I’ve heard this question asked quite a bit — how do I get a good sound for heavy rock or metal drum kits?  When it comes to micing up harder rock outfits you have to throw out the idea of micing things naturally.  There is nothing natural about a metal drum kit, just in-your-face mayhem.

The first thing I suggest is to start experimenting with kick drum samples.  It seems that most harder rock drums use samples on the kit to get that in your face, supper-clicky, dynamic-less sound.  There are many great drum sample libraries out there with magnificent sounding kick samples.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Luckily you can use something like Drumagog to trigger your lovely samples from an already recording kick track.  Just throw the plugin over the kick drum track and adjust to taste.

If you’re not into the sample route it’s going to take some serious tweaking at the source.  You might want to try a dampened drum head, something like the Aquarian Superkick.  I almost always rip the front head of the drum right off and start jamming blankets and pillows inside until there is little to no resonating.  You are going to want a whole lot of click in the recording so be sure to try using a wooden or plastic beater head and taping a credit card or coin to the inside of the skin at the impact point.  Both of these will add the upper frequencies that make the rock kick cut through the rest of the mix.

Remember to always compare your mixes to other reference tracks…start with the best.

Suggested mics:  Sennheiser E602, Audix D6, AKG D112, Heil Sound PR-48