Front of kit placement superior to overhead placement on Drums?

silentsky

silentsky

Member
On a recent session, in addition to setting up my close mics and a spaced pair of overheads (Russian Oktava MC012's), I set up two "parallel room mics" (MXL 603'S), as recommended in the Drum Recording Handbook. I put them about 10 feet out in front of the kit and about 10 feet apart from each other, about 3 feet off the floor, with each mic pointed toward the outside edge of the kit on each side. I found that these front-of-kit mics have given me a much more powerful and natural sound of the kit than what I've ever gotten from my overhead tracks. When mixing, I so preferred the front-of-kit tracks that I ended up not even using the overhead tracks for the most part. My question is, are these results normative? If so, why don't more people do it this way instead of the conventional overhead placement?

I'll also mention that I have 8-foot ceilings, which I know isn't ideal for recording drums, so maybe that's the key. I guess with higher ceilings, you could get the overheads up much higher without worrying about early reflections from the ceiling causing problems. But then again, I do have some acoustic panels mounted on the ceiling above the kit to help with that, too.

Has anyone else had a similar experience, or prefer this placement over the conventional overhead placement?
 
Many engineers do this, including myself. But, as always, it depends on what works for the project, I suppose.

Sometimes I'll have only a spaced pair of overheads. Sometimes an X/Y pair. Sometimes I do an end-to-end X/Y configuration with LDCs in front of the kit and I have been pleased with the results. There are so many great techniques and as far as I'm concerned, variety is the spice of life.

Just keep conscious of your phase relationship between the OH's and the rest of the kit. The polarity switch is your friend. I've found that to be one of the biggest pitfalls of drum recording and something that, when remedied, can cause the biggest improvement.

Cheers :)
 
I remember last year doing a session in a warehouse where in addition to the overheads, I used a dynamic mic as a 'room' mic. It was about 10 feet from the kit, in the back of a van, about 3~4 feet off the ground, pointed slightly towards the bass drum. I was amazed at the sound, a little raw perhaps, but it picked up everything clearly, including the kick. It sounded better than the overheads in my opinion.
 
Yeah, after this experience, I think that as a rule, I'm going to set up the "parallel room mics" just to have that as another option when I'm mixing. I've gotta add--one of the ironies to this was that the better-sounding tracks were from the cheaper mics (MXL 603's vs. Oktava MC012's) running into cheaper preamps (Behringer ADA8000 vs. Yamaha MLA8) into cheaper converters (Behringer ADA8000 vs. Echo Layla 24/96). Just another testimony of how critical mic placement is, I guess. Of course, now I'm considering using the better gear for the room mics and the cheaper gear for the overheads to see how that might turn out.
 
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