Recording Drums With Adrian Bushby

Adrian Bushby has worked with Jamiroquai, Foo Fighters, Muse, Skunk Anansie and more - and recording drums is his specialism.
In this SOS Video, Adrian talks us through his microphone choices, microphone placement and typical mix for a drum recording session with band Superglu.
You can download the multitracks in a ZIP file to hear the results for yourself from this page: www.soundonsound.com/techniqu...
Chapters
Live Room
00:00 - Start
00:21 - Drum Kit Mic Placement
01:56 - Overheads & Coles Ribbon Mics For General Kit Sound
04:17 - Phase Considerations With Multiple Microphones
05:19 - Double Mic Toms
07:17 - AKG D190
08:18 - Three Kick Drum Mics
09:55 - Snare Top & Bottom Mics
11:06 - Extra Mics On The Drum Kit
Control Room
13:00 - Processing Kick Drum - Blending Microphones
16:35 - Snare Drum Mixing
23:04 - Processing Overheads
23:42 - Checking Phase In Pairs Across Channels
26:48 - Processing Coles Ribbon Mics
31:36 - Blending In Room Mics
33:28 - Compression On Mix Buss
36:20 - Mixing The Toms
43:36 - Mixing In AKG D190
46:38 - Mixing Lomo Valve Mic
51:40 - Full Kit And Mixing In The ‘Crazy Mics’
55:27 - Mix These Recordings Yourself
Get FREE 170-page RECORDING TECHNOLOGY eBook: sosm.ag/recording-ebook
Subscribe! sosm.ag/subscribe
Visit www.soundonsound.com
LIKE Sound On Sound: / soundonsoundmag
FOLLOW Sound On Sound: / soundonsoundmag
Follow Sound On Sound on Instagram: @soundonsoundmag

[@vinniereck7536]

Really excellent video. Love the palette of sounds you set up to be able to blend with the rest of the music as needed. Calm in your knowledge that comes from experience. Great stuff. Thank you

[@plummetplum]

What a fantastic studio.

[@TheEleventeen]

Wonderful video ! Thank you Mr. Adrian Bushby ! X🤘🏻X

[@steverok67]

With that many mic's, mixing the drums becomes more challenging than recording them. I guess that's what they pay you for ! Good stuff.

[@matteodifra]

awesome!!!very useful. grazie.

[@LasseHuhtala]

Nice touch with the frames around the soffits. :-)

[@ritmanguitarexercises4335]

Thank you for a great tips

[@surgicalaudio8829]

That burp at 50:06 haha Anyway, amazing drum sound, amazing player . Thank you !

[@highpeakrecordings]

Amazingly informative video. And if this isn't an advert for the SSL bus/desk compressor I don't know what is!

Don’t forget to check out the drum recording multitrack audio download in the description 👆

[@erinateleven3477]

digging the lomo + D19, knicking that

[@urwholefamilydied]

7:18 ok, now the "synergy" aspect of your overly mic'd drum setup comes in. The vintage AKG that was the poor man's sm57, placed right in front of the drums. It's mAgIC!!

[@therecordingdummies4062]

Great for us. We have challenged ourselves to use budget equipment to record and promote our own album into the UK rock album top 40. Brilliant advice. We are using a portable drum booth, 7 mics and a behringer interface.

[@insidedastudio7539]

Great VDO. Are you using the mic pre's on the SSL?

[@wrongfuture]

That drum sound is perfect. I wish it was sampled.

[@buhlir]

I agree let us sample haha

[@davewestner]

12:09 what mic is that? Also, LOVE the control room with windows to the outside world!

[@fr4nc1sPT]

Oktava ML-16 ribbon mic

[@buhlir]

that was so cool and so informative, but man oh man am I upset the multi-tracks are not actually drum multi tracks. I got so excited to play around with all those mics. Idk maybe for next time we could get a print of all the mics. cool song though. and the final drum mix is really unique. so cool, well done.

[@OverdriveMusic]

Love the song Adrian did of The Subways - It's a Party (Adrian Bushby Remix). Way better than the original!

[@friguy4444]

I've come to a conclusion that in our modern studios we are all always "Looking" at the sound on the monitor. Which isn't how it used to be. And IMHO how it used to be had a lot more sonic pleasantry than a lot of what we are making today. (meaning in the 1960's to 1990's). Our producers were never looking at anything. They were only "LISTENING". I'm not saying there are no great recording sounds coming out now. But I think the focus is being distracted from what it should or needs to be. On the ear.

[@MT-sw7bh]

I agree 100%. There’s something to be said about say a minimalist mic approach and getting a killer sound nonetheless. I’ve never been formally educated in sound engineering but I hope when people learn this trade they’re aware of say the glyn johns technique- 3 mics, that’s all you need sometimes.

[@CrossGuitarWorks]

"He hates me...blurrp!" 😆

[@syap8888]

My wife was asking if I was watching some Jamie Olivier's program.... 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@chrislopez1391]

dang that's an old wired USB Apple mouse that was introduced in the mid 2000's! not a very good one, but enjoyed spotting such an old mouse.

[@ronfrancois]

'You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

[@lovebirdsmusic]

what was he mumbling about white noise? how does he use it? did anyone get that?

[@retop56]

He was feeling it at 46:00 for like two seconds and then stopped. Why?

[@davidpringuer]

anyone know where this studio is?

[@benthegardener6304]

Vada Evesham Rd, Cookhill, Alcester B49 5LN

[@banab6829]

👍🙂🗿🅱️

[@gagsmedia]

Is a calculator watch a thing in 2020?

[@SteveStockmalMusic]

00:06 Points at his… Ha ha ha ha ha

[@TimSuliman]

This would have been much more helpful if we could see what EQ he is using, preamp levels, etc. I'm sure there are people who have that many channels and mic locker, but this was not terribly relevant to me. I can't afford to set up 30 mics and hope for the best.

[@guilhemem.9443]

Sorry, but sounds tô me as you have all dream gear needed, but dont have a clue what sounds good means. If you need a visual of the Eq, with all parameters settings, your ears are useless.

[@m.o.n.d.e.g.r.e.e.n]

i guess it doesn't say anywhere that this is a tutorial so you've covered yourselves there. there are granules of relevent info here but mostly it's general chat. this seems to happen a lot on youtube but i guess i can't complain for free

[@fancynumbers9576]

50 min to get drum sounds... woof!

[@pass-my-test]

Go to

[@iammurphy]

I thought I excessively mic’d drums! Lol

[@tom27j]

This is crazy overkill for mics! Hard to see all of them, but I counted around 17-20. I've worked in some great studios and some of the best drum sounds I've ever heard was a single decent ribbon mic being used as a close room mic on the whole kit, thats it, nothing else. This guys specialises in tracking drums and I'm sure he knows more than me. Maybe its just for the purpose of this video, but if an artist/drummer asked me to mic the kit like that I'd probably walk out of the session, nuts!

[@Snulrich]

He clearly states that the reason he does use this many is to give him options

[@copetill7896]

The Sex Pistols had a good number of Mics including Ribbons and 2 Ambient Mics that were hard gated & triggered to open only when the Snare would hit. The key is committing some of the sources to 1 track via comping. If you don't CYA while recording modern-loud as hell Bands correctly, you will spend 6 weeks trying to Mix a Record. I love a Blues Group that I can record live w/my Stereo R88 Ribbon catching 80% of the whole band w/8 other Mics @most, but that's an easy day!

[@eightGhosts]

21 by my count . . . on a 4-piece kit. Haha. Still a fun video to watch.

[@kodykindhart8230]

20 mics but only keep one take... generally so I like to have different options depending on the session and drum style. If it is one track maybe only a few extra up. If not like to have most of my fav set ups to work from

[@DontWorryImAPilot]

Drum tracking and drum sounds are one of the things clients tell me they like most about the sound of my productions. The other thing is how my tracks constantly evolve and never sound boring or same-y for very long. I'm generally using 12-18 mics on drums. I'd use more if I had more inputs available. I'm often tracking bands in some sort of live-ish fashion so some of the inputs have to be dedicated to the rest of the basic tracking. I'm often using the different mics to create different overall drum sounds at different parts of the song. For example: use a mono close room mic during a verse for my main ambience, pull it out for a tightened prechorus, and bring in the stereo room mics for the chorus. Maybe the last chorus gets really dense so I need some extra poke for the snare drum. Luckily I set up that third snare mic to make sure I got a different picture of the snare sound. Turn the snare shell mic up and all of the sudden there's a better representation of that 700-1.5k to help it speak through a wall of guitars. Just a couple quick examples for why I go for a significant pile of mics.

[@GPauley]

@3:25 that poor mic stand :-(

[@SlinkiestTortoise23]

Punk died in that room! How to stamp on the point of everything and record it in easy to follow steps!

[@cy2112cy]

With all respect for the engineer... those cymbals are total garbage.

[@mikesgarage18]

This guy seems cool but the big studio stuff seems more and more a relic of the past. Labels don't fund excessive rock albums anymore.

[@SanFranciscoFatboy]

expensive........ u can get a great drum sound with 4 mics...... 2oh, sn n kick........ its just the drums, in my opinion this is madness .......

[@Meru112]

Bummer... I wish he was a lot more specific as he was monitoring from the desk, telling us which mic/mic combinations he's soloing and hearing back as he's mixing and tweaking them. Otherwise there's no point really, I don't know which mics he's working with as he's messing around on the desk. He'll just say "so I switched the phase on the pairs here"... which pairs? which mics again exactly? ...... it's just not as instructional as I wished it would be, he was too vague and not focused enough on sharing specific details as he was working