[HAM] Miking the drums to get a big fat and ambient sound.Was:"Save Ours Seas" New song by Dan Bonow

[John Freund]

> Led Zeppelin's recording engineers were really able to capture a nice
> beefy and resonant bass drum sound  that seems to be missing on so many
> other recordings which seem to have a non existent bass drum or the bass
> drum sounds either like cardboard or like a basketball being bounced.

Kon, I share your enthusiasm for John Bonham's Levee/Kashmir drum sound but
it doesn't work in all instances and even Zeppelin didn't use that sound all
the time.  Those tunes are epics and the drum sound was the starting point.
The drums on Zep IV are close miked (comparatively).

> Close miking each part of the drum kit is common but this often results
> in a boring and sterile or unnatural sound especially when the low end
> is rolled off.

You can't really make that generalization can you?  The way you really want
to record drums is with close and ambient mikes.  Using only ambient mikes
severely limits your choices in mixing other instruments around the drums
and as you point out, only close mics is dead.  Remember the 70's LA sound?

> Does anyone know  exactly how to mike up a drum kit  to get that nice
> big fat John Bonham sound

Frankly you need John Bonham.  I'm not trying to be glib or snide or nasty
or anything like that.  So much of why drummers ESPECIALLY sound like
themselves is the drummer, not the kit setup or miking. Carmine Appice, who
tends to take credit for John Bonham in general, had a rare moment of
benevolence when he said he had Bonham over his house and John wanted to
jam.  So Appice says the only extra kit he had was this crappy little kit
with a 20inch bass drum.  John says, "Fine, I'll play that". Bonham jumped
behind it and ta-da, Appice said it sounded like Johns drums.

Yers,
John