ello everybody,

I'm wondering what techniques people are using for overheads.
personally i always seem to come back to an XY pair just above the drummers head. but then again XY does lose spaciousness when your not sitting at the sweet spot cos of the amplitude stereo (as opposed to time difference stereo (AB)) but i personally can't get AB to work for me. but maybe i'm doing something wrong .... please share your findings.

thanx

Thomas
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Old 9th March 2004 	  #2
cdog
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You should experiment until you get what you want to hear.

I like a close spaced pair of small condensers, only 8-10" apart, a couple feet above the drummers head, angled slightly away from each other, and also towards the cymbals.

Placement depends on the room sound and the ratio of cymbals to toms/snare that you want. Some people use the overheads for the snare sound, others point em right at the cymbals and roll them off below 400hz in the mix. Preference mostly you have to fuukk around to get the sound you want for each room, drummer, kit, etc....

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Old 9th March 2004 	  #3
SureShotStudio
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he cdog,

thanx for your reply, please don't get me wrong , i can get a decent sound when using AB but it's never great. as opposed to XY. i usually use the overheads for the main sound and "fill it in" with some close micing. the amount of "filling in" depends on what style i'm going for.

greetings

thomas
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Old 9th March 2004 	  #4
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If you find yourself liking just the sound of the overheads, trying adding a mono room mic, large diaghram condernser, a few feet back and off the floor to capture the sound of the whole kit... add a little compression 1 mic goes a long way.... (don't tell Frank Filipetti)



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Old 9th March 2004 	  #5
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what cdog said... also,

I'm very fond of the modified spaced pair aka recorderman technique... one mike directly over the snare pointing down, at bout 2 sticks+ height, and another mike over the drummers right shoulder, pointing at the snare. Both mics spaced equidistantly from the snare center and (if possible) the kick impact center. What I like about this is the image, L/R without being too wide or too narrow.
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Old 9th March 2004 	  #6
joeq
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Originally posted by heinz
what cdog said... also,

I'm very fond of the modified spaced pair aka recorderman technique... one mike directly over the snare pointing down, at bout 2 sticks+ height, and another mike over the drummers right shoulder, pointing at the snare. Both mics spaced equidistantly from the snare center and (if possible) the kick impact center. What I like about this is the image, L/R without being too wide or too narrow.
a variation on this technique that I like is to have one mic over the rack tom pointed at the snare and the other mic over the floor tom but also pointed a the snare. Carefully measure the distance to the snare for each mic and make it equal. If you play around with it you can also get the mics to be equal in their distance above their respective toms. If you have two rack toms you can set the mic above the space inbetween them.

this method gives you a little more immediacy from toms and still keeps the snare in the center of the stereo image.


(be aware also that two drumsticks in height is NOT enough for some drummers- you may need to move them a little higher than that to keep them out of harm's way