Recording - January 2015 - 26

If you are anything like me, then you love a giant drum
sound-a wall of drums, as it were. Or maybe you never really
noticed just how big some of your favorite recordings' drums
are... in which case we can't be friends. (Just kidding, mostly.)
A big drum sound can add so much to a song. Think of a ballad
where that last chorus, the dreaded key change, gets huge. By making the drums bigger during that part, you will add intensity-
maybe even enough to not warrant a key change. (Have I mentioned I'm not a fan of key changes? Except in "Accidentally Like A
Martyr," but that's because Warren Zevon was a genius.) One of
my favorite examples of a big, roomy sound is on The Flaming Lips'
"Race For the Prize." The song starts with these incredibly huge
drums that just drive the entire song. Then they get small for the
verse, to give the song the room it needs, and then get huge again
for the chorus. It's so dynamic, and makes the song awesome.

Bruce Kaphan talks a bit about close-miking elsewhere in this issue,
and I'll let him cover those bases. This article is all about getting a
bigger room sound, so let's just focus on overheads and room mics.
Overheads
There are really only two configurations of overheads that I
would use when trying to get a big sound: spaced pair and
Mid/Side. XY gives way too tight a sound, and ORTF is usable
but not nearly as big-sounding as spaced pair or Mid/Side.
I'll start with the spaced pair setup. It involves two microphones,
preferably a matched pair, spaced apart (not just a clever name)
according to the 3:1 rule (or, as Bruce calls it, the 3 To 1 Rule).
The 3:1 rule states that for every foot of distance from the sound
source to a mic, the mics should be spaced three feet apart from
each other. This is to ensure that the mics will be mostly in phase.

By Frank Marra

So how do we get these big, roomy drum sounds, you may
be asking yourself. I am going to do my best to give you a few
tips and tricks that I like to use.
It all starts with the room
Obviously, the most important part is having a decent-sized
room. Our live room here at Treehouse Sound is 449 sq. ft. Not
huge, but not too small either. We have high, slanted ceilings,
which also help with reflections. I usually have the drummer set
up near the middle of the room, maybe a little closer to the back
wall, but not by much. This way I have space to place room mics
both in front of and behind the kit.
It's always worthwhile to experiment. We once did a live tracking session where the entire band wanted to play in the live room
for a mobile tour video/EP. The drums actually got a pretty decentsized sound when they were placed in the corner. Knowing your
room is a very important part of getting good sound.
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RECORDING January 2015

If you are using a DAW, you can check this by just having the
drummer play for a couple of seconds, then zooming in on the
waveform and making sure the two overhead mics' waveforms
match up, meaning both go up and down at the same time. If
they don't, check your mic positioning. If you really like the sound
you are getting and don't want to move the mics, try hitting the
phase (polarity) reverse switch on your preamp; that should fix it
up for you. For big overheads, I like to have the mics at least 3
feet above the highest cymbal, meaning that they will be 9 feet
apart from each other. These mics will usually be placed above
the drummer's crash cymbals on the outskirts of the drum set.
The second technique I like to use is Mid/Side. This one is definitely a little more technical, and has more of a unique sound.
For those not familiar with Mid/Side, it is when you take two
microphones, one a cardioid pattern, the other a figure-8, and
put the capsules perpendicular to each other, and as close as
possible. For overheads, I would have the cardioid mic aimed at

Recording - January 2015

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