This month’s Buyers Guide (on page 16) spotlights kick drum microphones. Obviously, mic choices will have a huge influence on the kick sound, but there are other factors to think about.
Respect the Artist
There are a lot of ways to change or improve the sound of a kick drum, but first and foremost you need the drummer’s blessing. If they’re not comfortable with the feel of the drum, you won’t get a good performance.
A good place to start is listening to the sound of the kick drum on stage — without any microphones. A kick drum with a long decay can be problematic, especially for music with complex arrangements or busy bass lines. But before stuffing the shell with your dirty laundry, make sure the drummer is okay with the idea of damping the drum. Depending upon the drum, the heads and the tuning, putting anything inside the shells may not be necessary. For example, heads like the Evans EMAD2 are designed to control excessive ringing and feature an adjustable damping system, while Remo’s Powerstroke P3 has an inlay ring for damping. The life of the head can be extended using a simple stick-on impact pad such as the Remo’s Falam Slam or Evans EQ Patch EQPC2 — both of which strengthen the head and increase the attack.
The resonant (front) head also plays a big role in the sound of any drum, and popular choices include the Remo’s Powerstroke P3 resonant (available in a rainbow of colors) and Evans’ EQ3 — both of which feature a pre-cut, five-inch hole. A hole in the front head makes it easier to insert, remove or adjust a pillow or blanket, and facilitates microphone placement. If there’s no hole in the front head and you want to make one, clear it with the drummer first.
Cutting a hole in a drumhead is tricky business. If you have a steady hand, you can use a hobby knife or razor blade. The Bass Drum Head Port Hole Cutter from Gibraltar is a clever, inexpensive tool that makes easy work of cutting a hole, and the company also offers hole reinforcement rings that prevent damage to the head.
If the drum rings excessively, a pillow, large towel, blanket or a piece of foam placed inside the drum can help control it. The trick is to use something big enough to do the job, without completely killing the tone of the drum. Alternatives include damping “gadgets” such as the KickPro Weighted Gripping Bass Drum Pillow from MuffleLow Technologies (kickpropillow.com) or the Protection Racket Bass Drum Muffler (protectionracket.com). If the drummer doesn’t want anything inside the drum, you could try taping felt strips to the heads.
Removing the front head is another option that can reduce ringing and provide options for mic placement. If you remove the head, a brick, stage weight, or the bottom of a round-base mic stand placed on top of a pillow will keep it from moving. Note that removing the front head is an invitation for damage to the drum shell such as chipping the bearing edge (the thin edge of the shell upon which the head sits). The front head and hoop also reinforce the shell against weight, which is particularly important if there are toms mounted on the bass drum.
Tuning any drum is a highly personal thing, and a drummer might not want you messing with the tuning of the beater head, because it affects the feel. Leaving the front head on can be helpful such situations, as you can tune that head without changing the feel. I usually tune the front head about as low as it will go without the hardware rattling. Start by completely loosening all of the tuning rods, and then make them finger tight. This is more easily done with the drum flipped so that the front head faces the ceiling. Turn each rod a half-turn using a pattern where you tighten one rod, then go to the opposite side of the drum and do the same. Then move one to the left or right and continue (see Fig. 1).
Two or three half-turns usually does the trick. Get an assistant to play the drum while you’re in front of it (wear ear plugs). You should feel air move when the drum is struck. If you don’t, then the drum is either tuned too high, or there’s too much padding stuffed inside.
Once you’re happy with the acoustic sound of the drum, you can turn your attention to microphone choice and placement. The mics in this month’s Buyer’s Guide are “voiced” for kick drum — meaning that they have been engineered to produce an EQ’d, finished kick sound with minimal effort. Most of these mics sound great, though one might be brighter than the next or has a more scooped midrange. But you don’t need a mic specifically designed for kick drum. For example, beyerdynamic’s M88(TG) and the Electro-Voice RE20 were intended for use as vocal microphones, but have developed reputations among engineers as go-to kick drum mics. In situations where you need maximum low-end, you might try a “subkick” mic such as Solomon Design’s (solomonmics.com) LoFReQ, which uses a speaker as the microphone to pick up the lowest kick drum frequencies. Subkick mics generally don’t capture high end, so you’ll need to use them in conjunction with another mic to capture more beater attack (see Fig. 2).
Location, Location, Location
Mic placement has a huge impact on the way the drum sounds in the P.A. system. Given a drum that has a hole in the front head, I typically start with the grill of the mic just inside the hole. From there, move the mic in and out of the hole to find the sweet spot. This is a lot easier with an assistant moving the mic while you listen at FOH. Placing the mic closer to the beater head usually produces more attack and less low-end. If you find that you can’t get the attack you want, adding a second mic is an option. A typical combination is kick-in/kick-out where the kick-in mic is a PZM, boundary microphone or small-diaphragm condenser, and the kick-out mic is a moving coil dynamic mic. The inside mic provides the attack while the outside mic provides the low-end. Be sure to check the phase between the two, so that the mics aren’t fighting each other. Worth a mention is Audio-Technica’s AE2500 dual-element mic, which employs dynamic and condenser capsules placed next to each other in a single housing. It reduces clutter, simplifies setup and ensures phase coherence between the two capsules.
Placing a boundary mic inside a drum and getting it to stay in position can be difficult. A cool device that solves this problem is the Kelly Shu FLATZ (kellyshu.com), which attaches to the lug screws inside the shell and suspends a boundary mic securely in place, even when the drum is moved. As a bonus, it also keeps a pillow or blanket from moving.
Kick Processing
In the old days, kick drum EQ would probably look something like Fig. 3, with a midrange notch at around 500 Hz and low-end/high-end bumps. That was before the development of “voiced” kick drum mics which already have similar EQ curves built into them, so you probably don’t need to EQ as severely, but a peak around 2k to 3k Hz certainly adds snap to help the kick cut through the mix. To reduce boxiness, try a subtle midrange cut centered somewhere between 280 and 500 Hz. If you need to move more air, a 3-6 dB shelf boost of at 80 Hz usually does the job. (See Fig. 4).
In addition to EQ, I usually gate and compress my kick channels. The order of processing is important: gate first, then compress. If you compress before gating, it will be difficult to set the gate threshold to ensure that the gate closes between hits. (That’s because compression reduces dynamic range.) Be careful with the attack time on the gate; super-fast attack times will produce a click when the gate opens; go for an attack of a few milliseconds. The hold and release times determine how much decay of the drum comes through. Try 100 to 200 milliseconds each. If there are songs in the set with soft passages, be ready to bypass the gates so that you don’t cut off any soft hits or grace notes.
Be mindful of over-compressing, as excessive compression reduces low-end. A good starting point is an attack time between 5 ms and 10 ms and a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1. Set the threshold so that you get a few dB of gain reduction when the drummer digs in, but you don’t destroy the dynamics of the performance. Happy kicking!
Steve “Woody” La Cerra is the tour manager and front of house engineer for Blue Öyster Cult.
