The bass player in Lake 32, Jeff Laird, is also our resident audio/recording engineer. As we finish writing our first set of songs, the band is looking to get some quality recordings we can post on our web site and on MySpace, but we don't want to drop a couple of grand to go to a recording studio for a few days.

Obviously, recording drums is not an activity for the faint of heart. Where other instruments can plug directly into the board, the drums need to be miced and EQed acoustically which can make for a long and frustrating process. And an expensive one if you close-mic each drum on the kit. I play a six-piece Gretsch kit, so that's a minimum of nine microphones when you throw in the two overheads and a condenser for the hi-hat.

Jeff has proposed a new micing method I'm interested in trying. It's called the Glyn Johns method and it only requires four microphones: One for the kick, one for the snare and two overheads. As opposed to focusing on the quantity of microphones, it focuses on the quality of the gear and the exact placement of the mics around the kit to get a really quality recording.

Jeff sent me an article that lays this out in detail, so I won't bother to reproduce it here and encourage you to check it out for yourself.

We're actually going to set this up in my home rehearsal area next weekend and do some recording the following week. I'll be sure to follow-up on this with the results and post some drum tracks so you can hear the outcome for yourselves.

Has anyone else used this method before successfully? Any tips or tricks you can offer Jeff and I as we work through this in the coming weeks?