Drum Overhead Positioning

[ze kink]

I've recorded drums many many times. I usually just spot mic cymbals, capsule pointing straight down a bit to the side of the cymbal, when it stops sounding to harsh. One usually to the left (drummer view) capturing left cymbal and hihat, and the other to the right cymbal. And maybe an extra on the HH,ride and china. When you solo those 2 OH mic's you should have a nice separated stereo image and If you want a more drum feel use 2 room mic's to capture the whole kit, but for me those are usually very low or muted in the end because of the damn hihat bleed haha.

Yeah, I seem to be doing more of this these days too. Usually the snare starts to lean to the left and kick to the right this way, but as a tradeoff I get better cymbal sounds than if I'd go with the center line stuff or something like XY or ORTF overheads, that I tried for a bit some years back.

3 overheads also works great if you're going for the center line mentality and less towards spot micing. Did it for one album I'm working on right now, because the studio we recorded at had plenty of channels and good microphones.

For room mic's you want to try and get as little cymbals in it as possible, i normally put it low to the floor so that it points between the kick and snare, maybe hang some fabric in front of it to kill off the high end from the cymbals.

(props on posting a thread about real drums btw, far too few of these around!)

I don't do this as much anymore, because the kick ends up far too loud for what I want out of room mics usually. Depends on the room though, obviously.

But one method I've learnt from assisting and done a couple of times with great results is an AB pair of ribbon room mics, with the dead spot of the figure 8 pointing towards the cymbals. Actually, I even had a picture!

I can't remember if we moved them around though - they seem a bit high in the picture - because that session was a while back, and that picture was from setting up. I'm certain we changed the ride mic to the underside and moved the d112 to the beater side after that though, so it's entirely possible.

 

[DeclanWhite]

I've recorded drums many many times. I usually just spot mic cymbals, capsule pointing straight down a bit to the side of the cymbal, when it stops sounding to harsh. One usually to the left (drummer view) capturing left cymbal and hihat, and the other to the right cymbal. And maybe an extra on the HH,ride and china. When you solo those 2 OH mic's you should have a nice separated stereo image and If you want a more drum feel use 2 room mic's to capture the whole kit, but for me those are usually very low or muted in the end because of the damn hihat bleed haha.

this if you want good cymbal sounds, do the equal distance thing if trying to capture everything. imo of course

 

[::XeS::]

Usually the "center line" theory works good but sometimes (your case) I use a spot micing technique: mics closer to the cymbals, at the same height and forget about the snare. You will hard filter your oh's with the eq so the snare should not be a problem in any case