Recording: Drums (Day 1 – Hi-Hat and Ride setup)

Shure SM7B on hi-hats

Shure SM7B

Shure SM57 on ride

At this point, I had the overheads setup, measured and in-phase; setup the kick drum mic; had the snare top- and bottom- mic’d; put top and bottom mics on the rack and floor toms;  and placed triggers on the kick, snare, rack tom and floor tom.

We did a few audio tests and I had good coverage across the entire kit. However, I wanted to space the kit out a bit further and exaggerate the width of the kit. My overheads are already pretty wide, physically speaking, and the overheads are already panned hard left and hard right on the mixer. So how do you make the kit wider?

It’s all about panning and placement, and faking things a bit. If I solo the overheads by themselves, it already sounds big and wide due to the physical placement and panning. Now, if I pan each mic inward a bit, maybe 80% Left and 80% Right, I still have a huge wide stereo image. But, I created a sliver of space over on the far sides at 100% Left and Right. So, what I do is find the cymbals at the extreme outer edges of the kit, mic those and pan them hard left and hard right. The result is a super wide kit (from the overheads) that now sounds even wide because direct, close-miked sources (hi-hat and ride) are placed at the extreme outer reaches. It’s kind of a psychoacoustical effect, and it works well.

On the hi-hat side, I setup a Shure SM7B mic. This mic is traditionally a broadcast/radio mic, but it’s received a lot of acclaim and use as a vocal mic, especially for screaming vocals. It has a depth, body and smoothness that tames harsh vocals in a good way. Rather than losing their grit and balls, things sound aggressive-but-not-harsh, and it settles into a mix nicely. Well, the same reasons it works on harsh vocals are the same reason it’s nice on other harsh sources, such as guitars and even hi-hats. I put it on these hi-hats and it tamed them nicely, while still being crisp. I ran this mic into an ART MPA Gold tube preamp (review coming soon) to further mellow the harshness. No EQ or compression.

On the ride, I miked it from below using a Shure SM57 pointed near the bell. You’ll have to listen to find the sweet spot on any particular ride. This one happened to sound best near center. No tricks or special notes on this one, just a 57 going into the other channel of my ART MPA Gold preamp to tame the harshness.

I panned the hi-hat/SM7B hard right and the ride/SM57 hard left. When I bring up the OHs, these blend right in and provide some nice extra wideness and separation.

ART MPA Gold preamp