Tips & Techniques

Drum Recording Without Tom Mics

Classic Drum Recording Techniques

Armchair recording pundits may recoil at the idea of recording drums like this, using no tom mics, but a drummer in the expert recording hands of Owain Fleetwood Jenkins can be assured that the sound that they need for a particular track can be captured with the minimum of fuss (and phase issues)..

For great sounding drums recording in a great live room with some classic mics is the only way - and of course an excellent drummer too! Renowned recording engineer Stuart Bruce visited to check out Owain's amazing Welsh studio to see and hear his drum recording approach to find why people come to make records at StudiOwz from around the World.

Jack playing drums viewed from the gallery above

Jack playing drums viewed from the gallery above

These days going to a studio can be considered to be a 'luxury' but when it comes to tracking drums nothing can compare to a great space that's been set up for recording drums - many studios, such as this one, have extensive drum collections to choose from to supplement your own setup - sometimes a track might need something like a brass snare, other times a huge kick drum. Not only do you get all of that at StudiOwz but you have an engineer that LOVES recording drums and his experience and taste ensure you're guaranteed to capture something special.

Talking of special things, the location of this studio is fabulous, most times we've visited it's a rare thing to see a car go past, it's not totally isolated but as far 'off grid' as most would like. The home cooked food and warm welcome is something that makes this a destination studio - please do visit and leave your reaction in the comments below :-)

Many thanks to Owain Fleetwood Jenkins for giving up his studio and time to make this feature possible and also to Jack Beddis for being our amazing drummer for the day and playing a series of random patterns for you to audition the setup! Links for the studio and Jack are below.

Jack Beddis playing drums with the image showing the lack of any tom mics

Jack Beddis playing drums with the image showing the lack of any tom mics

Thanks again to the brilliant Stuart Bruce for giving up his day to travel down and walk through the setup. We also recorded Stuart and Owain trying out a bunch of 'crush mics' and that will be available shortly.