You may find this video helpful - it is Steve giving a drum miking demonstration at an old Tape Op conference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvLuP4Kya8U

Hello !to someone who tried that and or Steve directly (?)I search on the forum and ailleurs for that and did not found an answer. Seeing picture of Steve drum microphone setup using a stereo set of mics or one mic in front of a drum kit in addition to a second pair of mics above the kit or behind the shoulders or something.I read a lot people talking about that and looking for what mircophone is used but I can't find why front + oh.I was wondering what is the purpose of each pairs to each other, how do the complete each other,are they placed equidistantly to the kick or snare or nothing, and how the two pairs are -usually- mixed together, is there a general habit or does it depend on the drummer/drumkit/music.Thanks !Cyril

There's also this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmP9z-xTRz0&t=128s

Thanks for the video endofanera ! All the considerations about polarity on close mixing are very interesting,Thanks for your answer Richard, I get the idea, something of the shells on front and something more from cymbals on the oh.I will try tomorrow and make some tests...Any advises are welcomed to gain some time ! And yes ! The mono mic on the rim of the kick I tried a couple of time it works very well ! An dynamic Omni, the MD21 worked good last time.You get a very balanced sound of pretty much all the kit in this spot that s surprising !

For me, the mono kit mic is a good way to push the shells without getting excess brightness from the cymbals. Good for chesty glue. I like a 77dx or a Coles looking over the kick at the snare, generally with some squishy compression on it (33609, TG1, LA2A). The fig. 8 pattern helps to isolate it from the ride and the rack tom/distance helps keep the hats from getting out of hand. Then I can use the overheads to spread the cymbals out and get a bit of air around things.I also like a dick mic. Generally go for a 635 just taped to the rim of the kick. Helps wth knock in the kick and snare. Ram it through something with a long-ish attack and medium release. If I do that, I don't do the mono kit mic described above. Phase tends to work better with one or the other, and sometimes that will be the deciding factor. One almost always favors the snare while the other will favor the kick. Which one is which changes with kits, drummers, and the other mics around the kit.

Plenty of useful ideas on here, but be warned: more mics means more phase issues.You're already thinking of that with the equidistant angle you were wondering about. It's good to try all of these ideas, some of them will be "the sound" on a project, but I'd venture to say that all of them at once will less often work towards an additive bonus.That said, if you have the track count and it seems cool, track it. Don't be scared to turn something off, or flip the phase, or delay something slightly when you're mixing.

losthighway wrote:Plenty of useful ideas on here, but be warned: more mics means more phase issues.You're already thinking of that with the equidistant angle you were wondering about. It's good to try all of these ideas, some of them will be "the sound" on a project, but I'd venture to say that all of them at once will less often work towards an additive bonus.That said, if you have the track count and it seems cool, track it. Don't be scared to turn something off, or flip the phase, or delay something slightly when you're mixing.steve wrote:n.c. wrote:the one thing i'd love to hear more about is how to check for phase with that many mics, and specifically between the 3 sets of ambient mics.When mics get a few feet from each other and the thing you're recording, they will have an essentially random phase relationship with the other mics. Polarity is not the same as phase, but also I don't subscribe to the the notion that absolute polarity is important.What I do is build the basic balance of the drum kit, with the close mics all up and working well on a per-drum basis, then test to see if flipping the polarity of one or the other pairs of tom mics makes things sound generally better or worse. I'm usually listening for depth of resonance in the bass, harshness or squall in the cymbal bleed, attenuation of overall impression of clarity, but I can't get too specific. Whichever orientation sounds best, I leave it that way.Next I'll pull up the stereo mic in front of the drum kit and do the same thing with the polarity switches on those channels, switching them simultaneously and always maintaining a consistent polarity between the two. Whichever way sounds best, I leave it that way.Then I'll add the overhead mics and do the same thing. First get a balance, then flip the polarity and listen, leaving it whichever way sounds best.With the room mics I'll try scrolling the delay line until it sounds good, then I'll quickly flip one or the other or both mics' polarity and see if one way sounds better than another. I'll leave it whichever way sounds best.Before I had a console with polarity switches on each channel, I built some minus-theta (okay nerds, minus-phi) cables and marked them, then I used those cables on the bottom mics of whatever drum I was recording. It was a pain to swap them out so I generally just left them and it wasn't really a problem. Flipping the polarity is a quick test now, and one way or the other usually sounds better, so I indulge in it.

n.c. wrote:steve wrote:n.c. wrote:the one thing i'd love to hear more about is how to check for phase with that many mics, and specifically between the 3 sets of ambient mics.When mics get a few feet from each other and the thing you're recording, they will have an essentially random phase relationship with the other mics. Polarity is not the same as phase, but also I don't subscribe to the the notion that absolute polarity is important.What I do is build the basic balance of the drum kit, with the close mics all up and working well on a per-drum basis, then test to see if flipping the polarity of one or the other pairs of tom mics makes things sound generally better or worse. I'm usually listening for depth of resonance in the bass, harshness or squall in the cymbal bleed, attenuation of overall impression of clarity, but I can't get too specific. Whichever orientation sounds best, I leave it that way.Next I'll pull up the stereo mic in front of the drum kit and do the same thing with the polarity switches on those channels, switching them simultaneously and always maintaining a consistent polarity between the two. Whichever way sounds best, I leave it that way.Then I'll add the overhead mics and do the same thing. First get a balance, then flip the polarity and listen, leaving it whichever way sounds best.With the room mics I'll try scrolling the delay line until it sounds good, then I'll quickly flip one or the other or both mics' polarity and see if one way sounds better than another. I'll leave it whichever way sounds best.Before I had a console with polarity switches on each channel, I built some minus-theta (okay nerds, minus-phi) cables and marked them, then I used those cables on the bottom mics of whatever drum I was recording. It was a pain to swap them out so I generally just left them and it wasn't really a problem. Flipping the polarity is a quick test now, and one way or the other usually sounds better, so I indulge in it.Thank you very much, this procedure description helps a lot !