Building the drum sound around the BM9

Performed by: Joseba Irazoki & Lagunak

Johannes Buff  told us how he achieved the drum sound for his recent session with Joseba Irazoki & Lagunak.

“For this recording my task was to record an “extra-wide-mid-focused-roomy-punchy-compressed-drum-sound”, that would also have “generous low end“. Damn.

To achieve this request, I chose to use as little microphones as possible to avoid phase issues. I needed a solid room pair to function as the main frame, to which I would add spot mics where necessary. I’ve been toying with the BM9 for a year now and I know this mic grabs tons of details from super hi to super low frequency.

I placed a pair of them in front of the kit in a Blumlein configuration and was (again) impressed by how much depth and low end they captured, as well as how much freedom they allowed when processing.

The BM9’s gave me so much info that I ended up throwing in only 3 other microphones : ElectroVoice RE-20 for bass drum, Sennheiser 441 on snare, and a Sennheiser 421 within the kit (in case I wanted blown/distorted drum stuff). No close micing on toms/cymbals etc.

Here you can listen to the raw Blumlein pair, my drum mix bus (with the kick and snare mics mixed in) and the final mastered track.

As you can hear we were not shy with compression, and I barely had to use EQ. The BM9 sounds to me like an extremely well balanced mic, without the harsh frequencies that a lot of modern microphones often render when you push them hard.”