DanRoy wrote: people have mentioned that this is a good micing technique, but I can't find the thread it's in.

can anybody help?

Here you go, take your pick:

https://recording.o…

I just read this and it looks like a great idea.

I wonder if anyone has any comment of the results using different mics for the left and right mics, such as maybe a cardiod for the left (snare side) mic and an omni for the right mic, etc..? Or has anyone tried this with omnis (I guess 603s are similar enough to omnis) for the OH's?

It's a huge thread, I know, but this particular question wasn't really covered.

Now I'm going to go home and try this for myself.

It would be cool if one of our mods made that recorderman thread a sticky ...
it's like a must read for many of us

Tried it with omnis last night and it sounded surprisingly good.

Never good get the FT-side mic equidistant from both the snare and the kick... As close as I could get it and I got some attenuation of the snare in the FT-side mic causing the snare to try and wander to the right side of the image (snare-side OH panned hard right).

It occured to me that this technique is really highly variable. The mic over the top of the snare drum is not that variable, just in height and axis. But once that's set, then there's a pretty wide variety of places that the other mic can be and still be equidistant from both the snare and the kick. If it's behind the drummer, then the drummer's body will attenuate much of the hi-hat side sound from making it into that mic and cause strange imaging. You can really fool with the kit balance by moving this mic.

Someone in the thread posted about a "jig" using PVC "T" and string. Well it's easier than that. Take a little bit of duct tape and tape the end of a piece of string to the center of the snare drum head. Measure off about 32" from the taped-down end and put a bit of tape on the string at that point to make a "marker". Position your over-snare mic at the marker directly above the snare drum, and while holding this marker in place on the OH mic, stretch the string to the center (beater mark) on the kick drum head and tape the other end of the string down there. Now if you keep a little tension on the string, you can move the marker in an elliptical arc that represents the whole range of positions (at the marker) for the other mic. Pick one and go. Pick another and make another test recording. Repeat until it sounds right.

Similarly, you could also move the SD-side mic along this arc (in either direction). There's no more magic in the directly-over-the-snare position for this mic than there is magic in the position of the other mic. My guess is RecorderMan has found a magic position for the FT-side mic that works well with the directly-over-snare position of the SD-side mic, but if you desire a wider stereo image then you can move both mics further from "center", if you want the kit to pan more towards one side or the other then you can change the relative locations of the mics, etc.

Anyway, now that I've got the kit set up I'm going to try a variety of different positions for these mics and see if I can come up with the "magic spot". When I do I'll measure the height (off the floor) of the FT-side mic which, knowing it's otherwise equidistant from the snare and kick beater, will absolutely locate this mic forevermore.

One thing I did note is that this is a comparatively crisp, toppy & airy drum sound compared with my other methods (another equidistant SD/Kick method but with SD-side mic low to the ground out in front of the hi hat and FT-side mic low to the ground behind the kit; or Jecklin Disk in front of the kit just above the kick drum rim about 1' away from the kit). The snare drum sounded particularly good with the RM technique, but the cymbals were a bit more "washy", that is, the sound pumped as they moved after hitting them, particularly (obviously) the crash cymbal closest to the over-snare mic. I think this technique will work really well for pop recordings.