It would depend on the drum set and the room and the style of music you want to capture. There is no 'set' way of doing this with a limited number of mics, and not knowing what the capture medium is makes it hard to form an answer.

Try asking again with more details.

I have a Profire 2626 as my recording interface. I am using Cubase 5. The drum set is a really nice Pearl 4-piece rock kit. I also would wonder what you would recommend for a smaller kit and a larger kit, though. The room is a small room that is actually pretty dead. I am probably going to be recording mostly rock bands but I play in straight ahead bop combos too so I would wonder what you would do for that.

I'd use the dynamics for close miking and the condensers as OH/room mics. That's about as close as you can get to a "generic setup".

The only thing wrong with your particular setup is that you don't have duplicates of either of the condensers so using them as OH/room mics is going to be tough. If I were you, I would look into getting a duplicate of the ATM33a since it looks like the bg 4.0 is no longer being manufactured.

SM57 on the snare I think that's a given...
You could go to Shure's website...they have all sorts of drum mic techniques
tech papers with their products that you could try with the mics you have.

Here's some of Shure's recommendations from their Drum Kit microphone selection guide: And I'm not a Shure dealer or anything they just have a lot of info on mics and a nice technical library!

Maybe that will help....try it with what you have and switch them around until you get the best sound you can.....and have fun with it! You need more 57's! LOL

Kick Drum
Beta 52A
Beta 91
Beta 57A
SM57
PG52

Snare Drum
Beta 57A*
Beta 56A*
SM57*
PG56
PG57*

Rack/Floor Toms
Beta 98 D/S
Beta 57A*
Beta 56A*
SM57*
PG56
PG57*

Cymbals
KSM141
KSM137
KSM44
KSM32
SM137
SM94
SM81
SM27
PG81

I think your first job is to experiment with the two condensers. Which one of them in which position would give the best overall sound of the kit. Try each directly over the kick, out front about 2-3 feet at cymbal level, etc. Then try them is the various asymmetric pair positions: recorderman and Glyns Johns. These both have one over directly over the snare pointed down and one over the floor tom pointed "across" the kit.

I'd then add what ever mics you have left as close mics. Snare top, kick, snare bottom (phase reversed), high hat. Choices of placement depend on the song and the drummer. The 57 for snare top is typical. Snare bottom and high hat can use a condenser if you went with a single overhead at the first stage.

Gentlemen, I dont think there is a condenser in that list.

Davedog wrote: Gentlemen, I dont think there is a condenser in that list.

Why do you say that?

This page denotes the ATM33a as a condenser:
http://www.zzounds.com/item--AUTATM33A

and the PDF downloaded from the Shure website denotes the BG 4.0 as a 'condenser instrument mic'.

Just out of curiosity though , why wouldn't you consider those two mics to be condensers?

Yup, those two. Put em in a humid room you'll get condensation in no time.

BobRogers wrote: Yup, those two. Put em in a humid room you'll get condensation in no time.

:)

My bad. Too much shopping....errr.....driving to the shopping....

I did learn something this year. You can clear the aisles pretty quickly with the Jason mask and a chainsaw..........

So to answer the question....the SM57 goes on the snare...The Sm58 goes in the kick drum and the ATM33 goes over the kit. The other two you sorta find a spot that sounds good while the drums are being played and put a mic there.

Davedog wrote: So to answer the question....the SM57 goes on the snare...The Sm58 goes in the kick drum and the ATM33 goes over the kit. The other two you sorta find a spot that sounds good while the drums are being played and put a mic there.

My thoughts exactly. Although I would recommend getting a copy of the ATM33a so you start with a true stereo pair for the Overheads. Not that it matters that much, but when it comes time to mix the tracks together you will find it difficult to get a good stereo spread and good tone at the same time. You'll have to copy paste the single OH mic track and pan them, which won't result in as much stereo spread as you would hope for. To get a good stereo spread out of that situation you'd need to either EQ both to death in different ways, or delay one of them, both of which result in a bunch of phase cancellation and most likely the whole kit would sound weaker. Unless you leave the OH track alone and leave it single and panned center, then you get no stereo spread though. In the end it's all up to you, a good engineer can take a bad situation and turn it into a good one.

I've found that most of the artificial stereo spread techniques cause more harm than good. If you choose the single overhead, I'd leave the drums basically mono. Beautiful mono. Worked for just about every song recorded until the mid sixties.

Then they started trying to pan things hard left/right and it sounds so ridiculous.

yep to what Bob and Code said

but to add ,
depending on the musical parts
a spot mic on a hihat or low tom panned across can give the impression of a stereo kit
and highlight the verse chorus transition

Dave said
" ...you sorta find a spot that sounds good while the drums are being played and put a mic there. "

no matter what you are recording
there is no harm in having a walk about and doing just that