A Different But Awesome Drum Mic Position

I wrote an article about microphones for real drum kits – Drum Kit Mic For Toms. So in that same vein, I’m sharing another article about the position of a drum mic – over the drummer’s shoulder.

Graham Cochrane tells about this technique in the below article. You can use it as the only mic if you want to only use one mic for recording drums. You can use it as one of a pair of overheads, or a mono overhead mic. Yeah, recording a drum kit with just one microphone. I’ve never heard of that before. But hey, if you are limited in your microphone budget or inventory, this could be a fantastic solution.

Some of the advantages are that it picks up less cymbal wash, and also serves as a sort of close-miking thing for the entire kit, which helps to minimize room noise, which is a desirable thing when recording in a less-than-desirable room/space.

It actually sounds pretty darned amazing for just using one mic on a full drum kit. I confess that if given the choice between trying to record drums with just one single mic, or simply using virtual drums (see my article Drumming Without Drums – Use A Virtual Drumming App OnYour Computer), I would probably have chosen the MIDI drums. But that was before I read the following article.

Check out Graham’s post here.

Cheers!

Ken