Primary Research

I decided to experiment with some drum microphones seeing as I plan on recording live
drums for my next project. I wanted to find the best sound I could using all the
microphones available. My main focus was on the kick drum as I only like a particular
sound from my kick. I do not enjoy the high pitch slap you get from the initial impact of the
pedal on the skin. I knew that I would need to remove some sound but this would leave me
with a muffled, half empty sounding bass drum. To overcome this I thought I should add
something else to balance out the sound
and get a rich, full sounding kick. I
added the home-made sub bass
microphone because I prefer to feel the
kick rather than fully hear it.

I placed the Sub Bass

microphone about a
centimetre away from the

kick drum skin to get the

most out of the sound. I
placed an Audix F6 half
inside the kick drum for the first recording, I thought it wasnt needed to actually place it
inside seeing as all the low end will be picked up from the Sub Bass. Here is the waveform
and EQ analyser from the F6 in this set up:

There is a lot of low end on it which made me think I could move it around without
sacrificing any of the sound. I decided to put it about a foot in front of the drum to pick up
the resonance. It gave me a completely different sound which sounded great once textured
up with the Sub Bass microphone.
Here is the waveform and EQ of
that recording:

The waveform is clearly far smaller when the microphone is further away but the EQ analyser
doesnt represent how it sounds in comparison to the other recording. The first recording where the
F6 is inside the kick drum actually sounds like it has less high end frequencies even though the EQ
analyser shows it has more mid and high end than the second recording which was outside.
The way I see it is the microphones do 50% each. If the Audix F6 does the higher end of the kick
and some low end then it can just about overlap with the Sub Bass microphone which will collect all
the low end and sub frequencies. This gave me a richer, fuller sound and made the kick sound
completely different. Overall I am happy with the results it gave me. At some point I will try some
variations with the kick by including different microphones in different positions, but for now I am
happy with what I have produced. I will also experiment with overheads win the future, the reason I
didnt include overheads this time is because I am not a fan of the Audix F9s. I would prefer to use
another microphone/s for the overheads such as the Shure SM7B. These are my favourite
microphones as they give off such a warm, thick sound.
Next time I will be Shure to use them.