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Recording and mixing kick drum may seem mysterious for people who are new to it. As with most things audio, there are many different ways one could record and mix kick drum. Here is my perspective. Please feel free to adapt these ideas to your own style of working, and be sure to compare ideas with others. I especially recommend Bobby Owsinki’s TheRecording Engineer’s Handbook and The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook for additional perspective on recording and mixing kick drum. Most importantly, let your ears be the most significant factor in deciding what works.
To be clear, I’m talking about putting mics on an acoustic instrument (not samples), music styles that would include rock/pop (not jazz or experimental) and I am assuming the recording engineer is not also the drummer for this recording. It is assumed a full drum kit is being recorded with 3 or more mics (a typical drum kit recording setup starts with two overhead mics, a close mic on kick and probably a close mic on snare). You may find some of my ideas useful beyond this scope, but just wanted to let you know the context for these recommendations.
Human hearing
Anytime a sound has a duration of about 200 ms or less, it gets more and more difficult to hear the shorter it is. Put another way, short sounds need to be louder to be perceived at the same volume as sounds that last 200 ms or more. This is the first challenge for recording and mixing kick drum: the duration is very short.
The other big challenge is that kick drums tend to have more energy in low frequencies than mid-range or high frequencies. Anyone familiar with the equal-loudness curves knows that more volume is required for the lowest of low frequencies to be heard at the same volume as mid-range or even most high frequencies.
Kick drum is difficult to hear. Great. But knowing what makes it more difficult to hear means we can use techniques to optimize these situations. For example, if we increase the decay time of a kick drum using compression, we can make it easier to hear. If we clear out the low frequencies as much as possible in the rest of the mix we can leave enough headroom to turn up the kick as much as needed to hear it without clipping. And we can use mic choice, placement and EQ to present kick drum at frequencies that are more easily heard.
Another principle of hearing response comes into play: spectral masking. If we hear two sounds with similar sonic properties and one is louder than the other, the quieter sound will tend to be less audible under the louder. But two sounds with different sonic properties will both be more easily heard because they are not competing for the same frequency ranges in your ear/brain. If we can unmask the kick drum from the rest of the mix it will be easier to hear it.
Drums are loud. Protect your ears when near the kit. I often wear earplugs when I am in the same rooms with drums, taking them out only briefly when I want to listen directly.
Consider the source
When the drummer hits that kick drum right in front of you, how does it sound? If it sounds lousy, so will your recording. In addition, how the playing fits in the song and how everything else works with the drums have a lot to do with how poorly a kick may work at the end of the process. The point is, the best recording practices may not overcome inherent flaws with the drum, the drummer, the song, etc. Tuning is a very big deal. And there are lots of opportunities for nuance: type of kick drum, type of head(s), age of the heads, type of beater, even affixing something to the skin for the beater to hit. It all boils down to getting the kick to sound the way you want in the room BEFORE you start worrying about mics and recording. In the words of @sonicvalentine, “start with a good kick drum hit by a good drummer.”
But don't take my word for it. I interviewed legendary studio drummer Gregg Bissonette over the phone in August of 2010.
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