Lesson Info
12. Tom Micing Techniques
Summary (Generated from Transcript)
In this lesson, the instructors discuss different microphone options for miking toms and provide tips on placement and reducing bleed. They compare the Josephson e22S condenser microphone to the industry standard Sennheiser MD 421 dynamic microphone, discussing the pros and cons of each. They also touch on miking the underside of toms and recommend the Sennheiser e604 clip-on microphone for this purpose. The instructors emphasize the importance of achieving the best drum sound rather than prioritizing reducing bleed, and mention the possibility of using sample augmentation to address bleed issues.
Lessons
Class Introduction
02:08 2Learning Drum Tone
08:10 3Drum Head and Shell Selection
10:07 4Matt's Signature Snare
04:37 5Tuning a Snare Drum
31:44 6Tuning Toms
18:56 7Tuning Drums Q&A
13:00 8Drum Feel and Cymbal Selection
06:58Micing intro & Kick Mic Techniques
11:58 10Snare Micing Techniques
07:10 11Shell Micing Q&A
09:43 12Tom Micing Techniques
07:51 13Microphone Placement - Overheads and Room Mics
19:55 14Soundchecking the Drum Tones
33:45 15Drum Micing Q&A
11:55 16Working With Tempo
17:42 17How Drum Parts Evolve
09:48 18Preparing for Recording as a Drummer
12:49 19Writing Drum Parts
17:02 20Recording Drum Samples
13:53 21Tracking Drum Takes
19:31 22Comping Takes and Q&A
16:37 23Mix Session Intro
06:56 24Mix Session Organization
06:35 25Top Down Mixing Approach
28:51 26Mix Bus Compression & Saturation
21:11 27Mix Bus Q&A
14:32 28Mixing Drums Intro
06:59 29Mixing Kick Drum
35:00 30Mixing Snare Drum
20:53 31Mixing Toms
09:14 32Mixing Cymbal & Overhead Mics
15:39 33Mixing Room Mics
25:22 34Mixing Bass Guitar
35:57 35Mixing Rhythm Guitars
13:33 36Mixing Lead Guitars
22:57 37Mixing Synths, Pads & Samples
06:30 38Mixing Vocals
31:56 39Wrap Up Q&A & Final Thoughts
10:13 40BONUS VIDEO: Micing Guitar Cab
06:20Lesson Info
Tom Micing Techniques
The microphones that I have on toms, and I've kind of put them roughly in position on the rack toms, not so much on the floor toms, are made by a small company called Josephson, and they're called the e22S. Actually, they were developed by Steve Albini, the guy we were just talking about, in association with Josephson. I tried these mics once on a recording session a long time ago. They're really quite expensive, but once I heard them, I kinda knew that one day, if I was gonna keep recording drums, those would be the mics that I really want to use. The industry standard mic for toms, Can you grab that black microphone that's just on the side over there? I know they're all black. This one? That one, yeah. (chuckles) This a Sennheiser MD 421, and you will have definitely seen these on toms before, if you've ever looked at miked up drum kits. Probably 90% of, well maybe not 90, but a very large percentage of any drum recording you've heard has probably had these on toms. They are real...
ly good at picking up the body of a tom and the attack of a tom. The thing that I find with them, is they have very harsh sounding bleed, which is that the cymbals coming through in them, and you are gonna get a lot of cymbal in these mics there. They're even closer to the crashes than the snare mics are, and especially on that side, you got the China, and on Matt's kit, the spot, very close to the, the floor tom there. I find that the bleed coming through them is so harsh, that even if I'm gonna gate the toms or cut out the silence, you will hear very harsh cymbal bleed coming through in between the hits. It can certainly be made to work. I've mixed many projects and recorded projects with 421s with no issue. These microphones, however, are condenser microphones, they're not dynamics. They're kinda designed to have a similar frequency response to a dynamic microphone, so it's a, it's a kind of sound which is familiar when you hear it to what you might expect to hear from a tom-close mic. But the great virtue of a condenser microphone is that the bleed coming through is so much more flat. It really, you could pretty much use them as cymbal microphones. In fact, I think you can use these as overheads if you want to. The drums do sound a little bit better to me than with a 421, but the big tradeoff there, the big bonus for me, is the much more pleasant-sounding bleed that you get. They're also side-addressed. In other words, they kind of aim at 90 degrees to the body, which is a lot easier to place if you, in this case, it's not a problem, but sometimes, there's much lower cymbals. If you were to picture that there with a lower cymbal, or more cymbals over here, or more toms, you could really start to run into issues. Certainly on the floor toms, I don't know if you can see so well there, but this tom has a cymbal covering most of the outside edge. This microphone would be really difficult to squeeze through there and still get an optimal position. It might be okay, but there wouldn't be much wiggle room if I wanted to optimize that. These microphones are great for that reason, I can really fit them into tight spaces. Generally, for miking toms, I try, a bit like the snare, to aim kinda somewhere just a little bit closer than the center of the drum. Again, like the snare, you get more overtones as you move towards the edge, and that's not so desirable for toms. By not facing them at the center of the snare, of the head, we're gonna reduce the amount of snare bleed coming into them, and we're also gonna reduce the amount of cymbal bleed coming into them by aiming them more downwards. With these microphones, I've found that they're very flattering on any kind of positioning anyway. I probably won't even have to move these, just eyeballing it, they're just a little bit over the rim, and they're pointing in roughly the right direction. I'm sure those are gonna sound great already. Some engineers, and in fact, I as well, sometimes like to mic the underside of toms. It's kind of a luxury though. It's not the nicest sound in the world, it's very kind of, I dunno, it's not the full pleasing sound that you get from miking the top, but in conjunction with the top mic, it can yield a really cool sound. It also tends to get less bleed, so if you're supplementing the signal with another signal with much less bleed, you can reduce the overall amount of cymbal bleed in the tom sound. However, when we've got four toms, that means we're using eight inputs on toms alone. Even just when it comes to mixing, having that many tracks can be a bit of a pain. And I know I can get perfectly good results with just top mics, so today, I'm just gonna do top mics. Would you use another Josephson on the bottom? You could, and Steve Albini recommends doing that. He has quite a complicated technique that I can go into. It's not a technique, but a, the way that you can do things, you kinda create a system of two microphones, and reflected sound coming back from a distance is gonna hit both microphones at roughly the same time. But because the underside microphone is generally flipped in polarity, it kinda cancels out that reflected sound. It doesn't work so well for close sounds, and the two mics need to be at a similar volume in the mix, which is also something which I don't really like. For underside mics, I really like the cheap Sennheiser e604s. That's the same range as that kickdrum mic. Again, a lot of people kind of look down on that, but they're very lightweight clip-on mics, and they have a really full sound. Just because you can clip them onto the rim, it means you've got less stands around the kit. It can be a lot neater, and to me, it does a really good job of capturing that side of the drum, which is not too crucial anyway. So that might be what I would do for that. Should we move on to cymbals? Yeah. Well, actually, one sec. I'm gonna put these mics into position. To get at this floor tom, I'm gonna kinda have to come in I think here. It's always gonna be a trade-off, I could try coming in directly underneath this cymbal. I don't know if this is visible, 'cause it's very low. I would almost definitely have to point the mic almost straight down at the drum towards the edge, which can work, but today, I'm gonna try, and having done this in the past, this has worked perfectly well. I'm gonna come in here, and kind of try and achieve a similar placement to what I have on the rack toms. I'm just gonna have to pull this mic. Let's see. That'll... Yeah, probably about there. I'm also trying to make sure this isn't actually touching the hardware, it is a little bit. Okay, that's a little bit cleaner now. Now, invariably, if Matt's playing the spot cymbal and the floor toms, we're gonna get a lot of bleed coming through there. We might have to resort to using sample augmentation just for that section, using samples that we take from the kit. We'll see where we go with that. My primary focus is making sure the drum sounds its best, rather than having a microphone placement that is gonna sound really bad, just to reduce the bleed. I know that's the opposite of what I was saying about the snare, but with toms, it's a little bit different for me. And then, yeah, Alex has already gone and put that in a very similar spot. Actually, what I like to do with the floor tom, and it requires just jigging this a little bit, is try and get the mic to come in from a similar angle, so it's pointing away from everything, just back towards the back side of the room. With this mic, I'm gonna kinda angle it like that. Maybe adjust the placement a little bit. Again that should give, yeah, that's broadly correct. We can mess with that later, but again, it's just over the rim, pointing in towards the edge just a touch. Hopefully, that's gonna do a good job of rejecting all of these very loud cymbals on this side.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Connor Smith
I haven't even finished the course and already my mixes have improved dramatically. Night and day difference. I haven't watched the portions with Matt as I'm using drum samples (GGD specifically), but I have no doubt it's great. Matt is always incredibly helpful and is a brilliant drummer. I thoroughly enjoy listening to Nolly, he's very articulate and his approach to audio engineering is flat out brilliant. I'm so happy I purchased this course. Before my mixes were good (balance and things of that nature) but lacked life and energy. I just wasn't getting the professional level sound I was searching for. Now, I am proud of my mixes and actually think they're getting to the point where they sound professional and don't sound like they were produced by a dude in his bedroom with about half of year of recording and audio engineering experience. The metal genre is difficult to mix as there's a lot going on and the "current metal sound" is very crisp and clear while still being very heavy and punchy. It isn't 80s dad metal where guitars are hissy and flubby. lol I am a huge Periphery fan and it's a privilege to watch Nolly share his knowledge. I really enjoy his approach as its very simple but very effective. He doesn't have insane mixing strategies, he just does what works and it's applicable to any DAW and is helpful for almost any genre of music. Brilliant course!
a Creativelive Student
This was an amazing course! I loved hearing from both Matt and Nolly on their thought process behind drums in general. I love the point they drove home about getting a great source tone. That seems to be forgotten in a lot of recordings and they try to fix it in the mix. Jolly did a fantastic job of making it look "easy" to take already great sounding source tones and making them really shine! Cant wait to put these concepts into practice in my own projects. What a great source of knowledge here. Thanks for this great class!
Adrian Gougov
Best course and overall learning experience I've had in a long long while. Nolly and Matt are superb. Nolly is an astonishing mixing and recording engineer and a great teacher. Not only does he explains his methods carefully and in detail, but also lays down key concepts in an understandable language. Definitely worth the investment if you wanna learn how to mix modern heavy music. Definitely worth the investment if you wanna learn how to track drums properly. Definitely worth the investment if you wanna see one of modern metal's best drummers track a whole song from start to finish. Props to Creative Live for bringing this material to us.