Need help micing my drum set

  • Thread starter Thread starter idanspicer
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idanspicer

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Hey all, this is my first time posting here. I want to mic up my drum set (I already have all the equipment), however I am running into a problem. My kick drum is positioned very far left compared to everything else on my kit, and if I were to position my OHs in a spaced pair set up, the stereo image would place my kick drum very far to the left, which obviously is not ideal for recording and mixing.

Is there any way to get around this? I was thinking about micing my cymbals from underneath. Is there any way to efficiently mic my cymbals without keeping the OHs set up in a spaced pair fashion, equidistant apart?

In case anyone is curious as to why my drums are set up this way, it's because it allows me to position my rack tom lower and to the right, in front of the floor toms. It also frees up that entire side of the kit and lets my rack tom and two floor toms sit closely together.
 
Here's what I'm thinking...
The right OH mic will hear everything, but obviously more from the right side of the kit. The same goes for the left OH mic. Hopefully you are going to have each on a separate track of their own. Don't forget to account for phase issues.

When mixing these two tracks, you can pan left or right to balance the stereo image of the room. so you pull a little more left pan on the right mic, and a little more right pan on the left mic. Then maybe EQ the OH mics a little to lessen the bass and bring out the brightness of the cymbals...
Then you have the Kick drum mic'd individually I hope. This becomes your prominent track for the kick, which you can place central into the mix.

My 1.5 cents....
 
I would think that with close miking the kick, it wouldn't be all that noticeable.
Roll widdit and see what ya think. It may work out just fine.
 
Dogbreath said:
I would think that with close miking the kick, it wouldn't be all that noticeable.
Roll widdit and see what ya think. It may work out just fine.
Click to expand...

+1 that.
In other words, mike the kick separately, and you'll be free of the problem...
 
You could also put the mics a bit diagonally, from drummer's perspective push the left OH mic further (depthwise) so it ends up over the crash cymbal and pull the right OH closer so it ends up somewhere over the floor tom. This way you'd get both the snare and kick in the center image of the OH. Hopefully my writing makes sense.

Whatever OH setup I end up using (spaced pair, ORTF, XY) I always angle them a bit diagonally because of this.
 
I think Spedes got it. Kick and Snare should be in the center of your OH(unless you plan on panning the close mic Kick and Snare accordingly off center) Just make sure the distance between the individual close mics is equidistant to each overhead. For what its worth you might check out Mike Major's book on Recording drums. I remember him talking about this very same problem and is a great primer in recording drums in general.
 
I generally use microphones to mic the drums. Direct line to console seems to not work for me.
 
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