You have a Neumann, is that right? Throw it up as mono overhead to pick up the cymbals, hats, kit. I would center it above the entire kit, 75-125cm distance. Make sure you are getting a good snare sound from it, in addition to the cymbals and the rest of the kit, because the OH will largely determine your snare sound (whether you like it or not). Try compressing the OH (that voicemaster has a comp in it, if memory serves) to smooth everything out. Use the 57 on the top skin of the snare, and if you are feeling adventurous, the 58 on the bottom (flip 180). The e604s will go on the toms, and you will have to use one as a kick mic (put it on a stand and stick it in the kick drum- near the beater gets more attack, away gets more body). The hats will be everywhere, don't worry about them. Compressing the kick a couple of deb isn't a bad idea if you can swing it. 1.STAY SIMPLE.
2. CHECK YOUR PHASE TO MAKE SURE THE BOTTOM END ISN'T GOING BYE-BYE. Good luck. Let us know how it turns out. Doc

i forget to metion i have a 1 Audio Technica PRO-25 fro the kick, yes the voicemaster pro has compresser. the real prob is my room, i like the track of the snare sound, but the 2 OH and the mic on HATs has the snare sound too, and is horrivel, is the room. what i need to do is to capture the cymbals with out the rest of the drums

FWIW: don't get too anal about perfect separation...We've been running a 4 source drum setup for a while now, and have had nothing but raves from clients....

One OH 28" above snare, centered....
One OH 28" above drummer's right shoulder, same plane as other OH...

One kick (319/SM7/SM57/whatever works) anywhere from 4" - 18" in front on kick beater skin

One Eminence 10" speaker mounted directly to front of kick, wired as a mic

Almost all of the 'classic' drum sounds were recorded in a similar fashion...jazz, rock, blues, country, whatever, this system is not as 'pretty' but it works extremely well...careful mic placement can address room issues ...

Experiment, have fun, and don't blame me if it doesn't work for you :c:

any one heres cut 500 below on EQ on OH mics ?

Few things to think about. First, think about the cardiod patern of each mic. Also think about the off axis response of each mic. So ... when placing your snare mic, consider where the off axis response of your mic is. You can get a little more control with your snare / hi hat that way.
Also, when considering off axis response ... the highs start to roll off as you move out of the patern. This will cloud or mask others sounds when blended together. Now take in the arrive times etc. Your over all drum sound is going to be how you blend all of those mics which are bleeding together. For your overhead, personally ... I think its a good thing that the snare gets into the overhead mics. Its a matter of taste. I use overheads to capture the whole kit and not really the cymbals. Your real snare tone is going to come from those overheads more than the snare mic. Think about it this way ... close mics give power and detail ... overheads and room mics are going to give you tone.
And yes, trim up the low end to clean up those mics. Also consider how the combined mics are building up low end. If you are compressing hard you will start to feel a little more low mid from the combination of the mics. Though you don't want to loose this power ... taking those low mids out of your overheads or room mics might hurt the tone .... or taking the low mids out of the snare mic might kill your power of the snare.
The key is your use of EQ and compression to find the right combo. Its an art form and takes a long time to get a handle on.
Once you get that down then you get into transient design, punch, and feel (aggressive or not).

Devin DeVore
TSC

I'm a bit confused as to what your actual PROBLEM is.

are you actually saying you are not getting ENOUGH cymbals a highhat? That's to say the least unusual.

if you're saying the spearation isn't good on the overheads, well...

first off, so what?
Remember it's ONE instrument.
You wouldn't put two mics on an acoustic guiutar and then complain because the lower mic picked up some higher strings. Right?
You'll ALWAYS get some leakage in drum mics and that's usually a GOOD thing.
In fact, i always tell people to start off by going for a one mic sound (or two for stereo) and then adding spot mics; rather than by starting with random spots and trying to blend in an overall or overhead.

but, you say you LOVE the snare sound.., so if the overheads are getting too much snare, why not just move them in CLOSER to the cymbals?
surely that will get more cymbal and less other stuff.

on the other hand, if your room just doesn't sound good for cymbals, that's another matter.
There isn't really a lot you can do about that other than to try to come in close enough to minimise the room effect. B
But a close dry drum sound isn't generally the most flattering (or BIG).

Let's go backward.
With ONLY the snare, BD and tom mics on... what do you get?
You've already said you LOVE these sounds... but how do the cymbals sound like that?
Okay? Okay but too soft or far away? How?
If you then need to add cymbal mics (really NEED to) try finding the spot that makes the cymbals sound good but ALSO adds something useful to the snare and toms. That way the leakage is HELPING you rather than destroying your sound.
OR, try to come in so close to the cymbals that that's all the mic sees.

But truth is, i've heard lots of great drum sounds where the cymbals weren't mic'ed directly at all. There was just enough leaking into all the other mics.
Don't worry about control.
Worry about the overall sound being good, not how you got to it.

One last thing:
You could start with those close tom, snare, BD mics and instead of actual cymbal mics, put a mic (or two) WAY back in the room, perhaps up near the ceiling, and see if THAT gives you some useful cymbal (and drum) sound to add.
That's really more my approach. i tend to put mics in front of the kit that serve as room and cymbal mics. i rarely use actual overheads anymore. They sort of take a picture of the overall kit and then i add the close snare and BD mics, and toms if needed.

hope this helps.. it's a BIT hard to decipher what you're aksing1

Gabriel,
I'm with wwittman on this. I almost never have a problem with too little cymbals and hat … it’s usually just the opposite. But I notice that you are using dynamics in this application. This may be part of the problem , especially using SM57 and 58, which have a huge “presence peak” bump in the 5k region.. while it is wonderful on vocals and close micing of other sources, this can make a lot of things sound real ugly, especially in a bad room as this is smack dab in the middle of the human range of audibility. I would suggest you try some small diaphragm condensers on the hat and cymbals, and as wwittman recommends, try moving the mics closer to the sources to eliminate the room sound. Another novel approach is to apply some treatments to the room to make it sound better (sarcasm intended, but with kindness).

I'm going with Doc on this one...get that Neumann up in the air above and slightly ahead ofthe kit and tip it back towards the cymbals a bit...this is a bright mic and you'll want to offset this just a bit by rotating(tipping) it a bit off axis...get those dynamics out of your cymbals...they work great for some things but in a drum mix they can suck the life out of the cymbals....let us know how it goes....

All This talk about what mike to use. We are trying to avoid a bad sounding room right? Put the mikes wherever you want and the room sounds better?
There are some great suggestions here and I wouldn't suggest ignoring them, Although I would have to agree more with the last suggestion of using the Neumann and playing with the position a bit. For cymbals you need the sound of a good condenser.
HOWEVER....Your room still sucks. So perhaps you could tell me a couple of things.
1.What are the dimensions of your room.
2.What type of construction..wood..drywall..what?
3.What steps have you taken for acoustic treatment.
Do you know your R.T.A.'s
Gimme some info and I might be able to help you prevent this from happening to you all the time. :D

"The worlds failures are those who did not know how close they were to success, when they gave up"
Thomas Edison.