Glyn John is one of the UK’s most respected producers and engineers. He began his career working as a tape operator for The Beatles and then went on to work alongside many successful artists such as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton.
This Glyn Johns sound was created specifically to record drum kits to create a big, live, open tone. Unbelievably, this sound is achieved by using only four microphones.
The microphones you could use for this setup include the following:
- Overheads: 2x AKG 414’s
- Snare: Shure SM57
- Bass Drum: Sennheiser MD421
Most of the sound that is recorded you will find is picked up through the two overhead microphones. They provide the stereo image, warmth, clarity, and ‘crack’ from the snare. The snare and bass drum microphones are used to round out the sound, producing body and attack for the snare and bottom end punch for the bass drum.
When recording this technique at Anglia ruskin, we used this exact setup, but also incorporated one other microphone near the high-hat and the snare drum to pick up a sharper, more defined sound whenever the high-hat it played.
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