http://soundcloud.com/geoffhodsman/29guitarsquiet

Avant Mondo in the kick...
Avant ADM on the snare...
An SM 57 sitting in between both rack toms to get them both.
Avant ATOM on the floor tom.
AT2020s in 'ORTF' arrangement directly overhead crash cymbals, six feet from the ground.

I went with just one mic for both rack toms because I am anticipating recording someone who uses four of them. With what I have the only option would be to have a mic for each pair... so I had to get a feel for that. After recording I cut off all the parts without tom use, then I make a second tom track and divide what's left amongst the two, according to which tom was being hit.

Sounds good dood. I still fucking love those "guitars".

Running some verb on the snare/kit?

So you are actually going in and editing the shared tom mic to cut one tom out of each half of the cloned trax? Crzy.

Yes. It's not that much labour on a 1 1/2 minute grind track, but I imagine a whole album of this would be icky. I usually edit out all the parts where toms aren't being hit anyway, so it's not that much work...

Wow, really? Why not use a gate/expander? I mean for the regular one mic per tom shizz.

I don't think I knew how to use a gate yet when I started mixing drums, and I guess I'm just used to it now. Plus, there is just no damned chance a freak cymbal smash could break through a gate/expander when it just isn't there on the track...

Yeah, i dig that. For stuff that was final/release grade metal stuff, i would do the same probably, just to keep things as tidy as possible. But for most everything else, i just spend a couple minutes tuning three Floorfishes in to my individual toms. I also find that using the gate/expanders tends to reign me in a tad from going too crazy with OTT compression and EQ on the things. Because if you get to crazy with that stuff, it becomes really difficult to gate anything at all. Or when it does gate, it wigs out the sound of the rest of the kit. And, well, my undying love of heavy compression and additive EQ definitely needs that reigning in...

Lately i have been getting pretty minimalist with my drum treatments though, basically just a bunch of small limiters, and really simple shelving sorts of EQ. The next stage is probably going to be leaving the close mics wide open all the time. Actually, with the borrowed condensers, and the type of stuff i have been playing, i *almost* can get away with no close mics at all. I actually tried it the last time, and i was almost okay with it. I do like a bit more "boom" than my toms naturally provide though, so as long as i have this kit i will probably be tied to some form of close mic.

Yus, I am really starting to like doing super simple drum recordings. The black metal project me and my friend restarted, I'm planning on just Glyn Johnsing that shit. And I'll put a 'room mic' somewhere in the house's ventilation, and bammo.

http://www.myspace.com/daidricon

The newest one there, 'Desolation', was just a kick mic and a single condenser overhead. Then I put a low pass on it to make it sound much duller.

That is gloriously shitty sounding.

I really enjoy the texture of the geetars on that too. They are gunky but still all kinds of sharp edges.

Yeah the guitars have the tone knob down a little but the treble on the amp is pretty cranked. Sounds horrible. It's so fun making things sound bad.