Kick Drum Tips

by Anthony Caldwell
Mic Choice: To get a solid kick sound, you want to use a large diaphragm mic. An example of a good kick drum mic are the AKG D112, the Sennheiser MD 421 and an Electro-Voice RE20. There are many mic's made for recording the kick drum and each mic will have its own feel and will help different frequencies over others. For example, if you want that "tick" sound of the kick drum petal beater striking the head, you would chose a mic that favors the lower mid range and the upper frequencies as well.

Mic Position: For a Tight Drum: (There are many way to mic a kick drum) This does not use 2 heads. Blot out the outer head and pace the mic inside the kick drum and slant it at the batter head. The gap from the batter head depends on the sound you are going for. The closer you are to the batter head, the more impact and less resonance sound you get form that mic. Inserting a blanket or a foam pad inside the base of the kick drum will help weaken unwanted reflections. A good starting point for mic placement is about 5 inches inside the kick drum, slightly tilted towards the floor tom.

For a Large & Live Kick Drum: To get large and live kick drum sounds, you should use 2 kick drum heads.The sound will sound more full with rich overtones. you may want to put a strip of cloth across both heads. This helps undermine overtones without destroying the boominess of the kick drum. Try placing your mic about 2 feet in front of the kick drum and have it point to the center of the head. You'll need to turn the pad setting on for the mic, or you may overload your signal. Various drummers have a the front head with a hole that they cut out or bought. If this is the case, you can posture the mic somewhat inside the hole or aimed into the hole. Note, that having a hole in the outer head can cause an annoying ring to it. To fix this aggravating issue, you can lay a foam pad or blanket against a section of the front head to remove the annoying ring without effecting the overall sound.

Signal Processing Tips: You can compress the kick drum during the recording phase. But you do not have to. You can do all this after its recorded into your program of elect. When I process the signal when recording, I will primarily use a compressor, EQ, and a noise gate. I'll compress with a threshold set to around -10dB below the highest peak with a moderate to fast attack and moderate release with a ratio set to 2:1. Then I'll boost at 100Hz to taste and then I'll run it through a noise gate, with the gate set up to close after a few milliseconds after the kick sound. This will make the kick drum very defined and very thrilling.
Kick Drum Tips