Hey dude...
I use the Recorderman Technique. Here's a quote...
"here's my trick. It's fast and it works perfect every time.
1. Place the "Left" overhead mic directly over the center of the snare at the hieght of two drum sticks-held end-to-end(from the center of the snare, straight up, to the capsule of the mic).
2. Next; take the drum sticks (still held end-to-end) from the center of the snare over to above your ( i.e." the drummers") right shoulder and place your "right" overhead mic here.
3. Fine tune the placement by using a mic cable and measurinb the distance from the center of the Kick to each of these mics is also equidistant from the kick and snare.
4. listen with headphones and have the drummer lightly hit his kick drum, and adjust the "right" mics angle until the kick is in the middle of your "image".
What this has done is:
1. Place the snare & the kick in the center when you pan these mics hard left and right.
2. Place the overheads in a position which is in-phase with the kick,snare and overheads.
3. balanced the over heads so that the Rack and floor Toms (as well as all cymbals) are correctly ballanced.
this is actually a great "picture" of the kit at this point. maybe a hair of Top end (depending on what mics your using) and a little this, and a Kick mic. BUT whatever you add (snare mics, toms, etc) you'll mow be inphase. This also makes your snare & toms louder inrelation to the cymbals & is more of a true OH mic set-up (Not just "cymbal" mic's )
It may look weird but try it...it truely ROCKS
This will instantly bring a new demension to the picture we've painted already. Just listening to the overheads witn the rooms to the "average" listener in the control room, it should sound really huge and amazing, without any spot mics(yet). There should be no undesired phase anamolies between room & OH. The Drummer is still just palying everything/warming up. Now when we start to add the close mic's to the picture, we should notice that the process speeds up. You'll probably at this point notice that, if you've done your rooms/ohs properly, then the phase will be right with the spot mics' and you'll probably not be tempted into EQ'ing them (the spot mic's) as much as usual, and spend much less time on them.
the problem I see with doing it the standard way is: First you get this Big Huge kick drum sound, then a Big Huge Snare sound, Toms, etc. By the time you get to the rooms, you've so tweaked the direct mic's that the rooms are an after thought, hastilly thrown in. Sure they work now when there's just bass/drums/gtrs/etc. But there not r-e-a-l-l-y dialed in, and 9 times out of 10 the mixer wont use them because they don't kick ass. Instead he'll ditch your room tracks, or make them really low and use some tired reverb. OH's are the same way. Tom mics (421's for example)added after you've got the room/oh's right first will probably not need the top boost/lo-mid cut that might be done if you were getting sounds on them first. The Top (or "air") will come from the OH's and the lo end "bloom" will come from the Room. Then they'll do there proper job of just adding mid/lo-mid punch and making the toms jump out, with out doing rides or using gates. Also, check just the toms and OH's together. Pan the toms the same as they are in your OH picture. they should paint a well ballanced (though kick and snare light) picture of the kit as well. If the Kick or snare image are not centered or smeared, fix it. Check polarity on everything/against everything....fast. One last tip for now. Set your monitor faders thus. Kick @ 0db. Snare@ -5db. ALL other tracks @ -10db. Ballance your mics and levels to tape with this monitor balance will gice you the headroom you need to easily hear Kick & snare. It'll make you push the toms to tape a little. I mean all tracks, Bass and Gtrs' as well. Using this method means that you'll be ballancing your levels "to tape" as you want them to finnaly be heard, more than worrying about every little bit....tracks recorded with that mentallity in the driver seat rarely makes for great sounds. The real benefit of this is that, every time you set up for OD's. place the K@0,S@-5,All else @-10 and you'll have a near prefect, slamming ballance.
So get the Big picture first and you'll have the big picture fast!"
All I use (most times) is this OH technique, Kick and I add a snare mic to the top.
Hope it helps....
