I go either way. *I* prefer whole kit micing to close micing if I can get away with it- less work later on for mixing and you get the sound the drummer and his kit. I usually don't mic the hats in that case.
I've learned, though, that it takes a *really* good and experienced drummer to know what they want. Inexperienced drummers might tell you "yeah, I love the sound of this kit and I want you to capture it exactly the way it sounds in the room" but when they hear it back in the rough mix it doesn't sound the way it does when they are practicing alone. Usually all I have to do is smash the crap out of a submix and they go "Yeah, that's what it sounds like! Why didn't you just record it that way? I don't think you know what you're doing!"
Idiots. Oh, well. I guess that's why I'm behind the board and not them.
Then I wish I had close mic'ed everything- and that's when you need the hats. The less experienced the drummer the more I need to mic. It still doesn't work as well as I'd like, but it saved me *some* headaches down the road if I have more control. And the hats are usually things I want to turn DOWN not up since less experienced drummers tend to hit them WAY harder then they need to.
I *love* sessions with good drummers. God, I love good drummers. You know the ones who know how their kit sounds and play the whole thing well? Who balance their own volumes and play on time within their limits? Ones who know what they are doing and trust you to know what you are doing.
The last album I was working on before the band exploded had a super flashy young drummer. Good. Creative. Not good enough for himself, though. It was a low budget project and we plowed through the base tracks in 3 days. Of that we spent about 4 or 5 hours getting drum sounds and the drummer was really happy with what he was hearing.
3 months later he was saying things like "I don't like the sound of the toms" and "the kick needs to be fuller." Uh... dood... we haven't even done any mixing, we're working on the vocals and everything else is DONE. We're not recutting drums. Then he asked to borrow my mBox and the drive with the sessions on it because he wanted to do some drum editting. Didn't like some of the hi hat and symbol work on a song or two...
IDIOT!! The time to edit your ambitious drum tracks was before we started cutting the rest of the band. The jerk was blaming ME for his sloppy takes- BEFORE we even got to any serious mixing. I tried to explain that to the band and even offered to do a quick rough mix to prove to them that the raw tracks had everything they needed.
But no. The unedited, un-mixed drum tracks didn't sound like Incubus so I didn't know what I was doing.
The band broke up 2 months later.
Anyway- that was a situation where, in retrospect, I might have been able to save the session by a) reading the drummer's mind, b) not over-estimating the knowledge level of the band, c) micing every damn drum, and d) spending more time on the rough mixes even though the band didn't want to pay for them.
Sorry. Long story to get to the point that something like deciding how the kit is miced- including whether or not to mic the hats- can actually have a huge impact on how the session goes- and not just in how the thing sounds.
So now, since I have plenty of tracks, I mic it without fail. I hardly *ever* use it, but I do mic it. Even when I know I don't need it. Especially if its a low budget project with no producer and an experienced band... its not about me, my knowledge, or even the sound: its about the drummer feeling confident that his genius is being properly captured.
All that just about micing the damn hats? Yup. I've run into so many young musicians now who have read just enough about the recording process to be really f*cking annoying. They ask things like "We're using Pro Tools, right? Only Pro Tools is good enough for us" and "Don't we need to mic the bottom of each tom, too?" and "we want all the levels to be really HIGH so we can have a LOUD album."
OK. Rant over...
-Chris
