Recording Drums like Steve Albini

Do you want to have a mammoth drum sound that'll make all your recording engineer/producer friends jealous, to emulate and innovate on famous drum sounds like the Pixies' 'Surfer Rosa' or Nirvana's 'In Utero' then let us look no further than the champion of the analogue recording studio Mr Steve Albini

Recently I stumbled across a great YouTube video which was all around Steve Albini's drum recording process purely when it came to the micing and placement of individual drums within a full kit plus a couple of room mics.

Now this was a solid 14 microphone setup which is extremely daunting for your beginner engineer/producer, just because your very unlikely to have 14 premium mics at your disposal. So, when I went about attempting to recreate the sound/setup i ended up with only a 10 mic setup which while still a lot of setup is much more manageable i feel.

Below i will list the setup he did :

Kick inside - Beyerdynamic M380

Kick beater side - Countryman Isomax

Snare top (only) - Altec 175

Toms Top and Bottom - Josephson E22S

2 Overheads (placed behind the drummer) - STC/Coles 4038's

Front of Kit mic - Neumann C-42

Ride Cymbal mic - Josephson C-42

2 Ambient mics - Oktava MK12's

Now this to me seems a fairly standard setup with a few notable exceptions that were certainly very interesting:

First: the stereo pair of "Ambient Mics" that were placed on the floor at the opposite end of the room. Designed to catch the reflections of the room as the room he records in is one of his most important aspects to a good drum sound. It has mostly reverberant kick and snare drums in it with a little bit of Cymbals. This placement interested me the most as I had always gone with just a room mic positioned in the middle of the room - if using a large live space - with an omni-directional polar pattern about chest height which leads to a lot more cymbals in a room mic which leads to having to tone down the amount of the room mic i'd use in the final mix in order to tame the cymbal wash the room mic would give. With lacking a pair of stereo mics suitable to this purpose during the recording process I adapted the idea by still using an omni large diaphragm condenser but placing it at a much lower down position - around knee height - in order to avoid some of the cymbal wash that's always plagued my room mics. Simple trick really but one that never occurred to me until i had watched that video.

Second: Using only a sole snare top microphone. Now this can be attributed to the genre of what was being recorded which sounded like thrash rock/metal which doesn't ever have much rattle from the snare drum in the final mixes anyway. However it is extremely ingrained in my recording process to have an under-snare microphone that the sheer absence of one surprised me. It may be due to the limitation of recording to tape that causes him to omit this microphone entirely as he has 16 tracks to record as opposed to the hundreds that a DAW would allow. This made me consider if I always need the under-snare microphone in my drum recordings as it does tend to pick up a lot of the kick drum as well leading to needing to high pass filter it later on in the mixing stage to give me just the rattle of the snare. I will probably continue the use of an under-snare mic during the recording process but will likely consider how much of that mic makes it into the final mixing of the drum kit and what is more "genre appropriate" as opposed to my personal preference. As a producers job is to make the piece sound both good and fitting to the genre.

Third: The placement of the Overheads. Normally whenever people are recording drum overheads they are placed in front of the kit to capture cymbals and the more top end that wouldn't come from any of the close mic'd drums. In Steve's own words it gives "a long sustain and brightness" that he found enjoyable comparative to the conventional method. After having tested out myself I honestly did not notice any major distinctions than the normal recording method I would have gone. However once i have more time i will try both setups on one track then test them back to back and see if there is notable difference that way. Although for now I will put a bit of faith in the professional and use this method for a while, unfortunately it means the drummer is going to have to step over a couple of extra wires to get to his stool. Oh well they're sitting down for most of the recording process anyway.

How I adapted the setup:

1. Removed the ambient microphones and added a room microphone in a place where the drums sounded the best.

2. Added a snare bottom mic - AKG C414 - as the type of music and personal preference suited having more rattle

3. Also did not have either a front of kit mic or a ride cymbal mic as the Overheads picked up enough of the cymbals and there was little playing on the ride during the piece anyway.

This along with the observations above and having a good live room with plenty of reverberation to record in gave me the following drum sound which i was very happy with for the type of 80's arena rock sound i was going for. I'll put up another blog about the making of the piece where the drums ended up so look forward to that. Note that the overheads have been taken down a fair bit so there is less cymbals but that was just a personal taste mixing choice.