If time is tight for a full‑band session, you won’t be able to perfect all aspects of a drum recording. But if you prioritise, you can still ensure you get decent results every time.
In an ideal world you’d have the time and budget available to approach a band recording session just as you’d like. We should always aspire to make great recordings, and I really don’t want to ‘dumb down’ the art of recording drums... But this article isn’t about sessions where you have time to audition different drum heads or tune the toms to the key of the song. It’s about the practical reality of recording bands with acoustic drum kits in less‑than‑ideal circumstances. I was inspired to write it after a recent discussion with a year‑three music tech student about how best to approach recording a typical indie/rock style band playing live in the studio. The catch was that their college only offered 2‑3 hour studio slots to their students. That’s a pretty big ask for any full band recording involving a drum kit! But with experience, you’ll learn how to prioritise and pace the setting up of a session, what fall‑back options you can deploy to save time, and when and where you should be spending time fighting battles.
Below, I’ll focus on how you can get a tom sound to a good or, at worst, usable place in the space of just a few minutes, freeing up precious time to do everything else you need to do on the session. Often, when trying to get a band set up quickly to record, I’ll follow the steps that I’ve described below. I’ll then be presented with a natural break of 15 minutes or so in which I can fine‑tune the toms further, with the bonus of actually having heard them in the proper context!
Spend enough time right at the start of a session making sure that the drum kit is fully optimised. That’s before you focus on mic choice or techniques, never mind sweating about which preamp to use for the hi‑hat.
The Kit Comes First
As I explained to this student, it’s hugely important to understand that, after the quality of the drummer and their performance, the sound of the kit will almost certainly have the biggest influence over the sound that comes from your speakers. More so than the mics, and more so than the rest of the recording chain or your mix processing. It should be obvious, then, that when recording live drums engineers should spend enough time right at the start of a session making sure that the drum kit is fully optimised. That’s before you focus on mic choice or techniques, never mind sweating about which preamp to use for the hi‑hat spot mic!
Even in a hurried session, there should be ample time for a drummer to get their toms sounding good before you record — but you might need to encourage some drummers to spend sufficient time and attention to that. It can help to have plenty of spare tuning keys to hand and, if you know what you’re doing, tools like a DrumDial, which can often help you locate a problem quickly.
While it might not be quite so tight on a typical commercial studio session, time is nonetheless often a rare luxury, and more often than not I find myself tasked with getting a drum kit prepped and miked up as quickly as possible. I try to run my studio in a way that facilitates that. For example, I always have a good‑sounding drum kit set up in my studio, with decent heads and in decent shape tuning‑wise. Sometimes that pays dividends, and if you have the chance to keep a kit in good session‑ready condition, or at least to get in early and set up in advance of a session, I’d encourage that. But, understandably, drummers will often prefer to use their own drums, and even if they’re happy using the house kit they may have very different ideas about tuning and the tone, particularly with their toms.
In that scenario, there’s only so much you can do in advance, so you’ll still need to spend a good chunk of the available time assessing and treating the sound of the drums. To keep on top of things, you’re going to need a plan, and a good starting point is to ask yourself what signals you absolutely must capture to ensure you can get a good result. On a short session like this, for example, before I could start to get the rest of the band up and running with headphone mixes, I’d definitely want to know that I had something good coming through my kick, snare, and overhead mics. Get those choices and techniques right, and you should have a decent image of the kit, as well as a cue mix that allows all the artists to feel and respond to the groove.
Only then will you really know how much time you have to get a result from the rest of the kit mics, including the toms, as well as from the other instruments. When it comes to the toms — which you’ll recall I said drummers can be very particular about — you’ll probably not have much time to experiment, but this doesn’t mean you have to put up with them sounding like cardboard boxes. The trick is to have a few good, reliable techniques that you can reach for quickly, that you can rely on to assess and, to some extent, manipulate these often mysterious parts of a standard acoustic drum kit when time is tight and you really need to get some recordings down.
Drummers Have Feelings Too
Here’s my most important piece of advice: talk to the drummer. Drummers are normally the nicest people in the band anyway [Neil’s a drummer, so he would say that! — Ed.] but assuming you haven’t had the luxury of any pre‑production time, it’s important to figure out how ‘set’ their drum parts are. Some will play the same way every time, while others can be more spontaneous about the parts of the kit they use. Be sure that you actually need the toms; more than once, I’ve spent time working on the sound of a tom and only realised after the take that they didn’t actually use it once! Also, it’s worth pointing out that inexperienced drummers often seem to feel the need to bring ‘extra’ toms and cymbals into the studio. You need to try (diplomatically, of course!) to find out what their ‘normal’ setup looks like, and suggest that maybe it might be a good idea to work on getting the best from a simple setup on this session.
It’s then a case of trying to figure out what they’re looking for from their toms, and you’d be surprised at the number of drummers who have no opinion on this. That’s OK, but it then falls to you to assess what’s realistic given what you have in front of you. Further enquiries might include whether they’re planning on ‘riding’ their toms in any sections, and generally getting a feel for how important they are. I’ve worked on lots of sessions where the toms are only used once or twice in a track, for single hit. Yes, every sound is important, but if we’re really in a pinch time‑wise, is it really worth spending half an hour on a single tom hit that you can easily replace later — or is it valuable session time you could spend more profitably elsewhere?
Assuming the toms are important to the piece, you need to know not only that they’re tuned, but also whether the specific drums can deliver the sound that you and the drummer envisage. In my experience of fiddling around with drums, most toms have a tuning sweet range where they really shine, and that might mean having a difficult conversation with the drummer about their equipment. Asking an eight‑inch rack tom to sound like a thunderous rock tom is a tough ask, for example, and so too is making a drum head that’s been battered to within an inch of its life have a nice sense of decay, when really it needs to go in the bin. You’ll make your life far easier and their result much better if the toms in front of the mics are realistically capable of sounding how both you and the drummer want them to sound. To that end, I’d advise that when soundchecking you don’t just get the drummer to play repeated single hits of the toms while you set up — ask them to play them in the context of the track you’re going to be recording; it will tell you so much more than just whether you’ve got your levels right.
Tools & Options
DrumDial.Even in sessions where we might be meeting a band for the first time for a quick recording project, there are things we can do in advance, including making sure we have tools to hand. In terms of getting a tom into shape, obviously it helps to have more than one drum key on you. I also like to have a selection of damping tools available, which I’ll discuss more below, and, although I use it less these days than I used to, I also find that a DrumDial type device can be useful for troubleshooting a problem tom. This can often be impractical in a really hectic session, but DrumDials can be great tools for developing your understanding of tension and how a tom can be manipulated, and with experience they can help you out of a hole.
Then there are the drums themselves, and having a few carefully chosen alternative options to hand can make a big difference. It might mess up how the kit looks on social media snaps of the session, but if the drummer brought along a poorly set‑up drum, believe me, they won’t complain once they’ve heard what the nice‑sounding tom you got ready beforehand brings to the table. It’ll be easier for studio owners to keep a few drums in reserve than it is for a student, but you will still have options. First, make sure you spend time getting to know the instruments that are available to you at the college, and then, when you book a session, try to make sure you’ll have the best options available on the day. You might also consider borrowing a couple of nice drums from a drummer friend. Even if they don’t get used, it’s good to practice learning to tune drums before a session, and to develop a bit of a feel for how to treat this often tricky aspect of recording a drum kit.
Drummer’s won’t always have the right tom for the sound they want on a particular song, and where possible simply swapping it out for a more appropriate drum will be the quickest route to a good sound.
Tuning Troubleshooting
Tuning is always going to make the biggest difference to the sound of the toms, but it’s an aspect of drumming and engineering about which I think we never really stop learning — in one session you might feel like the ‘drum doctor’, and in the next you could be completely flummoxed by how a tom is behaving! Indeed, people have written whole books on drum tuning. Obviously, I’m not going that deep into this topic in this article, but if you want to learn more why not, check out my good friend Dr Rob Toulson’s SOS Podcast series on Drum Science: https://sosm.ag/DrumSciencePt1PODCAST.
You do need to be aware that tuning can take time, but if you understand what you’re doing and can get some practice under your belt, you’ll be able to identify and rectify tuning problems pretty quickly. Having spent many years playing drums and recording drummers, my first piece of advice would be to remove any damping that’s already on the drum. Resist the urge to start adjusting the lugs for just a moment, while you make a quick assessment. Quite often you’ll find that a single ‘rogue’ tuning lug is throwing the whole tom out of whack. You can usually identify if this is the case by hitting the drum as evenly as possible towards the edge of the drum head in the vicinity of each lug. If you can learn to do this by ear, it’s a good skill to develop, but a tool such as a DrumDial can also be really useful. I find that quickly getting all the lugs on the top head at a consistent tension can often make an awful‑sounding drum seem respectable and, at worst, it will at least give you a better idea of how a particular drum is behaving. For example, it can make it more obvious that the resonant (bottom) head is causing the problem, in which case you can look either to follow the same process of evening out the tension for that head, or (the key to a great‑sounding tom!) try to quickly improve the relationship between the two heads.
Damping
Tuning aside, probably the biggest ‘quick return’ in tom tweaking is to damp a drum to within an inch of its life, and remove all resonances, good and bad, from the drum; you’ll still be left with a reliable trigger signal for drum replacement. But while you can go down this route if you’re really desperate, hopefully we’re aspiring to a bit more than that!
Following on from my earlier advice on tuning, I’ll assume you’ve removed any damping from the drum and have got it into a decent place tuning‑wise in the allotted time. You can now look to build on your gains with some targeted damping of the tom’s resonances — and by ‘targeted’, I mean not only being selective but also that you need to consider the musical context in which the tom will be used. If you’ve done any work with drums, you’re probably aware of MoonGel‑type products and DIY gaffer tape‑style solutions for reducing a drum’s decay. I’ve found, however, that I get quicker and more forgiving results from using the leather damping products that clip to the rim of the drum. Not only are they less messy and easier to put in place, but they also work in a different way to gels and tape: they momentarily release the head of the drum when it’s stuck, and that makes them less prone to choking the life out it.
There are some great products available in this style, but they may seem a little pricey to a non‑drummer, so here’s a tip: I’ve achieved similar results using little strips of thin leather that I attach to the drum with electrical tape (which is less sticky/messy than gaffer tape!). Another good technique, especially if you’re looking for more of a vintage sound, is to place a small folded towel, such as a tea towel, over the edge of the drum and hold it in place with the sort of spring clamp you might find in a hardware store. This allows you to vary how much towel encroaches on the drum, so it’s often pretty quick and easy to nix the undesired resonance.
Commercial products such as MoonGel can work well for controlling ringing and unwanted resonances, but they can also seem quite pricey for non‑drummers! Thankfully, there are plenty of affordable yet effective DIY options.
Mic Choices
There are some clever techniques for recording toms, for example using a single mic to capture a pair of rack toms, but these involve taking time to listen and refine placement — time that in this scenario you don’t have. So when it comes to miking your toms, I’d tend to keep things safe and simple, giving each tom a dedicated close mic (assuming resources allow). Cardioid dynamic mics like the Sennheiser MD 421 are a classic choice for toms for a reason and would be a safe bet. If the mic options are limited, you should at least have studio staples like the SM57 available, and they can serve perfectly well, although you might find you miss a little of the low end on larger toms. I sometimes like using beyerdynamic M201s for their more directional (hypercardioid) polar pattern. I’d also recommend not being afraid to try a capacitor mic, particularly one with a switchable polar pattern. My AKG C414 B‑ULS set to hypercardioid is one of my favourite options, in fact, and the off‑axis (ie. not front‑on) sound you capture with a decent capacitor mic will usually sound much smoother than with a dynamic mic.
When it comes to mics, the Sennheiser MD 421 is a classic choice, but where your options are more limited pretty much any directional dynamic mic is a safe bet — even an SM57 will help you get a good result in the bag.
This brings me on to an important point about miking. There’s an awful lot going on with things like cymbal spill and phase cancellation when recording a drum kit with multiple mics, so you really must pay close attention to the whole sound a mic is capturing from the kit, and not just how it captures the tom itself. Hopefully, you’ll have practice time at college, or some more leisurely sessions in which you can listen and experiment to find what sort of sound you like. But a dynamic mic should be a safe bet, and there are a couple of things you can do to squeeze as much isolation as possible from each mic too. Some engineers favour pointing the mic more downward to a drum’s head to achieve this, but I’d generally resist the urge to get closer than, say, two inches — because while isolation might be desirable, you do want the result to sound like the tom you’re recording!
One final tip while you’re still learning, and which won’t take up much session time, is to remember to take a few photos of your final drum setup. That way, you’ll have a clear visual reference for your future self. When you come to mix your own recordings, you’ll quickly observe which mic techniques worked and which didn’t serve you so well.
After The Fact
The focus of this article is on the recording session, and a great‑sounding tom that has been recorded well should need very little work in the mix. Yet, I do want to leave you with just a couple of suggestions about how you can improve a more ‘average’ sounding tom when mixing — hopefully you can turn to these before you feel the need to reach for samples.
First, always remember to check for the best polarity of a tom’s close‑mic signal against the overhead and room mic channels. Just hit the polarity button in your DAW channel/plug‑in. The position that sounds fullest (least ‘thin’) is the one to choose. Also, in between tom hits, try muting the tom channels and listen for any change in the overall drum sound. Sometimes the spill these mics pick up can contribute something useful, but often it will sound better muted, in which case use a gate or your DAW’s strip silence feature to isolate the tom hits.
An EQ would be my next port of call. More often than not, you’ll find that there’s a large chunk of unpleasant midrange information, and removing this from a close‑miked tom channel will yield an immediate improvement. With any bell‑style EQ, try sweeping a boost around 500‑800 Hz to identify the offending frequency, and when you find it apply a generous cut. I normally find that there’s an ‘unsweet’ spot somewhere around 700Hz that cuts well. Sticking with the close‑mic channels, some saturation can work really well on the toms when you need help blending what are often unnatural‑sounding close channels into the overall drum mix.
Lastly, because the close mics are usually fairly isolated and can, as I said, be relatively unnatural‑sounding, we can often be quite dramatic when we process them. It’s far harder to influence the overheads or rooms without compromising the sound of the rest of the kit but, obviously, your toms will be present in the overheads and room mics too. A helpful option can be to put a compressor on the overheads, and trigger it (using its external side‑chain input) using the close tom mics. You’re just looking to dip the level of the overheads by a couple of dB whenever the toms are struck. It doesn’t always work and it won’t always be needed, but it’s a technique that allows the close mics (or samples if you’ve gone down that route) to feel more ‘present’ in the final mix.