Ian Schreier's SM57 Drum Mic seminar (AM highlights) 

As an amateur producer, my best sounding drums, concrete floor, 6’ tall ceilings, Sm-57 on the ground next to the kick, Tascam 4-track, blew my mind and still does 20 years later. I still use them today in my hip-hop productions.

That sweet spot right above the bass drum is perfect

Very clear explanations & great instructions! Thanks!

I love the sound of drums mic'd at a distance! The kick especially 😍

Thanks Ian for sharing this to the engineer community ❤

You know its crazy how much the room can impact the sound of cymbals. I've been gigging a lot recently and my two crash cymbals will take turns sounding extremely harsh depending on the room they are set up in. One night one will sound smooth and pleasant and the other will sound harsh, then vice versa. One is a 17" and one is 18"

Very helpful, produced and presented extremely on the money, thank you.

WTF that kick is already sounding kickass. Nothing better to address the importance of pre production and good quality instruments than this demo

Oh Y E S - it´s the position, and the room! You nailed it! Thanx !

Increible video, muchas gracias por todo el trabajo que hicieron! Saludos desde Argentina

That room sounds great

Thank you, great video.

This one was so interesting - thank you for the video!

The kick sounds AMAZING! Almost electronic, love it. Great demo!

I’m so excited about this

This is such a good reminder.

This was very intresting for recording drums, we just recorded that with my band, so i think this is very helpful for the future.

Great content, interesting and helpful, nuff respect!

Love that front mic at 14:30 - thanks for the lesson! 💀🔥🥁

14:30 Love the front mic position. Thanks for posting this. It really is worthwhile.

Recently started recording demos from my home, this video has been helpful and affirmed some of my own experimentations. Great stuff.

Awesome video!!!

Fantastic! Great information presented in a practical manner. Subscribed.

Lots of good info on this video!

Love this!

very informative video, thanks

Awesome vid

Thanks for the video

Great stuff.

amazing differences, especially between 1st and second position!!

Amazing!

A good tool to use is a video camera. Setup a camera that captures as much of the room as possible and walk around the room with the mike, placing it in different locations for 10 seconds at a time. Sync the microphone audio to the video and note the best sounding locations.

Really informative !!! Best advice ever… walk around and listen; ears first brain next !!! I always feel like I’d like to coach drummers to play: two bars of a beat, and then a 1 measure fill (and the EXACT same fill every time) which includes a couple of soft notes and a couple of loud notes, then hit the right crash followed by the left crash…and cycle the whole thing over and over. I have literally watched hundreds of videos on drum recording techniques and I very rarely see a drummer allow me to actually hear the toms with dynamics, or who plays the right and left cymbals so I can check my panning. Please write that on a Post-it note and hand it to the next drummer you see and ask him to hand it to the next one he meets, and so on until we are all on the same page 😉❤️🎶 Great video, I’m off to the studio right now to experiment away !!!!!!!!!

Jesus Christ that room sounds amazing

Wow great. What a lesson.

Mic 4 position 2 is golden!

Bravo! Thank you very much

Blew my mind.

Lovely room, so much air.

in freakin' creadible video!! rgs. Thank you.

Ohhhhh man he’s got vintage Sonor phonic!!! One of the best, I own one in gold.

I really loved the snappy low end sound !!!!!!!!!! Reminds of a dnb style sounding drums!

Best video about recording / engineering ever made. HOW DOES THIS ONLY HAVE 5000 VIEWS???

This would be great if you put this into a video course.

HOLY FUCK THIS WAS EXTREMELY INFORMATIVE!!! i want to cry!!!

13:54 - 13:55 That sound was absolutely beautiful. Excellent choice in drums, nothing comes close to a Sonor kit.

This video was extraordinarily helpful. And I've been recording for years. Lol. Just when you think you know some stuff.

I personally like that high tuned bass drum sound.

This is a MUST-WATCH for every drummer or sound enginner. So helpful. In german, in music-jargon we call it "Wurst"... which translates to Sausage... to express that the mic is pointed directly at the drummer's crotch. kinda funny eh

If I'm not mistaken, the goal was to pick the best mic position to capture a balanced sound of the entire drum kit. With out any preference, the clear definitive choice for me was at 14:20

Thank you; much appreciated. Ideas to try with hand percussion :D

Feels like a presentation during covid

To avoid interference at the frequencies of the kick drum, it is necessary that the distance from the kick drum to the microphone and from the kick drum to the floor and microphone is not equal to half. It is desirable that one of the sides be 1\3 or 1\5 or something between these values. Sorry for my English.

Summary of the sounds from different mic positions: 9:49 - Attendee Mic Position 1 10:05 - Attendee Mic Position 2 10:18 - Attendee Mic Position 3 10:27 - Attendee Mic Position 4 10:34 - Talk about the Attendee Mic Positions 11:22 - Repositoning "Attendee Mic Position 1" 12:46 - "Mic 4", which I guess = "Attendee Mic Position 1" ??? 13:05 - Repositioned "Mic 4" (balanced sound) 13:15 - Talk about Repositioned "Mic 4" 14:00 - Alternative Mic Position 1 14:20 - Alternative Mic Position 2 14:38 - Alternative Mic Position 3 15:07 - Alternative Mic Position 4

Did this 20 years ago, put the mic (not a 57 but an even cheaper 33-1070c) on the kick drum facing the drummer (me) atop a towel to eliminate rattle/resonance. With a little EQ and reverb it sounded a bit like Surfer Rosa minus the stereo imaging

I absolutely LOVE the drum sound starting at 3:12! Big HUGE Bonham-ish sound. So that was the two Sanken mics? Can you recall where they were placed in the room?

Oh my god that sound 16:38

I would have tried one over the ride looking at the center of the snare. That’s my goto setup but with a Blue Microphones bluebird

14:00 for me. Not a lot of room You can add stuff later but that seems the most clear of all the positions to me.

Yikes. How far up do you have to insert the butt mic for proper recording? Seriously, thank you for sharing this information. Very cool!

A great room, well tuned kit, and good drummer goes a very long way. The snare could use some more bottom wires sound. Great video!

No compression used?

Great video👍 I know we are talking about drum recording techniques, however I'm wondering if one could apply this technique (ex. no 1 - above kick) to live performances. What do you think?

Wow that room

The drummer is sick

Which Sonor kit is this?

first thing i noticed was the Sonor Phonic lugs. Hence .. first you need a good sounding instrument,

Height is one-third of distance, except for the under-the-ride position. No-one went for a floor position, just above the surface, like the Shure Engineers explored in the 1970s, it may go back before then. Great way to get a reflected sound off the floor. The Shure people made a cradle to hold the mic at the right angle. There's a paper online as a PDF.

5:48 Butt mic. Glad they used 57s! An ldc would be painful.

super video.. would like to see him in a not so perfect room, with close to no ambience.. like most of us have to deal with.. and get his input.

Where did this take place?

It sounds very good. I think close micing is much better as it gives you flexibility to eq, compress, whatever to every piece separately. And these things are very affordable and not bulky these days.

I wish i could walk around the room as i play 😂

Where would you place two mics to get an stereo impression of the kit?

What was the position used for the audio playing at the end with EQ?

So just to be clear: the audio engineer got that final drum sound with the SM57 position at 14:05? Is that the position he was referring to?

10:06 ... the old mic above the drummer pointed at the snare was an old favourite from back in the 4 track days, although you'd need a mic on kick with it aswell, but record both to one track. None of the other suggestions have enough smack from the snare for me.

mic 4 position 2 - 1 mic balanced tone, nice

Please ask the drummer to include a few more and slightly longer tom fills per mic example. I wanted to hear the tom levels and how well they were projecting compared to the bass, snare and HH.

Ah yes the Horst Link SONOR....a mighty classic of german engineering.

So wait, that last clip where he's showing the single-mic result, is that just using the mic he placed above the kick pointed at the snare splitting the toms?

At 14:07, that's very similar to the 'crotch mic' method, which I personally like.

The room sounds great. What are the dimensions of the room? How many sides are there? What is the ceiling height?

killer vid. highly informative. butt mic got literal there for a moment..

I learned a lot from this, but the instructor never showed where he prefers the mic placed, he had the students decide and then he fine tuned the positions. I would like to see his choice of locations

I'm only 3 minutes in and I'm totally being that guy who comments before the video probably says something about it, but I just laughed a little; like 15 people are walking around the room trying to find the sweet spot, which is likely totally changing the sweet spot.

To use such a good sounding room is nearly cheating :-) I would probably use the SM57 like in minute 14:00 plus the Sanken Stereo, a bit Delay, depending on the music, and thats it.

aint no one gonna talk about how they got an inmate to play drums for this video?

Kinda skipped ahead to 4:26 and thought it felt like a Tim and Eric sketch I assume this is solid stuff though 🙏

What Mics were used to record drums in studio.

I'm hoping the really important information was not included in the RU-vid video. Otherwise I'd be super pissed about paying for this seminar if I had attended it lol!

it sounds like Ian Botham drums to my ear a little

14:05 sounds best to me

Very "ear-opening." Nice drumming John.

I started recording in 1961, with one mic, one mono tape machine, and one basement. It's almost painful to watch you struggle to do something we did every day, normally. Bill P.

I need someone like you to help me record I have original songs and I play all the instruments and I need help with each and every little detail

Didnt know bobby Moynahan taught sound engineering classes too

57 best mic ever?

I'm surprised no one is taking into account that when you hit a drum the skin compresses first. But if you're standing in front of the kick, you get an expansion first. To keep everything in sync, behind the the kit at drummers ear level makes the most sense for one mic

10:20 my favourite out of all of them