Drum Shells

I like to think of the drum kit as the rhythmic backbone of the song, upon which the rest of the instrumentation hinges, from a timing perspective.

The drum kit is made up of two basic types of instruments: shells and cymbals.

Shells, the more transient elements of the kit, consist of kick drums, snares, and toms. Their transience (short-livedness) makes them the perfect time-keeping element in a song, a sort of natural metronome.

I almost always incorporate drum shells into the louder parts of a song because of their ability to bring “weight“ and cut through the mix, but they can play an important role in defining the “feel” of any section.

My bedroom studio drum kit is comprised of a 22” kick drum, a 14” snare, a 10” rack tom (though I rarely use it), a 12” rack tom, and a 16” floor tom.

I like to capture the shells as a whole with an overhead matched pair of Rode M5 condenser microphones, spaced out exactly the same distance from the center of the snare drum, which tends to be the center of attention when it comes to most drum performances.

Then I like to place a spot microphone at an angle on the batter head of the snare drum and each of the toms. My spot microphone of choice is the SM57, a reliable dynamic microphone.

The kick drum is a unique part of the drum kit, because it’s the only piece that isn’t captured well by the overhead microphones, due to its front-facing resonant head. In order to capture both the “boom” of the kick drum and the click of the batter head, I’ve cut a port hole into the resonant head where I like to position a Shure Beta 52A at about a 45 degree angle to the batter head, directly inside the port hole. The Beta 52A is a dynamic microphone that has been specifically designed to pick up lower frequencies.

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Be sure to check in next week for my overview of cymbals, how I like to use them in a composition, and how I approach them in the bedroom studio!