How to record high-quality drums on a budget

1. Make do with whatever mics you can get

In an ideal drum recording scenario, the kit would be fair bristling with microphones – one or two on the kick, two on the snare, one on the hi-hats, one on each tom, and a pair of overheads for cymbals and ‘big picture’ ambience. If, however, you only have access to two mics or even just one, it really is still possible to achieve thoroughly viable results by experimenting with placement until you find the sweet spot(s). Exactly where these are will by largely driven by the size and make-up of the kit itself, the size and shape of the room, and the types of mic at your disposal. Regarding the latter, you might be able to get a dynamic mic closer in to the kit than a sensitive condenser, yielding a more focused sound; but condensers may well be more effective at a distance, for a richer, more lively vibe. One proven configuration is the ‘Glyn Johns technique’ – named after the legendary rock producer and engineer who invented it – which sees one cardioid condenser mic mounted above the snare at roughly the level of the drummer’s head, and another equidistant from the snare to the first (so as to avoid phase issues) but pointing at it from the side. Give it a try!

Of course, no matter how few mics you’re able to deploy on your kit, one thing you really can’t afford to skimp on is the audio interface used to capture their output. Happily, even the smallest Audient and EVO interfaces feature the same top-tier mic preamps and converters as their larger siblings, so even if you can only afford the two-input likes of the iD14 (sans expansion) or EVO 4, the literal quality of your drum track recordings won’t be compromised.

2. Optimise the room

Assuming you don’t live in a recording studio, finding a suitable space in your house in which to successfully track the monstrous noise machine that is the drum kit will probably be challenging. If you have a choice of rooms, go for the one with the least reverberation (you can check this using just the snare drum if you don’t fancy repeatedly moving the whole kit around), then reduce those reflections as much as possible by closing the curtains, filling the space with soft furnishings, hanging duvets on walls… anything you can come up with that minimises the hard surface area of the room, basically.
 
On the other hand, you might find that a particular space in your house offers the sort of natural reverb that actually improves your drum sound, just as Andy Johns (yes, Glyn’s brother) and Led Zeppelin did when recording one of the greatest drum tracks of all time.

3. Get the kit sounding great

Needless to say, if the drums themselves sound iffy, so will your recording of them. Before you even think about hitting the red button, then, be sure to get those tubs tuned up correctly, and check that there are no extraneous squeaks or buzzes coming from the pedals, stands and shell-mounted hardware. Given the likely lively nature of the room you’re working in (even after the ad hoc acoustic treatment suggested above), you’ll also almost certainly need to dry everything out and get overtones under control by damping the snare and/or toms using gel pads or tape, and sticking a pillow in the kick drum.

4. Be realistic with the mix

If you’re using one or two mics to track your drums, obviously you can forget about taking control of levelling, EQ and dynamics on a drum-by-drum basis, since you’ll only have one or two channels to work with. While this would appear, on the face of it, to be a wholly negative restriction, it’s absolutely possible to get a perfectly decent ‘mix’ with such fixed source material – indeed, that simplicity can ultimately net a more earthy and energetic drum sound than you might with a full multitrack array. Essentially, you’re applying bus processing, with the goal being to bring out the best in the kit as a single entity, using parametric EQ to focus on the kick, snare and hi-hats, compression to beef everything up and ‘glue’ the drums together, and perhaps a touch of distortion to add bite and sizzle.
 
It’s important to accept from the outset that you’re never going to get the ultra-clean, ultra-separated results that you would with spot mics in a dedicated drum room, so play to the strengths of the recording you have and don’t try to force the mix into places it just won’t go.

5. Save the day with drum reinforcement

If, despite your best efforts, your thrifty recording setup isn’t quite getting you the drum sound you need, the introduction of a few triggered samples can save the day. Drum replacement plugins such as Slate Digital Trigger 2 and XLN Audio Addictive Trigger use incoming transients as triggers for their sample playback engines, thereby precisely layering sampled hits over your existing ones. They’re generally designed to be inserted into individual channels within multitrack drum mixes, but targeting one at the kick or snare in a stereo or mono mix is a simple matter of loading it 100% wet onto an auxiliary return in your DAW’s mixer after an EQ plugin, then routing your drum track to it via the auxiliary Send control, using the EQ to filter the triggering input signal down to only the drum in question, and mixing to taste. This really can make all the difference to an underpowered drum track, but be careful to select and balance the samples so that they don’t detract the human authenticity of the performance.