Kick Drum Thump

[guitarjunkie01]

I've recently been working on micing up a Spaun kit that will be the kit for recording some projects coming up.

I feel pretty happy with most of the kit mics, though I'm far from a studio wiz.

I can't seem to get the kick drum to really thump. We're trying to get a good rock kick sound and it's not bad, but it's not satisfying right off the bat either.

My studio is in my house and limited with space in the drum room. The room is small and very dead. I have a beta 91 inside, which I like for the attack, and an RE20 on the outside. I've used the RE20 before on other kicks and have always enjoyed it, but it's not getting a lot of lows to pop out. It's throwing a lot out in the 200-400Hz range. I've been scooping some of that out with an eq.
I've tried several mic placements with it and about 5 different mic pres to see what's maybe working, but not a whole lot of luck. I also have a D112 and a Blue Kickball.

I've been sticking the RE20 in the drum about 2 inches or less and messed around with where it was aiming. I also tried the same thing with it an inch or 2 outside the drum.

Wondering if I'm missing the mark here. I'm not extremely knowledgeable with mic placement so any help would be much appreciated.
Also, have not ever tried the Subkick but have heard some really great things.
thanks,
Casey

[Sandyrb]

I can't seem to get the kick drum to really thump.

Hi Casey, welcome to MtM.

The biggest problem I find with kick drums - and I find it all the time - is that most drummers have theirs tuned way too low; especially when it's a smaller kick like an 18" or 20". The low pitch seems to work well for live show 'thunder' but less so in the studio when you want a 'punch'. Maybe that's something you can try.

I couldn't fail to notice that you've got two mics in there. That may also be part of your problem because there'll be an inherent phase difference between them. Not much, but enough to screw with your tone some.

I've never been a huge fan of the RE20 on kick but if it's giving it up for you then that's great. :) I like the Beta 91 on bigger kicks for that 'Bonham' sound but when I really got it to sing and dance was when I taped it to a cinderblock and stood it just outside the hole. Again, maybe you can give this a try.

K, there's a couple of ten-centses for ya, hope it helps. :)

EDIT: Oh, BTW much as many people like the Yamaha Subkick or various home-made versions, I find it works better for making little guitar amps sound big coupled with a '58 and some phase-flipping... I never really liked it on a kick drum, but then again I'm strange. :)

Cheers,

[guitarjunkie01]

Thanks for the input Sandy!

I have the drummer coming over tomorrow to work some more and I'll make sure that we try that out with the 91. I love it on the inside, but it's not well enough on it's own.
I have the phase flipped on one of the kick channels of my Orpheus, but I'm not well versed in the ways of phase issues. I haven't looked yet, but I'm going to see if there's any threads up here dealing with phase issues and if not, probly start one.

Do you tend to use more than one mic on the kick or just one in general?

Do you recommend and kick mics highly?

[seaneldon]

Do you tend to use more than one mic on the kick or just one in general?

I would start with learning how to do it with one mic before adding other mics to the equation.

RE20's are great at reproducing low-end but you've gotta have them in really close. These were designed as broadcast mics...they're supposed to be pretty damn close to someone's lips. Proximity effect (amongst other things) is dealt with via the body construction (it doesn't look like that for no reason). Stick the mic further into the drum.

Recorded drum "thump" is done differently than in-the-club drum "thump"...you've actually gotta TUNE the thing to the appropriate sound rather than leave it loose and "deep" (note that loose in this case almost never means "deep" and almost always means "papery") and boost the subs to do your work for you. Sandy makes note of this above. Definitely a function of a bunch of subwoofers in a club and not much to do with the kick drum. Fucking thing's a trigger at most live shows I've seen. A well-tuned drum will always have more size to the sound, even if its dominant resonant frequency isn't all that low.

If you can manage to get a fair amount of "bap" in the overhead mics you might find that a single mic fairly close to a well-tuned resonant head is all you'll ever want to get some low end real-estate claimed for the kick drum.

Every mic you put on the drums will hear the kick drum. Use them all together, think about them all together.

EQ isn't always cheating, by the way. When the desired sound never actually occurs in nature, it's often required.

[cookseyeng]

I usually use one mic for a bass drum, because its just easier for me, and... I don't have a lot of channels to use so I have to play around for a bit. I usually stick it closest to the beater head inside the drum (depending on what type of style your recording), and as far as eqing goes I usually roll off at 40hz boost a little bit between 50- 150 hz cut out some where around 400 and 1k then boost around 1200-2k and roll that off a bit at 5k. Every drum has a different sound depending on the environment your in aka: temp, tuning, drum size, mics... just listen to the drum it will tell you what you need to do, the rest of it is just figuring it out and what you like :).

[Sandyrb]

I have the phase flipped on one of the kick channels
I'm assuming your mics are up to about a foot apart with the '91 inside and the RE poking through the hole? I've seen guys do that sort of thing. So... the mics are not far enough apart for a phase-flop to be the answer *although* it will give you a certain kind of sound - not necessarily a good one. The sound travel time between them is less than a millisecond so introducing a very short delay on the '91 rather than inverting the phase would be the way to go (there are tools (http://www.mercenary.com/litlabibpanp.html) available for doing this kinda phase-munching stuff). The beater skin of the drum is advancing toward both mics when played so the first half-cycle of waveform is positive. Thus if you flop the phase of one without increasing the distance between them to at least one half-cycle you're just going to be cutting your fundamental frequency. However! The mics are so close together that the minimal phase difference will probably not affect the fundamental frequency significantly when properly summed. Make sense? :confused:

Anyway I don't want to get all science-nerdy so I must immediately assuage both my conscience and the wrath of fellow recordists by reminding myself of the divine mantra that "if it sounds right, it IS right". :)

Do you tend to use more than one mic on the kick or just one in general?

The general rule is that the less mics you use the better / more natural stuff will sound (because you'll introduce less phasey sh*t). I prefer to go with just one and as Sean sagaciously said that's definitely the way to start off. If I use two then there's one in the hole (oo-err missus) and one outside, usually a FET47 although I actually used a freakin' C42 the other day with good results and no-one was more surprised than me. Again, being at least careful with and at best accurately aligning the phase is crucial. One time I used 4 mics on the kick just for jolly... a '91 inside, a Crown PZM and Royer 121 outside then a Sennheiser 421 through the aperture. Phase was a nightmare and I ended up dumping most of it. Still, ya live 'n' learn eh? :)

Do you recommend any kick mics highly?

My personal favorites are the Sennheiser MD421 (old type preferred) and the little Audix D6. However one of the nicest, most present kick sounds I ever heard was an old Calrec CM1050C would you believe? Wouldn't be most people's choice, that's for sure. Wish I could find one S/h.

Hope this helps. :)

Cheers,

[Weiss-Sound]

Generally speaking, the mic inside the kick drum is used to grab punch and attack, and an outside drum is used to grab the low woop. The best kick out for me is usually a condenser pointed straight at the center of the kick a couple feet out. Sometimes, tunneling (putting up sound absorbers) between the kick and the kick out mic is necessary to get out the bleed. I wouldn't rely on an RE20 or a D112 to grab the out. I would say the 421 as stated above is a good dynamic, as is an sm7, or a cad kbm412 (40$ and kicks ass) when it comes to getting lows out of the kick. These generally work for me when placed just outside the back of the kick, and inch or two away. Specifically for lows, I often find myself swapping the cad out for the pricier ldds. But I'll opt for a condenser if I'm really trying to grab focused sub. You also don't need to tune the drum supper low. Kicks don't really give out focused sound any lower than 80hz - so tuning the drum down any lower is just going to give you a weak sound. Boosting a narrow band on the eq somewhere between 60-75Hz with a drum tuned with a tight attack is gonna give you plenty of thumpy love.

Other trick, you can tune a big floor tom really really loose and place that directly in front of the kick, and then mic the inside of that. That will give you some really heavy, focused sub frequencies.

If all else fails, trigger a sine wave.

[seaneldon]

Other trick, you can tune a big floor tom really really loose and place that directly in front of the kick, and then mic the inside of that. That will give you some really heavy, focused sub frequencies.

Never tried that with a floor tom. A somewhat-standard practice here is to use two kicks of equal diameter, removing the front head from the drum you actually kick and the batter head from the drum in front. Makes your kick drum twice as deep, gives low frequencies some more time to develop before hitting the resonant head. Boom fills the room.

[ears2thesky]

I use the combination of an Equation Audio DMI.104.SLF and a BLUE Kickball. If I ever need a little more low-end I'll switch on the 150Hz boost on the kickball. I rarely ever have to do this, however as the 104 gives me plenty of beef. I actually place them both at equal distance about 1 inch outside the hole.

One technique I really like is to put a figure-8 mic between the under snare and the batter head of the kick instead of a second kick mic and under snare mic. Some phase flipping is generally required, but it gets great definition on the snare wires and the "click" of the kick.

[Sandyrb]

...a figure-8 mic between the under snare and the batter head of the kick instead of a second kick mic and under snare mic. Some phase flipping is generally required, but it gets great definition on the snare wires and the "click" of the kick.

What a cunning idea! I am SO going to try that sometime soon. Thank you! :)

Cheers,

[guitarjunkie01]

Thank you to all!
We worked on tuning the kick higher and took some of the padding out of it and it definately got bigger. I only have the 91 inside it right now, but it sounds much better on the low end and still focused.
I also threw up my 121 in front of the kit aimed at the snare and that got some great sizzle snare tone, but I really like the idea of the figure 8 between the snare and kick drum. I'll be trying that soon.

[Ryan Slowey]

Tuning is absolutely crucial, as some have already said. Something that took me some time to learn. Also, so many drummers pack the living crap out of the kicks with blankets, pillows, etc.... sucks more than the resonance out of the sound. Only dampen as much as you need, if at all.

Far as mics go, I like the Sennheiser e602, but since you've already got some nice stuff to work with, I wouldn't blame the gear in your case. Shit, a 57 can give a good kick sound, if the drum sounds right in the first place.

Best advice I can give is to work on your tuning. I'm fortunate enough to have a friend who is a mad scientist with drum tuning, so I just call him up for every session now.

[Sandyrb]

So many drummers pack the living crap out of the kicks with blankets, pillows, etc.... sucks

Oh holy crap you hit that nail squarely on the head. Like, a while back, we had these dozy kids come along and their kick was so full of blankets, shirts, flannels, socks etc that it was actually hard to lift the bleddy thing. They thought it sounded "tight". I engaged in some education that day.

Damping is an important point though; I try not to damp stuff too much so that we can preserve the sound of the instrument better. Usually I'll cut down the shell ring a bit by taping some cloths inside around the circumference if it needs it and *maybe* a small piece on the head if it proves absolutely necessary but that's really it. Gone are the days of wodging a huge great pillow in there or something. How about the rest of you folks?

I intensely dislike these horrible "click pads" that you're supposed to stick to the skin where the beater strikes... holy crap if you really want to ruin your drum tone just stick one of those things on. Hate those vile dark gray foam rings too... What are they called? "Emads" or something. Bloody awful things. Just gimme a nice unadulterated, unmodified kick drum and let me record it! :)

There's another question though... what about shell choice? I always find that birch kits record well.

Cheers,

[Benny Grotto]

Another tip I haven't seen mentioned:

You didn't mention how the drum sounds in the room...

Try moving the drum around the room, while the player lays into it (from a seated position, with his kick pedal, just like he was playing it). Find a spot in the room where the bottom end is big and tight.

You might be dealing with an acoustics issue; in a decent room, IME, the low end is usually the easiest part of a kick drum to dial in. I have a much harder time with the midrange and the attack (and all the phase and bleed problems introduced when you start trying to optimize them).

As always, get it sounding good in the room, and your job becomes so easy you'll feel like you're doing something wrong.;)

[ears2thesky]

I use a Powerstroke 3 batter head and have a small piece of pyramid foam on the inside bottom of the shell barely touching both front and back heads. I typically spend a good amount of time getting the tuning right on both heads.
I also use a birch kick although my toms are maple. I generally close-mic the drums with the overheads and room mic providing the ambiance.
I learned the figure-8 trick from a guy who used a minimal Johns-style miking technique. He would add that one extra mic to the kit if necessary to get more snare/kick definition with out going to the "mic everything" direction. I guess this would be the polar opposite of the Raskulinecz 30+ mics technique used on Rush's last album. On a related note: I read that three mics were employed on snare for the Snakes & Arrows sessions. One of them was used to mic the shell (in addition to the typical top and bottom). At first I thought this to be slightly ridiculous over-kill. Then one night a couple of months later I was running live sound and noticed the snare mic had dropped four inches and was now aiming right at the mid point of the shell. I started to go up to the stage to adjust it when I recalled the article I had read about the Rush album. I solo'd the mic in my cans and it actually sounded pretty good (a nice balance between strainer and top head). I decided to leave it that way for the rest of the set and was very pleased with the results. I don't know that I would do that for a recording gig but it is a viable option to add to the list.

[jonathan jetter]

well...for starters-

the best recorded kick sounds i've done were on 2 different sessions at 2 different studios with the same drummer, for a record that i'm doing for an avant-pop band. the vibe is like regina spektor's evil twin meets radiohead. old slingerland kit....20'' kick i think. both single-miked.

session 1 - RE20 into API 312 into Apogee AD-16x. some kind of ADL EQ or something adding +2 @10k on the way in. i forget exactly which model.

session 2 - studio doesn't have an RE20 so it's a D112 (not usually high on my list of favorite kick mics....) into an old Quad Eight strip again with +2 @ 10k, this time into a Lynx Aurora.

i am CONVINCED that good converters are necessary here.....far more so than a great preamp (though obviously that won't hurt either)

they both came out sounding bangin'. dude just tunes his drums right and hits them really, really well. come mix time i can see maaaaybe adding +2 @ 60hz or maybe -2 @ 300 instead. but im not sure either of those'll be necessary and i'll probably just end up loving it as is.

most drummers i work with are pretty good but none of them have the sheer amount of control over their sound as this guy does. i'm not much of a drum tech so the finer points of head selection + tuning unfortunately elude my grasp. things that i have done to help though:

add a CAD 412 as a second mic, usually on the outside of the resonant head. this thing has a crazy shelf up at 80hz. it's got a lot of 300hz mud but i just notch it out. and i got mine for $60 used

badass analog EQ helps. something about the phase shift in analog EQ as opposed to digital EQ can sometimes just be really, really right for a kick drum. usually i'll argue that the Digirack EQ-3 is a fine piece of software and totally my go-to on most sources. kick is one of the few sources where i wimp out and rely on "gear." if for some reason there is no good analog at my disposal.....i'll still go to town with a plug-in EQ. i work my kick way way harder than most other sources.

i pretty much stopped compressing my kick drum. even on heavier music. i don't like what it does to the transient, i don't like what it does to the low end, and the dynamic levels never get controlled to nearly the extent i would like them to be. i compress the drum bus a bit and then go in and automate the kick levels if/when needed.

depending on your room....low end from the room mics can be a huge help and can work in a very different way than the same low end from the close mic. try cranking 80hz on your rooms and see what you get. sometimes sweet. sometimes not. this is one of those spots where it can really, really pay off to take a few minutes extra and really zone in on the imaging of your room mics and their phase relationships to the close mics and/or OH's.

also....i've never had much luck with the 91 myself. always sounded rather artificial and seemed to need a 2nd mic in order to work.

hope some of this helps.

EDIT: just saw that someone else mentioned the CAD 412. AND they are apparently cheaper now than they used to be. totally a steal at $40.

jon

[Mixwell]

old slingerland kit....20'' kick i think

You win.

[jonathan jetter]

couple more thoughts-

hi-pass filters can really mess with your phase relationships, even way above the filter frequency. they can significantly change the phase of the track they're on. and if you have different drum mics HPF'd at different frequencies, you can end up with some subtle but real phase problems. which means less low end thump.

the steeper the filter slope, the greater the phase shift.

usually i don't hi-pass any of the drum mics. or i hi-pass every drum mic at like 27hz. or i hi-pass the drum bus when mixing, again at like 27hz.

also. don't expect huge variety in terms of mic pre selection, and don't spend too much time looking for a solution there. as long as you're at a minimum level of professional quality (no cheap ICs, no Behringer, etc etc) then the difference between an API and a Daking and a Quad Eight will be relatively small.

having made all these points though- if the kick sound is not at least decent with any mic you throw on it, then i would bet $$$ on there either being phase problems or tuning/playing problems. have you meticulously checked the phase relationship between every combination of mics on the kit?

[Weiss-Sound]

Kick drum close mics will always be out of phase with other mics on the kit. It's simply unavoidable. It's much more beneficial to be hardcore about phase between single sources. Snare top to snare bottom, kick in and kick out, and most importantly OHs. With an XLR cord and an intern you can quickly and effectively get the OHs equidistant from both the kick and the snare. Diaphragm angle and degree along the center line of the kit determines the amount of high end in the cymbals, and the even to odd harmonic ratio. But THUMP itself is going to come from the kick close mics - the other mics on the kit have little bearing. Although, the OHs will catch the air from the kick, which is vital to a sense of depth - without that, thump just sounds like it came off of a drum machine.

If you get the thump in the tracking stage, you can tighten the low end up by notching out woof in the kick, and keeping thump. This requires monitors that can play back low frequencies accurately. Using a sub is not helpful hear, because everything sounds like woof on a sub.

I definitely agree that high passing your drums is asking for some audible phase issues that will soften the overall impact. An appropriate notch or two will do more good than harm though if you want a hard thump.

[Max Gain]

[CODE]
Damping is an important point though; I try not to damp stuff too much so that we can preserve the sound of the instrument better. Usually I'll cut down the shell ring a bit by taping some cloths inside around the circumference if it needs [/ itrecord

Cheers,[/QUOTE]

STAY_FREE MAXI PADS w/ the self adhesive strips!! ( they say on the box that they prevent leakage but the bass will bleed if your not careful!!

[Mixwell]

STAY_FREE MAXI PADS w/ the self adhesive strips!! ( they say on the box that they prevent leakage but the bass will bleed if your not careful!!

Your kick drum is female?

[Zachg]

Your kick drum is female?

:D

[Halfway Competent]

I recorded a nice DW kick once. Stuck an EV Raven just inside the hole. The Raven is a bit lean on the bass, so to make the drum thump I put some fast compression on it to squish the transient, then boosted the bass... The idea being that there's LF thud right after the transient, so that's going to be louder, right?

This allowed more of the interior sound to come into play, including a lot more detailed sound of the beater hitting the head... Sounded like there was a garbage bag over it. The drum was thumpy, but also sounded flaccid. So I took the comp and EQ off and started over. Turns out, all I needed to do was boost 70 Hz a bit. Voila... Thumpy and punchy, both. No huge thud, but the drum didn't really sound like that anyway.

[moose]

Head choice & drum tuning aside, the RE20 is a fairly old-school kick mic... it'll need a good bit of EQ and if you're after a "modern" kick sound, LOTS of EQ! I'd suggest trying a different mic first... I'm not much of a D112 or D6 (audix) fan, the Beta 52 always seems to work decently, or a 421. What else 'ya got?

There's probably a good degree of frequency overlap between the 91 & the RE20 in the mids & top end... and sticking them both inside the drum is going to produce some massive phase cancellation too.

Its all subjective but I'd probably ditch either the 91 or the RE20 and go with one mic inside and then use some sort of figure 8 mic maybe 2-3 feet from the outside head. I usually had good luck with a 414 B/ULS in that spot...

If you stick with the RE don't be afraid to bust out pliers for the low band & really crank the EQ until its moving air.

[Max Gain]

:D

They ALL are!!!

[Seb Riou]

I like the Beta 91 on bigger kicks for that 'Bonham' sound but when I really got it to sing and dance was when I taped it to a cinderblock and stood it just outside the hole.

Now I wanna try that !
Hello everyone and thanks for the tip Sandy.
I'm already liking this forum more than the others

Cheers y'all

Seb

[Seaneman]

This is a nice beefy thread-
I'm a drummer first and recordist distant second, but here's my take. (I've played for 7 grammy winning production teams and scored two gold records out of it and if there is any common factor, it's that nothing ever seems to work exactly the same way twice.) but some things that seem to always help are.
1. tuning, I agree with a higher than "normal for live" pitch, but not go crazy
2. Get the junk off the shell, the more toms and crap mounted to the drum, the less cool overtones we all hunt for.
3. purpose the beater- no-one has mentioned the HUGE difference between felt and hard plastic, they both have advantages in different situations, simply flipping that puppy around can make or break a session. ( don't even think about any of that taping a quarter bullshit)
4. as much front head as your mikes will allow, ie smallest hole possible.
obviously a small hole increases the woosh-e-ness of expelled air. placement becomes even more critical. Something else to think about, it's the non-batter head that determines the over-all pitch and sustain of a drum.
5. padding is one of those random things, I advocate the less is more approach, but on more than one occasion, just ramming my sweatshirt in there has saved the day. I always, always keep a variety of stuff in my tuning kit to try out on the day. Pillows, blankets, foam and a small canvas bag of metal pellets I stole from a health club that often holds things in place nicely.
6. I agree with the ONE mic theory. (whenever possible) I too would like to try out the figure eight trick, maybe with my AT4050? my experience so far with mikes on the batter side of my kick has been total crap, though.
My usual go to mic is a Beta52 in the studio, and a 91 for Live (no stand needed is very use-full) I've had mixed results with RE20's, surprisingly good results with 421s (usually as a second) I hate the 112.
7. I shoot for about two inches inside of the front head and work around from there. Spend more time with placement than anything, it always pays off.
8. The whole resonating extra drum thing is hit or miss, I liked an 18" tom for that the best, capable of more controlled tuning, it seems to give clear, definable freqs that you can coax out and refine better than a full blown kick drum.
9, like I said, nothing works everytime.

[pauly]

i find that the best route to good kick sound is tuned well and played by a good drummer, if time and patience permits i'll tune a kit to the key of the song. heads make a big difference depending on the music i like the evans genera g2 coated heads and despite others opinions the emad evens works well with a lesser quality drummer, the emads also seem to work well for higher tempo alternative/rock and overall busy material. the shells bearing edges also make or break a good drum sound, if the edges are fucked good luck getting good tones. 90% of custom drum companies and even some of the majors are using keller shells and its the bearing edge separates the men from the boys

my favorite mic setup is a bock 195 outside somtimes with fat boost or even fat boost with the low cut and a 421 set to s or speech for the attack. i also use the little labs between phase box to get phase good.