In Figure 1 the microphones are positioned about two feet above the drummer’s
head. This placement will provide excellent results in a drum booth or an acousti-
cally treated small room. If you do not have a drum booth or are in a larger room,
you can also use another variation of the X/Y pattern by facing the microphones
straight down (see Figure 2). In this case the microphones should be one or two
feet above the drummers head and about one foot in front of the drummers face,
looking down.
Closer Overhead Miking
There is a closer miking approach that we also used in our sessions. This method
would be ideal for those who do not have a drum room or drum booth. Closer
miking will reduce some of the ambient room sound while picking up more subtle
details of the drum set. This method is shown in Figures 3 and 4. In Figure 3, you
can see the positioning of the microphones from a front view and Figure 4 shows
where the microphones are pointed. This was the miking technique used on tracks
27 and 28 of the enclosed Earthworks DK25 DrumKit
TM
System Demo CD. All
other recordings of the drum set on the DrumKit
TM
Demo CD were done using
the horizontal X/Y positioning shown in Figure 1.
4
