, when recording the signal in MIDI, is that you can correct it if you make a mistake. For example, you can slightly quantize your kick drum hits to adjust for any small timing errors…

One option: have your drums recorded

In a home studio context, it can be difficult to achieve a good drum sound.

And perhaps you are more of a guitarist than a drummer, which can complicate the recording of the drum kit, making it quite daunting.

One option to keep in mind, in this case, if you do not wish to go to a studio, is to have your tracks recorded by a professional drummer.

Typically, like Allo Drums which provided the audio examples you have heard in this article.

Artistically, this may bother you, but the quality of the recordings and the tightness of a pro drummer can be a real plus for your production / your CD — so I find it to be an interesting option to keep in mind.

In conclusion

There you go, you now have a wealth of information on recording drums, whether it’s acoustic drums with different microphone configurations or electronic drums.

► Continue reading with my guide to the best microphones for drum recording