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Playing the drums is easy, playing them well takes years. The same might be said for recording them. They are the most difficult instrument to record. I don't claim to be a master, but I've come a long way from my first days of recording. I was doing a bit of work on it yesterday and thought I would document it.

I ended up on the tapeop forums this past week and ran across a micing technique I'd probably heard of before - the Glynn Johns drum mic setup.

You place a mic above the snare, about forty inches up, pointed toward the kick or snare. You then place another mic opposite the hihat, behind your floortom, at the same distance you placed your other mic: about forty inches. I have a pair of rode nt5's that I used for this. I also tried with my two audiotechnica large diaphrams. They are two different models, but sounded better than the small diaphram rodes. I opted for the rodes up high so I could use the large diaphram's for other duties, I will talk about.

You will then place at least a kick mic. It can be inside or outside the kick, you just need to get that kick. I used my sennheiser e609 right up against the beater.

I also put a Shure 57 two inches from the snare, angled at about thirty degrees and one point five inches from the rim.

Showing the kit from the hihat side.

Mixing - you pan the overhead snare mic a bit to the left and the 'tom' mic hard right. Adjust levels until the snare is balanced in the middle. I send these to a bus and smash the heck out of them with a 1176 compressor. Doing this brings out the very little room sound that I have.

Then I take that bus all the way down and bring up the kick to get it hitting around -8. Then I bring the overheads back up until there is a nice balance. For the nt5's I take some high end off or they burn the ears. Bringing up the snare and adding a touch of low-mid subtractive eq is next. I then bus the kick and snare to a compressor - I'm using the logic compressor on 'Hard Class A'. I route that to another bus along with the overhead bus which controls the total volume of the drums. I usually route the overheads back with the kick and snare and compress that, but it didn't sound as nice so I didn't do it. Again, see the mp3s below for my sound to this point.

The other tidbit I picked up was the heart mic, also known as a crotch mic, since that's what you point it at. The term was being thrown about a bit on the forums so I did some hunting and found out that it is a microphone placed right above the beater side of the kick drum, pointing at the drummers crotch. I threw my AudioTechnica 3035 up there and compressed the heck out of it again and got this trashy, bumping, focused sound - it was great! I routed that in with the kick and snare and mixed in just a little bit.

Here we have a picture of the heart mic over the kick and the skinny rode nt5 next to the floor tom. The large mic clamped to the tom is not being used.

I also put my AudioTechnica 4047 up about three feet from the kick and three feet high, pointed at the kick drum. I have a tiny little room so I think this would work better elsewhere, but it did get a bit more of the real kick sound. One tip on placing that mic: have someone stomp on the kick pedal while you listen where you plan on putting the mic. I was getting a pretty bad sound until I did this. I had the mic too low and it was get a bit of bass build up from the corner of the room. Now I'm looking at my kit to see if I can angle it to get a bit more room in the front of it.

That mic, the kick outside mic, is also routed in with the kick and snare. I can also go with the overheads and be mixed in higher if you are getting a really nice sound. So much of the kick sound is the room and the snares all vibrating together. Your overheads should capture this, but the this front mic can help get a bit more of the low end. See the mp3 below for this version of the mix, with the two additional mics.

So that's my take on the Glynn Johns method of recording drums. Remember, even pros take hours to get drum mics set up, so don't be afraid to spend a whole day swapping mics in and out and trying different techniques. This is only one.