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Ira Blonder
Franklin, TN, United States
Ira Blonder is the Managing Partner of Sound Kitchen Studios (www.soundkitchen.com)and The Blonder Group, LLC (www.blondergroup.com)
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Friday, January 29, 2010

How to Mic a Rock Drum Kit

Everyone knows there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to mic up a drum kit. We're going to concentrate on a pretty standard way to mic up a "rock" drum kit. We've used a Palmetto kit with a Kick, Snare, Hat, Hi-Tom, Floor Tom, Ride and Crash.

For the Kick In mic, we've used and AKG D112 mic. 5" back from the head aimed 3" off the beater.
For the Kick Out mic, we used a Nuemann Fet 47. 3" from the back of the head and 5 1/2" from the rim.

Kick IN

Kick in and out

kick in out 2

For the snare top, we went with the "standard" Shure sm57. 1 1/2" from just inside the rim at a 50 degree angle aimed at the contact spot.
For the snare bottom, we used an AKG C452EB. Mirrored image of the top snare mic.

Snare

Snare Bottom

For the Hi-hat, we used another AKG C452EB, 4"up and 3" from the edge, angled toward the outside of the hat to help reject bleed .

Hat

Hat 2

For the toms, we decided to use Sennheiser MD421's. Both are 1 1/2" up just inside the rim at a 50 degree angle aimed at the center spot.

Hi-Tom

Floor Tom 2

For the ride cymbal, we used an AKG C452EB 18" up aimed 7 1/2" from the edge.

Crash

For overheads, we went with AKG C414's. We placed them over the center of the kit 45" up off of the snare head. 16" apart, aimed toward the ride and crash cymbals.

kit from behind

Kit best

There was no compression or EQ used on any signal. Everything was going through the API mic pres on our board. Please listen to the examples below and then let us know your thoughts in the comments section.


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