Distance Mic’ing:

The more mics you have, the greater the control you have over the balance, stereo placement, EQ and effects for each component of the kit.

Using a single mic, the best you can attain is some sense of balance between the individual drums, along with the amount of room reflection versus pure drums. Using a boom, try angling a cardioid mic toward the kit at about 6 feet off the ground and about one foot in front of or behind the kit. Alternately, place the mic four feet above the center of the kit. If you desire more room sound, try pointing the mic directly at the kit at a distance of about eight feet.

Several techniques are available using two mics. If you have a matched pair, try an X-Y pattern about three feet directly above the kit. Alternately, place the matched mics level with the drummer’s ears and facing forward about four to eight inches on either side of his/her head. (The drummer’s head actually acts as a form of baffle in this technique.) If you do not have a matched pair, try placing the one with the larger diaphragm inside the kick drum and the other on a boom about two feet over the rest of the kit.

Where only three mics are available, two main choices are favored. The first is a hybrid of the aforementioned dual mic techniques where one mic is placed inside the kick and the other two form an X-Y several feet above the kit. The other is to mic the kick and snare separately along with one overhead.

The use of four mics begins to open the possibilities for professional results. Place individual mics on the kick and snare, then use a matched pair in X-Y configuration for stereo overheads.

Close Mic’ing:

Modern music centers so much on the kick, snare and hi-hat that being able to mic these components of a drum individually is fairly critical. At a minimum, you also need a pair of overheads to catch everything else in stereo. In a perfect world, you have enough mics and channels to mic each element of the kit individually—with the exception of the cymbals (hi-hat excluded) being captured by the stereo overheads. Cardioid or hyper-cardioid is ideal in most cases due to the need to isolate the elements of the kit from one another.

• Kick Drum. If the front head is on the kick drum and there is no hole in which to insert a mic, simply place the mic close to the front head. Placing the mic inside the kick drum provides more flexibility.


Placement near where the beater strikes the head produces a tighter, punchier sound, while moving further out makes the sound larger and deeper. It is common practice to experiment with various methods of padding inside of the kick in order to increase punch and reduce boom. Use as large a diaphragm as possible. You may need to switch on the mic’s built-in pad if the sound pressure is overloading the electronics of either the mic or the preamp.


• Snare. Snare drums are one of the few places where dynamic mics are routinely used in the studio. One of the reasons for this is that the snare mic is the most likely to be hit by errant drumsticks. That said, you could certainly use a condenser, especially in more subtle applications such as those involving brushes.


Standard practice is to angle the mic down toward the drum at about two inches from the rim. Moving the mic further in provides more attack and less body—something that is true for most drums. Some engineers routinely place a condenser under the snare drum as a second mic in order to capture the sizzle of the snares themselves.


• Hi-hat. Most engineers place a mid-sized cardioid condenser facing down at the outer edge of the hi-hat. This position tends to produce more of the sound of the stick striking the cymbal, where moving it further inward captures more of the quality of the bell. In either event, orienting the cardioid diaphragm downward helps to reject bleed from a neighboring overhead cymbal.



• Toms. As with the snare, tom-toms are often the domain of dynamic mics because of the possibility of being hit by drum sticks. Here again, condensers are perfectly valid in controlled situations. Mic’ing toms individually provides the flexibility of balancing, panning and EQ-ing them separately in the mix.



• Overheads. Mid-sized capsules are used more typically than large capsules in this application due to the smooth high frequency response. (Sterling large diaphragms have enhanced frequency response due to the Disk Resonator technology, so these mics work fine for overheads as well.) The pair can either be used in an X-Y coincident fashion or spaced several feet apart over the left and right portions of the kit. In both cases, experiment with a height of anywhere between two and five feet above the kit. In general, high ceilings are helpful in regard to drum overheads because there’s more room for the sound to breathe before being reflected back.



• Room mics. If the drums are in a sizable room, you can attain a truly large drum sound by placing a stereo pair of mics out in the room, then mixing their sound with the individual mics. Adding compression can make the sound appear to be even bigger.