drum recording and mixing...
With most instruments, you mic single sources: (1) guitar amp, (1) violin. But with the average drummer, you tend to have at least a kick drum, snare, rack tom, floor tom, hi-hat, one ride cymbal and maybe two crash cymbals.
Here I’ll explain working with a standard 5-piece drum kit (this does not include the crash or ride cymbals when naming the drum count). I'm going to be using the tracks from a long time ago project "One Day...Will Subside" because it's one of my better drum mixing examples.
Drummer Jason Wallack spent a lot of time tuning his drums, which makes the recording process a lot easier.
I use a pretty basic mic set-up when recording drums. Why? Because it works. I don't concentrate on putting a mic on every cymbal, but instead use what we call an overhead mic array. This captures not only the cymbals, but a different perspective on the other drums.
Isolation is the key when recording: I would love the kick drum mic to record only the kick drum, the tom mic only the tom, etc. But with drums, it's hard to completely prevent bleed-through and some microphones just naturally pick up the other drum sounds. There's a lot you can do later on in the mixing process, but I'll get to that later.
kick drum mic - AKG D112 - stuck right in the bass drum through a hole in the front, leave it about 4-5 inches from the drum head that the kick pedal hits against
snare drum mic top - Shure SM57 - placed at a 45º angle, pointed towards the center of the drum head, but close to the rim to pick up a little of the naturally occuring snare head ring
(though this array does not have it, I’ve found it quite essential to have a mic on the snare bottoms as well - SM57 works great ther, too)
floor tom mic - Sennheiser 421 - same placement as snare drum head
rack tom mic - Shure 57 - it’s simple and works for me
overheads - Rode NT5 - a great stereo matched pair
In a large studio circumstance, which I rarely have available, you'd use an additional stereo pair as "room mics", which do just that: record the entire sound of the drums in the room. Unfortunately, the rooms that I usually record in do not sound that great, so I have to concentrate on the individual drums themselves.
For Jason and I, a few hours later, came this...
Great, I've got my drum kit all recorded, now I'll begin mixing. I actually begin the whole mixing process with the drum set, and I begin that with the kick drum.
The mic was actually IN the drum itself, but I can still hear the bleed-through of the cymbals.
I use an equalizer to take off a bit of the high frequencies. Not too much, though as I don't want to kill the "snap" of the drum. And I boost the lows slightly to give it a "kick". In the end, I actually ended up doubling the kick drum sound with a much lower sub-bass, synthesized kick. Digital Performer has a fantastic plug in called “sub kick.” I hate to say this, but I don’t particularly concentrate on the kick that much anymore ‘cause this plug in makes it almost full-proof. But it allows such a great deeper "thump" in the end.
Finally, I'll throw a limiter on the kick. This way, I can make sure the drum is as loud as possible without distorting. If there are inconsistencies in volume that the drummer made, this will smooth them all out by pushing their volume to the limit without going over a certain volume. A compressor will do much the same, make the softer hits louder and the louder hits softer, but I found a limiter - which is a much harsher effect - to be far more useful on drums given that they don’t need such a subtle effect.
By far the most important drum for me. I like it loud and I like it hard and I want it to cut through.
Though this is a very 80's sound for a snare, I've always loved the drums from Living Colour's "Time's Up" album:
Living Colour "Fight The Fight" clip
The snare is such a loud drum and given the mic's close proximity, the bleed-through isn't so bad. Plus, you don't wanna kill ALL the bleed-through so that the snare can sound a little more open. One trick I learned is to boost the frequency of the snare around 400Hz, which gives it a nice snap. Other than that, I slightly accentuate the highs and kill any low frequencies below 120Hz. I also throw a limiter on it, just as I did with the kick.
Toms - the rack and floor tom - are used quite sparingly in a drum beat, so when I get a good sound, I generally put on a noise gate that completely kills their volume when they're not being hit. These days, I actually just delete any waveforms around the toms hits, which is essentially what the noise gate is doing anyway. But this technique allows you not to worry about getting the settings 100% right (who has time these days??) As you can hear, that also means some of the bleed-through from the other drums tends to rise as well when the noise gate "opens".
You want a general balance between tone and boominess, so I have to pay special attention to EQing the toms. Each tom, with each drummer, is completely different.
As you can hear, all the drums are picked up by these mics. But I make sure to take out most of the low-frequencies so that it only adds flavor of the other drums and concentrates on highlighting the cymbals. There tends to not be too much difference between the processed and unprocessed sound, so I'm only playing the processed sound.
Like I said before, I start the entire mixing process with the drums and I start the drum mixing with the kick. I make sure the kick and snare are tight, almost so that they have the same "snap" sound at the same volume. Then, I add in the overheads. The toms, because I consider them more of a "addition", I mix in last.
The mixing process includes the effects I threw on the drums themselves, which is why this last paragraph may have seemed so easy.
A couple things to watch out for are the boominess of the toms in the mix. Because they have a tone to them, as opposed to just an attack, they have a tendency to sound a bit intrusive, As you will notice by the following clip from Anthrax's "Black Lodge", it might be slight, but they seem to overtake the whole sound and when they go away, it feels like something is missing.
Anthrax's "Black Lodge" clip
I wanted to make sure that this didn't happen and made sure their level was conservative.
I'll alter the mix over time, but ultimately, the mixed drum sounds like:
Finally, to give the drums a little more space, almost as if mimicking recording them in a larger room, I add a little reverb. It makes the snare come ALIVE, which is what I like about it. It may sound like a lot of reverberation with the drums alone, but when I get to the final mix, it makes a little more sense.
same section, with reverb
tom-highlighted section, with reverb
And, ultimately - final mix with everything
Hope this gives you some insight!