That Recorderman Technique
I ran across this thread on reddit and spun out this rant here:
Most specifically this is my method: The first mice is placed directly over the snare not too far away, enough distance to actually get a decent balance of the kit but not so far you get lots of room (really just where it sounds good). The second mic is placed so both mics (same type/preamp) are exactly the same distance from both where the stick hits the snare and the beater hits the kick and pointed toward the same spot. The whole "use a string from beater to mic to snare top" is great. This invariably will place the second mic where the drummer will nudge it out of place with their flailing body parts. Apply shock therapy. Then hard pan and adjust your gains so the snare sounds like it's in the center. The low freqencies of the kick drum might drift off in one direction due to the room sound being more obvious to the second "over the shoulder" mic's pickup direction. Either embrace it, move your drums, or use a different technique :P Anyway, THEN you pan them inward and compress to taste. I find the hard pan to be unnatural despite being balanced. The kick mic was added to get bass whump without rumble and boom from the overheads. For a more natural sound high shelf away some rumble and fade in kick to taste. Phase rotator is worth toying with here. The snare mic was added to add crack and snap to the mix. Check phase, fade in for thwap. Since this is no longer the basis of your drum sound it open you up to try different mic techniques. George Massenburg would put a mic on the snare drum's shell. They used a funky crystal mic on Are You Experienced or something. Pick the right mics and you'll need very little else in a good room with well tuned drums and a great percussionist. The one question remaining then is when you compress as a stereo group do you add the kick and snare to that buss or have them added afterward? Or even compress the overheads, send all 4 channels to a second stereo buss and then compress that again? The answer to that is entirely room sound and arrangement dependent.
