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Kick & Snare Recording Techniques
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Tried & Tested Techniques From 50 Top Producers
Published in SOS June 2008
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Technique : Recording / Mixing
 
We pass on the hard-won wisdom of fifty top producers in the essential Sound On Sound guide to recording kick and snare drums, the backbone of modern music.
Mike Senior
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When it comes to describing ininterview how they record drums, top producers seem to spend more time discussing techniques for snare drum and bass drum than anything else. The reason I know this is that I've recently been combing SOS's interview archive and Howard Massey's book of interviews Behind The Glass, looking for nuggets of wisdom on this very subject. In the process, I've compared the snare- and kick-recording tricksof fifty high-profile producers, who are collectively responsible for hundreds of millions of record sales. My aim in this article is to distil that information for you, to help you on the way to your perfect drum sound.
Clearly, different miking methods suit different records, and even the studio greats disagree about which techniques 'sound best', so ultimately it's up to you to decide whichworks for you. However, drum-miking is long on options, whereas most studio musicians are short on session time and don't have the luxury of comparing lots of setups while the band are breathing down their neck! So I've created audio files to demonstrate dozens of the most commonly used mics and placements for both snare and kick, using the same drum kit, the same drummer, and the same room. Thismeans that you can audition and evaluate them all side by side at your leisure, and decide on the most useful contenders before your next session.
I'll be dropping a lot of producers' names in this article, some of which you may not initially be familiar with, even though you've probably heard a lot of their records! To avoid an avalanche of parentheses, I've listed all of them in separate boxesthroughout this article, together with a handful of their most relevant credits for reference.

Fix It In The Live Room
As with recording any instrument, the choice of drum and the manner of its tuning and preparation can make a huge difference to the sound you capture, so this should always be the place to start. Even if you don't play drums yourself, it makes sense to discuss the sound with thedrummer, encouraging him or her to make any adjustments that might improve the sound. When discussing his recordings for The Darkness, Roy Thomas Baker also stresses how the type of music dictates the target sound: "You're going for a sound that's appropriate for the song, not necessarily what's a good sound, and what's appropriate can vary greatly... That's why we had three drum kits and amultitude of different snare drums and tom-toms."
Nile Rodgers takes a similar view, adjusting the kit to suit the song: "Even if the band uses one drum kit for the whole record, I want it tuned right for each song. We'll change the heads or tune it differently, all that kind of stuff. Sometimes we change the beaters... It all depends on how those frequencies are responding to the key of the music, tothe pulse of the music. Every record is different, every song is different, every tape is different."
That said, Alan Winstanley found that sticking with a particular model of snare drum that suited his sound constituted a useful production shortcut: "I remember renting a Ludwig Black Beauty snare drum from a record company for [Madness' The Rise And Fall], and [their drummer] actually ended upbuying one because he liked the sound of it so much. At the same time, it became a staple part of... my drum sound for quite a few years — 'If you haven't got a Ludwig Black Beauty, we're going to rent one in'."

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