Drum Recording techniques

By Tom Bam

  • 1950's

    Very basic techniques when it comes to recording drums, most of the time positioning all instruments around one mic leaving the drums at the back as ambient sounds.

  • mid 60's

    Multitracking began! Close mics on drums started to be used so louder drums became more normal. Panning started being experimented with and the conventional method of snare and kick down the middle began.

  • Late 60's early 70's

    Jimmy Page believed that simple microphone techniques and distant mic'ing are the only ways to record drums. This became the common view by a lot of people.

  • Early 80's

    Big sounding drums were being used, to achieve the large sounding drums necessary heavily compressed room mics and gates started being used. Also drum machines allowed sampled sounds to be used if they couldn't produce a big enough sound.

  • late 80's, early 90's

    Dance music began resulting in a large use of computer processed sounds and samples allowing a wide range of drum sounds to be available. Artists also started using samples from old soul tracks as beats.

  • 2000's

    There are now many different styles of drum recordings for different styles of music. Adavnced technology has also allowed more choice in recording techniques.