Big recorderman fan on my Focusrite Clarret 8Pre 2 OHS, Kick, Snare, 2 toms, Front of Kit and Room

3 things: 1. I like your hair. 2. I like the sound diffuser behind you. 3. I really wish you would gift all of us a brandy new video every single day. Thank you 🙏. You’re stuff is in my top 5 things I go to to learn stuff about things I love love love to do.

I tend not to have a "standard" method of miking drums as it all depends on the music, the kit, the player and the environment. But my favourite approach for rock music, learned from George Chkiantz, and using what are now fairly vintage mics, is a true coincident pair (ie co-sited crossed capsules, array centre pointing vertically down) of U87s on cardioid overhead, plus two more cardioid U87s spaced equidistant from the snare on either side of the kit (ie beyond the FT and beyond the HH) and the same distance from the snare as the overheads: pan both pairs left and right and record them on a stereo pair of tracks: balance the two pairs of mics (coincident and spaced) so the snare is in the same place (centre) in the stereo and adjust the relative levels of the two pairs to get the degree of openness you want. AKG D20 on bass drum on its own track, and that's it. The lack of snare mic is deliberate (though you could add a C451 on its own track if you really have to) which ensures that the snare sounds like part of the kit and doesn't stamp all over the vocals. If you are minimalist you can go for a single 87 overhead and a single 87 outlier plus BD, ie total 3 mics, but that config really works best in mono (and as a technique probably originates with Glyn Johns).

When I first started tracking acoustic drums in my old room, I used a Shure Beta 52 just at the sound port of the kick, SM 57's on the snare, and separate ones on the hi-hat and toms (2 riding, 1 floor), then I used a pair of AKG C1000S condensers for R/L overheads and cymbals... as time went on and I gathered additional mics over the years, I started adding a 57 under the snare, another 57 behind the kick close to where the beater hits, additional C1000S for more direct over cymbals, etc. It actually took me a while and listening to some Beatles vinyl to realize I was over killing the drums. That is when I started experimenting with minimal mic coverage on the drums. A lot less to deal with at mix however, you are correct in the statement with fewer mics placement becomes the key. At the time I was tracking onto 3 TASCAM DA-88's. I have since picked up ProTools and also using 2" tape for tracking. That is where I realized minimum mics work just a swell...Thanks, enjoyed your take on this.

I’m kinda at a loss... I have 2 rack toms, 2 floor toms, bass, snare, hihat, 2x crashes, a splash, trash crash , ride, trash stack, and a China... I’ve been told at least 8 mics. But his hi hat question is spot on! Thank you!

I might give my impression here just for reference. For 8 channels I use 2 XY overheads + 1 center mic. Three of them form equidistant triangle. This third mic does what Glynn Johns top mic does - it centers the kit. Close mics are just adding low end punch to this sound, maybe adding Room mic if you have good acoustics and music is heavy. Anything else is just basic close mic. I'd do resonant head for snare too, as I really like crackle on pretty dead snare. The hardest one to get right is Kick drum mic. Its placement is really essential to gluing whole kit. I hate Kick port sound. Its just boom with no attack. What I found works for me is short mic stand that gets inside the kick drum and points to the outer ring of kick. It has plenty bottom end, but what's more important is that it has much more mids and attack than any other way. This way I use way less gating on kick

My favorite approach after many many years recording drums, is a single overhead in the best spot for the room/player...then a snare mic, an outside kick mic in the best spot for phase out in front of it, then i use the bleed from the tom spot mics to widen the perception of the whole kit with panning them out respectively. Maybe a mono or xy room set up or even a mic in another room/hallway for some ambience. With a pair of headphones on I have the drummer keep giving me solid kick hits and move the front of kick and tom mics in a spot where they sound the most in phase or sometimes I flip the polarity at the preamp and move them until they sound the weakest then flip the polarity back. The snare mic I just put where I like it best and flip it later if needed. Easy way to get more than enough tone (if the drummer is balanced) and can do it with an 8 channel interface if you had to. The least amount of mics you use ....it's just going to sound better. Period. Another trick is to leave the tom mics muted until the choruses come in to give the whole kit some excitement and some spread when you need the extra lift.

Justin - nerd your arse off any time you like. A- it's your channel; B- your best stuff comes out when you nerd your arse off!

I really enjoyed this ... and "just talking" too. Drummers bashing cymbals way too hard has been a pet peeve of mine for decades now. Plus they break them ... a costly lack of finesse. I have been getting into mic'ing drums on a song by song basis. It's not too much trouble to change things around. I usually have room for five to seven mic's. What if the song has a contemplative, moody groove with kick, snare, and hi-hat only ? Then I can put an under-snare mic. What if I make a sweeping, cinematic beat with just kick, hi-hat, ride, and a single, medium to large tom ? Then I can mic under the tom. It's good to write songs with these kinds of alternate grooves and beats in mind. There will always be songs with more traditional set-ups. Think about song-writing and arrangement with the drum part and feel in mind. Ideas that work will satisfy the creative brain, as we find new ways to communicate and focus our music. Great stuff man. Will definitely be watching more.

I also first recorded drums as a teenager with a Tascam Porta-One, three 57s, a 58, a Radio Shack 4-channel mixer and a nanoCompressor. My gut instinct was to also use a “front of kit” mic, as well as one overhead, a front of kick and one pointed between the hi hat & snare. I pursued songwriting & performance over engineering, so I didn’t learn about phase until I started recording myself in the box over 10 years later. I still have that Porta-One...I should remix those early recordings for posterity.

thanks for this!!

Thanks man!!

Best drum kit sound I've ever gotten was a slightly modified Glyn Johns drum micing method.

great content as always

I was thinking...oh, no, some tool gear head metal fusion bro....then you dropped Gabe's name.....and you had me. I REALLY enjoyed this. Seriously. Thanks, man.

David - number of mics for optimum drum sounds depends on the circumstances - the drummer, the room and the music. I record drum tracks every day for remote clients of all kinds, as well as having many projects come to my studio with OTHER drummers. Your 4 inputs will take you far as will less as Justin points out. 90% of the outside clients that come in to record in my studio are acoustic and somewhat jazzy, and the drummers are always high level, experienced players who have good INTERNAL BALANCE in their playing - 99% of the time 4 mics wins the day - stereo overheads, bass drum and snare, and quite often the snare is unnecessary unless the drummer switches between brushes and sticks a bunch. For more "modern" music where a tighter (or roomier) sound is appropriate / the mix engineer might need more control over individual elements, the setup ranges from 7 mics (BD, SD, HAT, T1, T2, OH L+R), to up to 15 or 16 - BD in and out, SD top and bottom, HAT, Side Snare, Satellite BD, 4 toms, OH L+R, Room or Rooms, and in rare instances a Center Overhead for when the L+R are pulled wide and I'm still looking for that great direct over the snare by the drummer's head sound. The other huge factor is how good your room is - if the room sounds great, stereo overheads can cover everything except for bass drum. If it sounds crappy like almost all small rooms, then more mics closer to the drums can help - but there's no guarantee. Many say their rooms sound great, and they're almost all wrong. More mics create more complicated phase relationships of course, so quite often I RECORD a bunch of mics and pick and choose which ones to use in the mix. My opinion - if you want to offer full service remote drum tracks to your clients across different styles, you should have more than 4 inputs and mics. if you got another input device that would give you 4-8 more inputs, you'd be set. One other thing - the Glynn Johns thing works great also, so try it out - maybe certain clients will prefer it, you never know.

Right now it’s pretty much all AKG for my drum mic set up Akg 451 on snare Akg 414 eb p48 overhead above cymbals looking at the snare Sometimes I’ll use another Akg 414 eb p48 over the low tom aimed at the snare I never measure it. I just eyeball it and I don’t get bad results. Then an akg D12 or d12vr on the kick. With a closed front. I always tell the drummer to get the fucking pillow out of the kick so it extends the sustain.

thanks for this deeper dive into my original question Justin - it was reeeaaaaallly informative and inspires me to get creative with mic placement for the various upcoming projects where I need to provide different kinds of drum sounds/vibes. I've been mostly going with the Glyn Johns setup. I love how it captures the over the kit picture and also the really nice floor tom tones going across. I've set up two Coles 4038's (in stereo, haven't tried two mono yet), a Telefunkin M82 just a little inside the ported resonant side of the kick, and a Sennheiser 441 to cover close snare & some hat. I realized long before I started to record that the room didn't sound good for drums, but that it had alot of potential, so I started to treat it and kept going until I got the overbearing tones out and the warm tones started to come through. I also moved the drums around alot, sometimes just a move forward or backward by 6 inches to a foot. That made a difference. I also am someone who tunes drums every time I set them up on a gig, and that is thousands of gigs at this point, so when in the room recording, I tune and tune until the kit is resonating together well, single freqs aren't ringing out too loudly (there's always some ring) and then, its a small room, so playing quieter yields reaaallly good results. I've been using an Apollo x4, so I'm at four channels for tracking, but, I'm really excited to try tracking with one, two and three mic setups. There's alot to learn within the perceived limitations, that's the beauty of this. Its really simple and yet, endless. Thanks again Justin!!!!

14:15 is fkn brutal, man. Right on! Make them suffer, as much as you did !

I had some pretty good success with a kick mic on the outside, a cardioid pencil condenser between the and very close to the toms, pointing at the snare. I was trying to not get too much cymbal sound from ride and hi hat and this worked well.

I started with a four XLR Focusrite Scarlett a few years ago, so I went with the Glyn Johns method. It worked out fine, but I play a big kit, so I got a eight XLR Scarlett after a while. I also have a Behringer ADA 8200, so I have 16 inputs totally. This is my setup: Kick out (about one inch from the Kickport(ed) hole, snare, oh R, oh L, t1, t2, t3, t4, "octobans" (6" one-headed concert toms through a mixer to one input on the Focusrite) and room. That leaves me just enough inputs for guitar, bass, organ R, organ L, Rhodes and synth.

Glynn Johns + stereo overhead + Kick in & out for R&B, Mono room + stereo overhead + Kick in & out + hh + snare top & bottom for RnB

I discovered in junior high (in the late '80s) that I'm blessed as a wizard of mic placement and videos like this only reinforce my tendencies and give me confidence to stand my ground against the 'has to happen one way'-ers. Whatever works toward the end goal is fair game to me. I once micd a whole kit to my guitarists specs and slipped in the Glynn Johns setup. On playback he was stoked that he 'told me o'until I showed him he was only hearing two mics lol. Just had to share that ;) Love the video! Great delivery! Now, what IS that mic you've got there?? Sounds pretty fantastic and looks amazing.

Good thorough coverage as usual - thanks Justin. And I hope you gave your hair to Locks of Love or someone like that. I cut all mine off back in January just before lockdown and it took a long time to get used to - months later and I still unconsciously reach for the pony tail. :)

Nice insights! I don't record drums for my work but this was super insightful!

Your hair! 😮😮😮

ALSO..... Fleetwood Mac has done the drums/no crashes thing... I like doin that, too....considering drums go down first... I like that wiggle room in case the song changes in the recording process....

I have never used more than four mics on drums. The reason for this is that most of what I did was on 4-track analogue (yeh, je suis ancient!), as well as the fact that - even on 16-track, I don't want to use more than a quarter of the track-space that I have at my disposal. My current philosophy with my Zoom R-16-based project studio is that there is no point using four mics if three will get me what I need - which is essentially a decent overall balanced drum sound. Graham Hawthorne's comment resonates with me very well: often, four wins the day. I'd still argue that three would be just as good, as Justin said ... the GJ method gets you a beautiful snare sound every time (practically). The best sound I ever got from a kit was from a single AKG D 880S cardioid dynamic aimed between the snare and the bass drum, and a Shure PG58 getting the bass drum from the front. The mono mix of those going straight to a single track was ... gorgeous!

How much does laziness and declining attention to detail factor in? For me, they're a damning way of life... I play a standard 4-piece kit and can run ten channels. I'm struck by the diminishing returns as I go from 4 mics (OH's, kick, snare) to 5, 6, 7, etc., so I don't think I ever run all 10. When I use the 5th input (usually the case), it's always an OTK, essentially with the same purpose of a front-of-kit mic but aimed to get a dirty balance of the 4 drums. Sometimes I'll add a mono OH (usually a ribbon) next to get a different overall capture of the kit. I'm a 2-bit hobbyist and never seem to get the toms to sound either natural or big from the close mics, so my default overhead set-up is one demonstrated by George Massenburg that gets a good balance of the toms in relation to the cymbals. I only roll off in those what I need to eliminate the much dreaded rumble and sneak in the tom mics underneath, almost as effects mics that sound downright moronic on their own. It works if you pay attention to tuning and balancing/mixing in your playing.

Both the Dave Grohl record with QOTSA and the one after were done that way. "The Sacrament" by Lamb of God was recorded the same way.

I like things to be tight as can be, since I find it easier to work with individual sonic characters, than putting MD421's on all topside drums, room mics and more. The kind of holistic approach tend to piss me off, when working with such stems. Using clamps for dedicated drum mics for snare & toms, an overhead LMC, two SMC's L/R, a SMC for bottom snare, two for the kick, one in front a 2nd for the beater. Thats 9 mics. Well it's a lot, but I get the best out of this setup. My miclocker does not support another setup. But sure, in the early days in the bandroom I did some good stuff with a handful of Shure mics (L/R, snare+HH and kick) mixing direct to two tracks down to my Tascam 244.... those were the days.

Nice Video! Do you still use thr Ref/Auratones or are they just there to improve visuals?

You're correct, it was Queens of the Stone Age with Dave Grohl drumming. The album was "Songs for the Deaf" and it was recorded by Eric Valentine. Eric has his own KZfaq channel and he posted up a now taken down video with a deconstruction of "No One Knows" from his multitracks of the sessions. He told the story about the drums only/cymbals only thing and how much of a trooper Dave Grohl was with actually making that work. It was pretty cool to watch and hear; too bad Josh Homme made him take it down. When I record live drums in my basement I (usually) use 9 inputs: snare top, OTRF overheads, kick in/kick out, two toms and stereo rooms. I use a 57 on the snare top, a stereo pair of Warm Audio WA-84s as OH, 421s on the toms, D112 kick in/Various kick out mics (usually either my Royer R10 or the Lauten Audio LA-320) and my stereo pair of Roswell Mini K47s in the room.

Sorry this is a bit off topic, but nice mic! Are you actually getting audio from it or is it a nice visual prop? How versatile is it? Would you record male lead vocals on it? I actually have The Violet - The Amethyst Vintage and I have no idea how to use it 🤣.

I think around 13 or 14 microphone

In regards to remarks made around 7:20, some tracking engineers ask the drummer to hit everything hard, so that they have "something to compress". My opinion: this lends itself to a plethora of un-do-able artifacts. What say you, Justin?

One can work.

Hey Justin, I have 10 inputs and 3 toms which I like to spot mic. Ideally I’d like to have a kick out mic, snare bottom mic, hihat mic, and front of kit mic, but I can only pick 3. Which 3 would you pick?

One