XY/NOS miking

[Gizmo1977]

Using two small condenser microphones (XY or NOS) for a small drum/percussion kit. Besides a kick mic, would miking the snare give any relevant improvement? More problems? Or would you rather separate the condensers one on each side in case the snare was miked?

Thanks in advance!

[Guest]

For a minimal setup I would use the condensers as overhead mics and individually mic the kick and snare.

[Matt Houghton]

There are so many options, and really it all depends on the context: what result you want to achieve and the degree of control you require at mixdown to make the drums work with a given track.

Generally, I tend to prefer building the main image of an acoustic kit from overheads and/or room mics, and then having close mics to give me more options for reinforcement, triggering and/or reverb at mixdown. And I'll always have at least a kick and a snare mic... not least because with those as a trigger source I can reinforce the OH/room mics pretty much however I want. But it's perfectly possibly to get great results without such shenanigans...

There are some great examples in this article on minimal drum miking techniques.

[MarkOne]

I’m always amazed by what was achieved “back in the day” when classic albums were made with 16, 8 and even 4 track recorders, and by todays standards quite modest consoles.

Big rock albums from the early 70s might well only have had 3 or 4 mics on the kit.