Recording a Latin Drum Setup

[moelar2]

I'm soon to record a Latin music project I'm working with. The drums are set up as follows from drummer's left to right side:

Two mini timbales
Hi-Hats
Two Cowbells
Snare
Tom1, Tom2, Floor tom
Thunder Timbale

The setup has Crash above tom1, a china above tom2, and a ride above the floor tom.

My mic crew includes: 1 sm57, 1 beta52, 2 oktava mc012, 3 samson R11, 1 AKG D790, and 1 Rode NT2. On my typical rock setup, I will use the oktava's as overheads using the forum's highly acclaimed 3 mic technique, beta52 on kick, plus sm57 on snare, and samsons on toms. This leaves me with two mics, akg d790 and rode nt2 (which i haven't used on drums), for the two mini tims, which are on the drummers far left side, and the thunder tim, which is on the drummer's far right side.

Some of my questions are:
1. How should I pan the individually miked drums? For example, the thunder tim and the floor tom are often used in solo situations; this would be an ideal stereo hard pan place, i.e. floor tom hard left and tim hard right. What troubles me though is that both of these drums are hard right on the overhead - how will this be reconciled?
2. What overhead setup should I use? XY is always good; and with respect to question 1, it might help eliminate that concern since this setup does not accentuate a rigid L/R separation. Is a three mic overhead setup suggested even if I'm using more than three mics?

I am using the Audiophile 2496 with a mackie mixer. I run a stereo signal from the mackie, usually a sub mix of overhead and individual mics without the kick and snare into the analog inputs of the audio card. I run the kick and snare out through the mackie auxilaries into my roland 840ex. I use the roland only as a means to get two extra tracks into the audiophile using SPDIF. This gives me four track capabilities; it allows me to balance the kick, snare, and overhead/tom mix.

Sorry for the long post! Hope you can help!

Thanks.

[Tim Brown]

Well, can you get him to leave out the Timbale parts, and overdub them?

That way you could pan them anywhere that you wanted in the mix.

Plus you could try to convince him that they would sound cleaner (and cout through better-which they would), since they wouldn't be "cluttered" by the live sounds.



Tim

[moelar2]

Tim,

The mini timbs are part of the basic rhythm. The thunder tim is used sporadically for fills. Though we have been rehearsing the songs enough to have a general idea of what we're playing (i hope), there's always a degree of improvisation that takes place, especially with his drum fills. Its almost like asking a rock drummer to record his snare separately; its do-able, but you loose a certain feel and groove in the process. I suspect it wouldn't sound as natural.

Nonetheless, I will propose your suggestion to see how he feels about it.

In the event that that is not an option, is there anything else you can suggest?

Thanks.