Just realized my dad's advice about recording drums was backwards

My dad always told me to mic the kick drum from the front for more punch, so I did that for like 5 years. Then I read an old interview with Butch Vig where he said to stick the mic inside the shell pointed at the beater, tried it on my Ludwig kit in Austin, and the low end came out way tighter. Anybody else grow up learning studio tricks that turned out to be total myths?

2 comments

2 Comments

abby83611d ago

Wait did moving the mic inside change how you tuned the kick too? I tried the same thing on my Pearl kit and had to tighten the resonant head way more to stop the ringing inside the shell. Did yours sound boxy at first before you figured out the tuning balance?

derek_burns11d ago

Actually the first 3 gigs with the mic inside were a nightmare lol. @abby836 youre right, the boxiness was insane at first. I ended up stuffing a folded towel right where the beater hits to kill the initial slap then tuned the reso head way tighter than I ever would have thought. What really saved me was taking a pencil and tapping each lug on the reso head until they were all the exact same pitch. Once I did that the ringing stopped completely and the low end got way punchier. Never would have thought the inside mic placement would make me that obsessive over head tuning.