He wrote:

“Playing live we always have different sound guys. Many with limited skills. So I’m looking into having my own mixer so I can mix and taylor my own sound and just send a left and right to the main console. Have many of you tried this kind of set up ? Any thoughts on a mixer? Thanks”

Now this is a good question, and it sparked some suggestions all focussing on the technical side of mic’ing. But I think this is the wrong attempt. Instead of mixing your own sound, try something revolting: have a great acoustic sound that no sound engineer can mess up*. Drummers treat their drum set as semi acoustic instrument, and the most essential part of the signal chain is the sound engineer.

*) ok, some will say “challange accepted”. But there also is the saying “shit-in, shit-out”; let us pretend that sound engineers are not all incapable of doing sound for the sake of our sanity here, ok? 🙂

A real acoustic instrument has no signal chain. It is simple – the instrument is the original sound source. Now when mic’ing, the job is a different one: to simply capture what is there, as true as possible. Now if drums were built to sound best acoustically, our article would close now with some suggestions on getting a decend drum set and you’d be fine.

But:

Most drum kits on our stages usually are not acoustic. Don‘t get me wrong, each individual instrument might be, but not the whole set: especially the snare and cymbals usually are way too loud, so they need to be mic’d to be adjusted in volume (meaning, kick and toms louder than snare and cymbals). Then we rely heavily on proximity effect, this means the mic’s are so close, they alter the sound. And we want the extra compression and bass boost it gives to the instrument.

To give you more hints on the fact that drums are generally not treated like an acoustic instrument, look at the choice for microphones for drums: they usually are dynamic, placed close (or even inside) the instrument. This both is a huge no-go for any instrument, as it is a flawed technic which alters the sound of the instrument dramatically. Thus built in mic’s and piezos at guitars usually are only used on stage, due to volume issues (ironically usually caused by loud stage drums) which prevents a regular mic’ing with a good condenser. This and because the guitarist might be moving around.

Also we want a good signal seperation with our drums (and less room sound), thus we use close mic’s. This is done primarely to be able to tweak the sound as much as possible without interfering with the other instruments mic’d. But also, because we want that extra punch and compression proximity effect gives us. Placing the mic’s further away would demand different microphones (dynamic mic’s are used to blend out other instruments that are further away in progressive way).

Now mixing a drum set that is not really meant to be played acoustic (and while many disagree with me and call me stupid, it still is common sense to mike drums no matter how small the venue, to get a good, well balanced sound…) is one of the hardest task for a sound engineer when miking a rock band.

But when your drums are matched and tuned in a way that they lack nothing when played just acoustic, mic’ing is simple. A single microphone can already capture the whole set (let it be a stereo mike, maybe a stereo ribbon mike, for nice recordings too), and close mikes can be seen as optional add-ons for more control.

How do we get there? Can any drum set become a real acoustic instrument?

1. Learn to listen.

First, learn to hear your instrument differently. Have someone else play it, while you listen to it from different positions in the room. Recognize how much our ears compress volume when we are close to the set, while the imbalance stretches and snare and cymbals suddenly seem unbearably loud compared to the rest of the set.

2. Tune for the room, not the mic – warm tuning

Learn to tune for the room, not the mike. Get a warm, full sound by tuning the bottom heads higher. Most drummers here try to get the sound with both heads tuned low, but this will not sound powerful acoustically. Already a few feet away the low end will get lost, and all that is left without miking is the brutal attack, the sound of your stick on plastic. Not sexy. (More details on this here)

3. Pick the right Instruments for the gig.

Next, learn that larger diameter of your drums actually makes the sound thinner, as it increases the attack. For a full and rich sound, depending on your playing style, chose smaller drums with more or less shallow sizes (deeper when you tend to play too loud, shallow when you can play less loud too). In general, the larger the drums you play, the more you will depend on being mic’d. But when you play a drum set that is well balanced and sound good, making them louder becomes optional, not to improve but amplify the sound.

Large stages yearn for large and loud drums, but a drum set is not just stage prob, it is an instrument. And if you want to sound good, you might have to reconsider what instrument you end up using, and how to play it.

Try smaller snare drums and avoid steel or brass shells. Just a smaller, less loud snare will already give you a way better stage sound. The less volume your drums have, the lower the stage sound, and the better the venue sound.

Same for cymbals, but here larger cymbals give you what smaller drums offer: lower sound, warmth, well controlled volume.

When you set up your drums, keep in mind that usually the snare is way too loud in context, while the toms have too much attack the larger they get. Part of learning to listen is to recognize the volume differences and set up the drum set accordingly. Generally spoken, cymbals are always too loud in setup, so you cannot go wrong with making your cymbals sounding as musical and dark as possible. Getting those and the snare down in volume already will have decreased the need to mic’ the set – because when the snare is too loud, all you can do is make everything else louder.

4. Avoid muffling

Only muffle as little as possible to control overtones. Muffling takes away sound and enhances attack, so using muffling to reduce volume is a bad idea. A good sound engineer knows how to bring back the tone, but it will never sound as good as when you actually know how to tune well. Surprise your sound engineer.

5. Use the right heads.

Many drummers have double ply heads on their toms. While this might be okay for your sound, please consider that thicker heads have a smaller tuning range and tune less low. Yes, they might sound deeper, but in fact that is just the extra muffling they have, which gives them less overtones. So if you want to go lower in tune, single ply heads are your tool. Overtones can also be absorbed with muffling.

6. Play less loud

Using single ply heads on a well tuned, sensible drum set will make you sound better when playing less loud. Drummers usually believe the myth that playing loud and hard improves the drum sound, but that has rather been an adjustment to bigger drums, which also take more whacking to sound good. I’d say the smaller your drum set, the less loud you have to play them to sound good, and they will sound better in general. But also, being less loud on stage improves your stage sound a lot – and this improves the sound of the venue too!

With a drum set that sound just awesome – and it will when you learn how to handle it as acoustic instrument, and not just as „loud work out tool“ – a sound engineer cannot do (much) wrong. Learn to appreciate good sounding drums.

Afterthoughts…

Why is this not common sense? Why are drums built semi acoustic?

Be warned… this is nothing taught by many pro‘s. Why should they? They do have their sound tech. Drummers who master the technic of good acoustic drum sound are usually those who won‘t get mic’d, not those who play the largest venues. Which also explains why this issue is so controversial… the most clicked tuning tutorials are not those which explain how to tune drums to acoustically sound well, but to sound ok on the mic or in recordings. They treat the drum set as just a part of the signal chain, not as a real acoustic instrument. Thus most tutorials about drum sound are tutorials about how to mic, not how to tune.

The reason why drums became semi acoustic can be found here. Long story short, first (guitar and bass) amps got insanely loud, then drums followed. Then came affordable mixing consoles with plenty channels and cheaper mic’s, and we kinda got stuck with the drums which now were simply mere replica of the loud drums we had in the late 60s to battle stage volume.

The past 20 years now have seen stages getting less and less loud. The Who, a band that was ground breaking for many drummers due to Keith Moon’s energeting playing, is now using e-drums to keep the volume down on stage (Nope, we are not kidding!). While volume used to be the most integral part of being a rock band, this is shifting, especially during the past years of pandemic. We have seen numerous streamed concerts played in small locations, and many drummers have found out the advantages of having a drum set that is being optimized for a room, not a stage. Still, many drummers are stuck in the 60s and 70s, but we have to realize that we try to solve problems we do not have anymore. So what is left is the visual appearance, and when drummers pick large and loud drums today, it is usually not because they want them to sound the way they do, but because they want to reference the drummers from that time and honor them.

Warm tuning means you tune your resonant head about a third higher than the batter head, resuting in overtones an octave below the fundamental tone. This makes your drums sound huuuge. Thus, warm tuning.

Many drummers want their drums to sound phat and warm. Their solution is to pick large drums, and tune them as low as possible. Cannot go wrong, right? After all, the majority of drummers tune that way, and get taught by online drum tuning tutorials which have millions of views to do so.

Please. Don’t.

I will show you a more excellent way, and it starts with the propper tuning for a really phat and warm sound.

There are only three possible ways to tune a tom:

1. resonant tuning: tune batter and resonance head the same
(why this is a bad idea I will explain later below)
2. flat tuning: batter head is tuned higher than resonance head.
(This results in a sound too high and too thin for our desired sound, so forget about that too)
3. warm tuning: Resonance head tuned higher than batter head.

Most drummers actually tend to use the resonant tuning, it is by far the most popular way of tuning. But it has disadvantages:

• Tuning both heads on the same frequency makes the tom sing longer, often uncontrolable. In order to shorten the sustain, one head would either have to be tuned higher or lower (warm/flat tuning), or we have to use tools:
• Muffling the drum with moongel or other stuff gives us control over the length of sustain with a resonant tuned drum, but it also enhances the attack, which we don’t want to hear, and it muffles the actual tone we want to hear. In result, the drum sounds dull and lifeless.
• Dull sounding drums seem to work great for live situations, and in fact, when amplified, due to proximity effect those drums can impress. BUT – when played back at regular volume, the drums still sound dull and lifeless, which explains why live recordings sound so much differend from studio recordings even when the band plyed really well.
• the biggest disadvantage is though that the drums don’t really sound as warm and low as they could possibly sound, because when tuning resonant, and really low, the heads never really move in perfect synchronisation. So what often happens is that the low end, the bass, is canceled out due to phase shiftings. You won’t recognize on your close mike, but from a few feet away the drums sound thin and noisy, not phat and warm, as you’d expect. This results in big issues with bleedings. This is so common, it is common sense today to have the drums in a different room when possible at recording studios, and use screens and full enclosuresn on stage to keep the bleedings from other mikes.

So let’s see what warm tuning can do…

Warm tuning gets it’s name from the effect you have when you tune the bottom head signifficantly higher than the batter head, about a 3rd above. The closer you get to the Third, the more low end you get into the sound, thus the name, warm tuning.

What is actually happening here? As said before, most drummers try to get a low drum sound by tuning all heads as low as possible, but this results in a rather dull and flat sound. Usually now the batter heads get muffled to get rid of overtones, to sound lower. When tuning warm, we use physics: we all know power chords on guitars, I suppose. Thats a fundamental tone and the fifth, and the harmonics to this happen to be exactly an octave below the fundamental tone. As a drum has two membranes combined with a tube, we get the same effect at a different tension, thus the 3rd. Why it is not the fifth is a highly complicated issue which Nils Schröder (another GUest author here) can explain way more eloquently than I. So bear with me and trust me here…

Imagine we have a floor tom tuned to 100hz, and the resonance head to 130hz (the 3th). You will now also hear the overtones in harmony at 50hz, which will give your drum a lot of low end. This will let especially smaller dums sound huge and pretty awesome.

But what happens when you mike the drums and amplify or record them?

When close miking the drum, it will pick up the 100hz and give you a nice boost of that frequency and everything above. This is what most drum engineers want live. But the drum produces a warm overtone of 50hz which we can only pick up with mikes when a bit further away from the drum. That way you get the 50hz picked up too, and your drums sound well balanced. This is the reason why in studios sound engineers today mainly use the room mike, and only add little of the close mikes.

Too few drummers know the physics of drums, and try to get low end by tuning large drums low. Actually this works best with smaller drums though. Perfect sizes are 8-14” for toms. You can also use warm tuning for the Bass drum, but when not miking, tuning it to the room node (a room frequency that makes the room resonate) might be more effective if not loud enough. But that is something we can focus on in a different tutorial.

The larger the diameter of a drum, the more attack you get from it, and we have trouble hearing differences between them, big toms tuned low, kinda all sound the same.

So how should I mike the drums now?

When the drum kit sounds good acoustically, miking becomes easy: forget all you learned about miking drums, and imagine you mike an acoustic instrument which you want to capture as it sounds, not modify the sound. A single condenser mike on second tom position pointed to snare and bass might already be enough to capture the whole instrument well balanced. Overhead mikes usually have too much cymbals in the mix.

When miking acoustic instruments other than drums, you have to at least be a foot away from the instrument with the mike, if you are closer, you risk altering the sound. With drums this is usually what we want, but only when dealing with semi acoustic drums (stage drums). We use proximity effect to add low end to the sound. But now we have added an octave below to our tom sound, and to capture this, we have to actually treat it like an actual acoustic instrument!

The only instruments you mike close, or even internal, are semi acoustic. The sound we get from those close mikings is a lot different from the acoustic sound of the instrument. Trust me, any decent instrument builder that has put a lot of effort into making a great sounding acoustic instrument will frown uppon any internal mike. It turns any acoustic instrument into a semi acoustic one.

Now with this in mind, we have either miked drums all wrong, or drums generally were treated as semi acoustic instrument anyway. This might be okay when the stage sound level is high, say, at an ac/dc gig. But we have come a long way since the 70th, we got smaller guitar amps, amp simulators, in ear monitors, and often the drums are the only instrument you can still hear on an else silent stage. The way we used to tune, “for the mike”; was disrespecting the actual room sound, you treat the instrument as semi acoustic and not mike it to simply make it louder or pick it up for recording. Now, when we want low volume on stage, we do not have to mute the drums all together, we simply have to admit that the drums are being played in a room which we have to take into the calculation. Tuning the drums in a way that they sound full and rich in a room, making mikes optional, means actually trwating your drums like an acoustic instrument.

Next step would be to get cymbals that match. Less loud means larger, darker in sound. And while we are at it, I mentioned that smaller drums work better for warm tuning. In general, the acoustic instrument has a pretty tight tolerance when it comes to dimensions. Certain sizes work best for the desired sound, and some sizes make it nearly impossible to give you a great sound acoustically. We were so used to work around that fact and worship large drums, we need to realize that when we play acoustic, small drums rule. And I can explain why:

While when tuning larger drums lower, we might get them maybe a third lower than a smaller drum, but using warm tuning on small drums gives you a way more defined tone plus an octave below. Now when moving away from optimal acoustic drum sizes to bigger sizes (with toms starting at 16″, which happens to be the most popular FT size for decades), we get less definition, and might end up with the octave harmonics being too low in volume or in an inaudible frequency.

Warm tuning, especially in combination with small acoustic drums, will put a smile on the faces of your band members and your audience. And once your sound engineer learns how to handle it, he will love it too for the simplicity.