Ducking the overheads

I have been trying a new way to mix live drums. I set up direct mics on kick drum, snare drum and hi hat and a stereo pair of condensers for the overhead capturing the whole kit including toms and cymbals. The kick and snare were gated so that the hi hat did not come through, then triggers were sent from the kick and the snare which ended up at the input for the side chain on a stereo compressor put across the stereo overheads. The result is that every time the kick or snare hits the trigger ducks the overhead slightly. This makes a nice tight sound which allows the kick and snare to cut through and pumps the room sound and cymbals in a good way. To see what would happen I then added distortion with tube amplification to the overheads. This created an even more unique sound that was ducking around the kick and snare then expanding out again in the spaces in between. I put an old echo chamber type of reverb in with the distorting amp (before the side chain compressor) and the sound really came together. It might be a bit much for the track and I may well end up backing it right down, but it really added an unusual edge to the sound. Just to see what would happen I sent the snare (mostly playing rims) track to another guitar amp with a heavy rocky sound on it and pushed up the send until I could hear the edgy sound coming in. To give a stereo space to it I sent one side to very short delay with no feedback panned opposite to the dry sound. It added something new to the sound, giving it a kind of Portishead vibe which I think I will keep in the mix.