Malcolm Boyce wrote:Something that's pretty foreign to me is hearing about spot mics on things like drums in a kit being around a foot away. When did you first see that kind of thing happening Andrew? I used to consider myself pretty liberal with distance from drums until I started hearing what you guys are doing... "Close" mics on drums when I was starting out were about an inch off the head so being a few inches or so away was pretty "distant" by those standards.
I had the luxury of not knowing anything about audio before working with Andrew. So whatever Andrew said was taken as gospel, more or less. Which I think really helped me get on the fast track. I didn't go on audio sites on the web (except for this one, which was mostly just Andrew and I talking, with a bit of Malcolm in there for context,) so I was able to avoid a lot of misinformation. At the same time, I wasn't exposed to a lot of alternative methods that may also be valid. I feel it was a small price to pay based on the results we were getting.
Aside from the results, I liked that it kind of forced me to treat the drum kit as a whole instrument. I did one recording that focused on really close mic'ing each drum (and even some cymbals) and to this day it remains the worst drum recording I have done. The player wasn't great, but was good enough to make my kit sound better than the recording would have you believe. Albeit there are many variables that could have come in to play, I avoid taking that risk again since I really didn't like the results. I also wasn't the producer and the producer was looking for "that" sound, and well... He was happy with the sounds at the time, so who was I to argue?
When the close mics are fairly distant, you really have to pay extra attention on placement, more than usual even. In some cases the close mics may not even sound great on their own but with the combination on different mics everything together sounds amazing.
I really wish I had more time with the old Fluid room so I could have experimented with other engineers like Malcolm, Tim Davidson and Sean Boyer. Just to see what different engineers would do with drum kits in that room, with the same gear, given different musical circumstances and to observe their results in comparison.