The EM Poll

Ribbon Mic Summit

Aug 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Gino Robair

           

Ten top engineers share their favorite techniques.

Call of the Drums

Using ribbon mics on drums is a classic sound, whether it's out front or overhead. “I use either a Coles 4038 or an RCA 44 in front of the kit — 3 or 4 feet back — to get a big, mono drum sound,” explains Hogarth. “To me there's nothing that does that like a ribbon mic. U 47s do a pretty good job of getting the top end and the smack, but nothing grabs the low end, and the fat, and the punch like a mono ribbon mic in front of a kit.

FIG. 4: Ainlay’s mid-room mic blends together the most important elements of the drum kit—snare, kick, and hi-hat.

“It's generally placed waist high: I don't go down to the floor with it,” Hogarth continues. “I move around the studio and feel where the low end goes away, and I don't go any farther away from the kick drum than that. There's a point where you really feel the punch, and then you go farther back and it's more like a room mic.”

Ainlay's approach involves putting an R-121 about 3 feet in front of the kit (see Fig. 4). “I call it my ‘midroom mic,’” he says. “It offers a nice overall drum representation that I can mix in with the other drum mics. I place the mic off center from the kick, out from the snare drum, about 4 feet up from the floor. Then I listen to the mic and move it around until I get mostly snare, but a nice blend between kick, snare, and hat. And then I just totally smash it with a UREI 1176.

“I almost always record three room mics: a pair of spreads further away to get the ambience of the room, and the midroom mic, which, on its own, sounds great all smashed out like that. I can just mix that in with the close mics, and it fills out the drum kit and makes it sound more real.”

FIG. 5: Chiccarelli uses a spaced pair of ribbon mics, focused at the bass drum, to get a rocking drum sound.

Chiccarelli says his favorite thing is to put a pair of ribbons in front of the kit (see Fig. 5). “I place them 3 to 5 feet in front of the kit, with about 5 to 8 feet of separation between them, and maybe 2 to 3 feet above the floor. They're about the height of the kick drum or the floor toms, and angled in a little toward the kick drum, almost like a triangle between the kick drum and the two microphones. And sometimes that's my only pair of room mics for the drums.

“I find that it gives a lot of weight to the kit,” Chiccarelli explains. “There's that chunky, almost Bonham-esque kind of low end that you can get from a pair of Royer R-121s or R-122s. Occasionally I'll use Coles 4038s. The older ribbons don't work as well for me in this situation. They're kind of soft and dark, and not punchy. That's the one thing about the new ribbon mics: they're not condensers, certainly, but they feel faster and more aggressive than an old RCA.

“If I'm using them as my only pair of room mics, I'll compress them with whatever seems appropriate,” Chiccarelli adds. “If I'm blending those in with other room mics, I may not compress them. But I may compress the other room mics.”