Room mics low to the floor. "knee-high" mics in front of the kit.

[AASteveo]

I sat in on a session the other day where they recorded just drums. It was interesting to see these "knee-high" mics, as they called them. I've never seen this before, but they place two C414's as a spaced pair about 2 to 3 feet off the floor in front of the kit. The engineer said that the sound coming from the bottom of the cymbals are much different and the whole room sound changes. You also get this nice soft reflection off of the carpet that adds some texture. They actually sounded better than the overheads, but they ended up mixing both together and the room sounded huge!


There was also a center mic on the overheads, which really added a lot. Sometimes the hard panned L/H overheads can be too separated. It was almost a decca tree style setup.

It was a really cool session. I wish I could have taken home a copy of the tracks. :-/

 

[Bguzaldo]

That sounds pretty awesome! Im definitely going to have to try that out and see how it sounds were the "knee highs" panned hard L/R?

-Barrett

 

[drossfile]

were the "knee highs" panned hard L/R?

-Barrett

i'm looking forward to an answer to that as well. i pan my OHs @ 3 and 9 o'clock, and i'd probably put the knee-highs at 2 and 10 or something.

i'm definitely gonna try this.

 

[mixsit]

I like a single mic out front of the kick like that. It's a nice thicker mono version vs overs'.