[DaneK]

Here's how I go about miking drums and making sure they're all in phase.

1. If you have a decent sized room I would first walk around with the floor tom hitting to see where it sounds best in the room the set the kit up around it

2. Place mics in their general positions

3. Get some rough (yet conservative) preamp levels - the drummer usually plays harder during the song than in mic check - then mute all preamps

4. Un-mute the overheads and get the drummer to hit the snare (make sure they OHs are panned stereo at this point)

5. Then collapse the OHs to mono again and flip one in and out of phase. If they are in phase and at the same volume they should disappear when one is flipped out of phase (if they disappear when they are in phase but not out of phase then leave them like that though)

6. Now continue to work in mono starting with the kick. Leave the OHs un-muted and now un-mute the kick mics and continue to flop in and out of phase while slowly moving the mics around the kick. Listen for the low end of the kick to disappear, that will usually mean its out of phase and then simply flip the phase to keep it in phase

7. Continue with the rest of the drums this way leaving all the previously phase checked mics un-muted until the rest of the kit is done.

8. Pan the kit back into stereo and away you go