The Kick Drum (Part 1)

Well this post will be about setting up a kick drum sound using microphone placement to better your kick drum sound in a live environment.

Let’s first assume (because this is such a broad area and because I have only so many resources and hours) that we are not interested in the beater head material used (wood vs. plastic vs. metal), whether the drummer tuned it properly (if drummers can actually hear a note). But that we have these guidelines; we only have one microphone (because two is a whole other story but I’ll do a post on that in the future), and our kick drum front head has a hole in the end. like below.

The placement of a microphone to “mic’up” a kick drum has some guidelines on the positioning. The first method requires you start by placing the microphone on the opposite side to the drummer on a stand and near the sound hole facing the opposite skin where the beater would hit. Like this.

Almost any microphone will do the trick but here are some that are more suited

Shure Beta 52A (What we currently have)
Sennheiser e902
AKG D112
Audix D6
Shure SM57 (Even this)

Obviously these aren’t all of them (I’m not really going to touch on pressure zone mics) but they seem to be the majority vote on the best sound. For some ideas go here. This site shows many opinions on which is the favoured kick drum mic. Each mic will have it’s own dynamic properties and all will sound different. Placement will depend on the microphone and kick drum. Assuming we have only one mic (you will get more options with two) moving the mic to the edge of the hole on the skin which is on the opposite side to the drummer will create a more boomy, undefined kick sound. As you move it closer to the opposite skin, toward where the beater is hitting, you will get a less boomy (and possibly loose some punchiness) but defined sound coming into the mic. Some people call that definition the “click”. Trial and error is the name of the game to find your preferred sound. I tend to dial in my click with lots of EQ and get the natural boominess of the kick itself (I get big punchiness that way) so I place mine about 2cm inside the hole and use the EQ to get the “click”. Be careful not to let your cabling or mic interfere with the skin (do not let them touch the skin).

The other option for placement (which I don’t recommend unless you have two mics, one for the first method and the second, for this method, to add definition) is on the drummers side of the drums facing where the beater hits the skin. Like below.

This will yield a sound defined as lots of mids and treble. This sound will be tinny, have a whack to it and have very little punch and boom. If you want to add definition to the kick drum but don’t care too much for the low end then this will work great.

The last method (which is also not my favourite) is to place the mic outside the drum, on the opposite side of the drummer in relation to the drum and turn the microphone to face the drum. This sound will get that old 50′s jazz drum feel. It will sound very loose and have almost no low end kinda muddy. If you are looking for the 50′s sound then this could work quite nicely although you will also pickup the sound of the other drums this way.

Well there you have it, mic placement of the kick drum in a live environment with one mic. Obviously I would recommend the first method but even these methods aren’t the full package. You can even use all the methods to dial in your kick sound (if you have three mics to do it) like this guy below.

Experiment and try new things with your kick it can be a very versatile instrument. Next time I’ll talk about EQ the kick drum.

Cheers