Some professional thoughts about micing drums

Steve Marcantonio (Studio Engineer at Sound Kitchen Studios, Nashville, worked with Rodney Crowell, Deana Carter, Billy Falcon, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, George Strait, Alabama, the Warren Brothers and Vince Gill, among others)

"I use a lot of the same mics all the time on the drums. A Neumann 47 FET on the kick, and I might use an AKG D12 or D112 with that. I'll put the 47 outside and a D112 a little bit inside. I stay away from using gates. A lot of guys don't like any leakage on the kick, but I like the sound of the area around the kick drum, and I use the 47 to get a little of that air in there. I usually don't gate any drums in tracking. If I gate, I'll send it in a mult in mixing so I have an additional gated track to mix in.

With the snare, I go with a 57 in general, but it depends on what studio I'm at. I'll find out what kind of mics they have there. I've used 414s on the snare, and one time, the drummer brought in a Beta 57 that sounded great.

Do you mic top and bottom?

Yes, I do. When I first started doing the bottom, I got in trouble, because I had too much bottom-too much rattle. Now I tend to use just a little bit of the bottom or put it on another track.

On toms, I go back and forth. I've used 421s in the past, and at Ocean Way, they have Sennheiser 409s, which are great. Recently I bought these really tiny Sennheiser MD-504s and I've been using them. Even with those, though, I try to place the tom mics a little farther away, maybe 8 inches off the head, once again to get in a little of the air.

On hi-hat, usually a KM84. On cymbals, KM84s sometimes. Or 414s, 67s...I treat my overheads sort of like a stereo drum mix; there are a lot of cymbals in them. I try to get the sound of the drum kit in the overheads. Sometimes I'll start with those mics and build my drum sound from that.

Then, depending on where I'm working, I'll use some room mics-M49s or 67s. Over at Ocean Way, they've got RCA77s, the old ribbon mics; I like those for the room. And also I've used the Coles. At Sound Kitchen, they have four Audio-Technica mics wired into the ceiling that come up in the patchbay. They sound incredible, sort of like a nonlin-type room [setting]-a tight, short decay that's good for rock 'n' roll.

Sometimes I'll also put a center room mic down low, or sometimes I'll put a mic behind the drummer. I'll print them on separate tracks. If I have the tracks, I like to print three or even four tracks of room, to be able to blend them later.

You compress the room mics.

Definitely. I love the 1178s and the Fairchilds for that. If I can get hold of a nice set of Fairchilds, I'm happy. I also love using the Distressor on room mics. Actually, I'll use a Distressor on almost anything.

When you get to mixing, what's the first thing you do?

I'll listen to the overheads, blend stuff into them and try to get back what we had when we were tracking. Then what I'll usually do is run a submix of the drums through a Fairchild or an 1178 and bring that back on two faders to make it real punchy.

What settings would you be likely to use on compressors?

It depends on the song, the rhythm of the song. With the 1178, sometimes I'll press all the buttons in, and it does "infinity" or something like that; that can be really cool. Generally, I'll use the slowest attack and then a quick release, which gets them pumping. But it does depend on the tempo of the song. I'll mess with the attack mostly; the release I'll keep quick.

With the Fairchild, there's only one knob, and I usually tend to keep it on one, which I think is the quickest. If I use Distressors, I usually put them on Nuke or Opto."

(Source: http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_steve_marcantonio_keeping)