Half our setlist is made of records that were cut with almost no microphones on the drums. So when I landed on a video about miking a whole kit with four mics, it stuck, and I have not stopped thinking about it since.

The video is Heavy Drums with 4 Mics - The "Glyn Johns" Technique by Glenn Fricker at SpectreSoundStudios. Link is at the top. Go watch it properly, it is four minutes long.

Here is everything in it that matters, plus what I think it means for us on a stage, which is a different problem to the one the video is solving.

The whole setup, in numbers

Glenn's line is that all you need is four mics and a tape measure. That is not a figure of speech. The measurement is the technique.

  1. Overhead one. Directly over the snare, 40 inches, dead centre, aimed at the beater on your kick.
  2. Overhead two. Across the floor tom, aimed back at the snare, again 40 inches away.
  3. Kick mic. In the kick, as normal.
  4. Snare mic. Top of the snare.

Then pan the two overheads hard left and right, and that is it. That is the entire method.

The gear he used in the video, for reference:

  • Overheads: Roswell Mini K47 pair
  • Kick: Audix D6
  • Snare: Studio Projects C4, which he picks over an SM57 because it is "not quite as papery sounding"

The mics are swappable. The 40 inches is not.

Why the tape measure is the whole game

Both overheads have to be the same distance from the snare. If they are not, the snare hits the two mics at slightly different moments, the phase fights itself, and the kit goes thin and hollow. Nothing you do at the desk will rescue it.

So: tape measure, snare centre, 40 inches, both mics. Then tape the floor so we can find the spots again next time.

Four mics and a tape measure. If we only remember one thing from this, it is the tape measure.

One honest wrinkle about the "40 inches"

The 40 inch number is Glenn's, and it works. But it is worth knowing that Glyn Johns himself seems to have been looser about it.

In the comments under that video, someone quotes his book Sound Man: A Life of Recording Hits, where he says he used no fixed measurement at all. He just made sure both mics were the same distance from the snare, and past that, whatever sounded good. Same commenter says Johns rarely used a snare mic at all, and did not pan the overheads hard left and right, because he felt it stopped sounding like a real kit. Another commenter puts his panning at roughly 40 percent left and right rather than full.

I have not read the book, so I am passing that on as what it is: well-argued comments citing a source, not something I have checked myself.

Which lines up with something else worth knowing: strictly, the original Glyn Johns technique is three mics - two overheads and a kick. The snare mic is the modern addition that makes it four.

Practical version for us: start at 40 inches, keep the two distances identical, then move things and trust our ears. Equal distance is the rule. Forty inches is the starting point.

Glenn's own warnings, which we should take seriously

He is blunt about where this does not work, and both warnings land directly on us.

"I don't think it's appropriate for a full metal mix, cuz I feel the toms get lost. I think the toms should be more cannons." With only two mics covering the whole kit, the toms sit where the drummer put them. You cannot go and make them enormous later.

"You are going to need a great drummer, and somebody who really knows how to hit the toms." This is the real cost. Take away the mic-per-drum safety net and the balance of the kit becomes entirely the drummer's job. Nothing gets fixed at the desk, because the cymbals and the snare and the toms are all living in the same two microphones.

And then his verdict: "If you want to do some rock and roll stuff, this is probably going to do you just fine."

Rock and roll is precisely what we do.

Why this is interesting for this band

Look at what we play. How Many More Times. Good Times Bad Times. Moby Dick. Immigrant Song.

Those drum sounds came out of exactly this school of recording. Not a mic on every drum and a pile of processing. A few mics, a good room, and Bonham hitting things properly. That comment about Good Times Bad Times having the snare panned off to one side is a real fingerprint of it, and we play that song.

Then there is Moby Dick. A drum solo, in front of people. If there is one thing in our set that deserves to sound like a whole enormous kit in a room rather than four separate drums glued together, it is that.

And Hot for Teacher, where the shuffle intro is completely naked. Whatever the kit sounds like in those first thirty seconds is what the room decides the band sounds like.

We also happen to have a drummer who can carry it. Glenn says you need a great drummer for this to work. Fine.

What changes when we take it live

This is the part the video is not about, so this is me, not Glenn.

The video is a studio technique. Controlled room, no wedges, silence between takes. On a stage we have none of that, and two of our four channels are wide-open overheads that will hear absolutely everything.

What I think we have to deal with:

  • Bleed is the whole problem. Cardioid or hypercardioid, aimed carefully, is not optional.
  • Overhead two sits low, down across the floor tom. It is going to catch stage wash off the back line. That is my biggest worry.
  • Compress the overheads. Glenn says this explicitly, so the snare does not jump out all over the place.
  • High-pass the overheads so the kick mic can do its job.
  • Check polarity on the kick. If it goes thin against the overheads, flip it.
  • Hi-hat discipline, because hat bleed lands in everything and there is nowhere to hide it.
  • Panning. Hard left and right may be too wide on a live PA. Given the Johns 40-percent note, I would start narrower and open it up.

Bonus, and he is right

Buried at the start of the video, nothing to do with mics: if your hi-hat is very high, it is usually because your seat is too low. Raise the seat, raise the hat. He frames it as saving your hips and knees later on, and he is completely right.

What I actually want us to try

Not at a show. At rehearsal.

  1. Set it up properly. Tape measure. 40 inches, both overheads, from the centre of the snare.
  2. Run Moby Dick and the Hot for Teacher intro through it, and record the room on a phone.
  3. Then set up our normal miking and run the same two things again.
  4. Listen to both, same night, same speakers.

If it wins, it comes to a show. If it falls apart against a loud stage, we learned something for the price of one rehearsal.

What I still do not know

  • How badly overhead two gets hammered by stage volume at the size of rooms we play.
  • Whether it works at all outdoors, where there is no room sound worth capturing. Sonoma was a big stage. A First Friday street show is probably the worst possible case for this.
  • Whether hard panning is right live, or whether we pull it in.

Only one way to find out.

If you have run this setup on a live stage, I want to hear how it went. Come find us at a show.