I've used quite a few different techniques, but I thought it would be nice to get a list of all of them right here. Feel free to comment on the techniques you like or any variations you've made.
I'd love to see a list of techniques and how they are setup and used.
This is not a particularly exotic setup or anything but it is a great place to start from.
This setup ensures that the bass drum and and the snare drum will both be centered in the recording. The toms should spread from left to right, with the hit hat off to the right.
You can adjust how wide the stereo image is by adjusting how far apart the overhead mics are placed.
This technique gives you a pretty natural overall sound to the drum kit, almost as if you were standing somewhere in from of it.
When I record our band practices, I use a pair of pencil condenser in an XY about 2' up and 1' back from the drummers head, pointed at the hat and the floor tom. If the drummer is not using cans, he uses a monitor wedge on a stick behind him. In this case, the overheads get positioned to aim away from the monitor. Usually this keeps most of the rest of the band out of the druim tracks.
The kick is mic's a few inches into the shell, aimed around the beater and angled toward the floor tom.
Snare is captured with a snap on drum mic. Most of the mixes have enough snare in the overheads, so this track is usually treated with some compression and verb, then used just to add colour to the drum mix. Most takes their is little bleed between the kick and the snare, but if there is I will gate it out.
The overheads get a bit of compression, a bit of eq and usually panned a quarter notch or so apart, sometimes half apart if the song uses a lot of ride. Drum tracks get sent to a bus with a bit of compression to bring out the hat.
Here is a drum session with sound files and pictures of microphone placement including overheads. Sounds files include both small and large diaphragm condenser mics and Spaced Pair, X-Y and Single microphone configurations.
You can access the link here: http://www.lautenaudio.com/lauten-sessions-drums.htm
Wow, did you guys put all this together yourselves? Awesome resource...vote this up people!!
Justin Vencel | Oct 14 at 03:10
To get an overall snapshot of the kit, try a pair of Coles 4038's evenly spaced above the center of the kit, as close as you can, out of drumstick range. Being ribbon mics, the top end is like silk and the low end is awe inspiring. Great on ballads.
Sometimes I stick a small diaphragm mic either a condesor or a dynamic mic like an AKG D224E over an acoustic guitar neck (or any similar fretted acoustic instruement for that matter). Not sure if that qualifies as an overhead technique, but it's very good at accenting the main guitar sound coming from the sound hole. The idea is that if a guitar sounds good to the player, a good mic placed in roughly the same spot will sound good too.
Here is a great resource containing quite a bit of great information about drum and overhead mic placement.
You will find quite a few different techniques and images of the different setups.
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