Dry style

[WhosyourMax]

Hey, I've been wanting to experiment with micing a bass drum and then using one mic with the rest of the set. I here there are different ways of micing a whole kit, one being right over the drums and another being furthur away, i would think that if you were going for a dryer Mitch Mitchell and the Experience sound you wouldnt want the mic overheaad as it is so close you might loose the dryer sound.

[KeyserSoze]

I just started messing around with 2 and 3 mic setups this week. Here's the little I've found so far.

A) My Fender dynamics that came with my Passport PA sound better as overheads that SM-57's do. Go figure.

B) Further away is better for your non-bass drum mic. If you have it 6 inches over the cymbals the dynamics of the kit get screwed up and it sounds like it's close mic'ed. No room sound at all.

C) A single overhead would be great if there's a high ceiling (at least 10') and you could get the mic way up there. The drums project up and down more than they do out. Cymbals project in all directions and can easily drown out the toms if the toms aren't close mic'ed. The opposite solution might be a mic near the floor out in the room. It will catch the resonant side of the tom projection (which sounds a lot different than the batter side).

You'll probably happiest with a mic somewhere between 6 and 18 feet from the kit, depending on the size and sound of the room. What I do to experiment is set up the mics, hit the red circle button and before I play, say into a mic what the setup is (mic X is 5 feet away and 6 feet high). That way you can skip naming all of the tracks in your software and focus on the sound. Then once you've tried a few different mic placements, you can A/B them to see what sounded best. That's my novice way of doing it. I just made my first glitch/pop free recording last night though. I still have a ton to learn.

[WhosyourMax]

Thanks for the advice.

[KeyserSoze]

You're welcome. Let us know how it turns out.