mixing drums

dobro

dobro

Well-known member
Gate on the toms. What else do you put a gate on? I love how bleed works, but not on toms. But what else?
 
I actually manually gate my toms. I don't trust automatic/plug-in gates. I'll go in, cut out any bleed on the audio track that isn't tom hits, and then put in fades manually however it sounds best.

Kicks and snares are too frequent; it'd take too long to manually gate those, so I put an actual gate on kicks and snares usually. I'm typically mixing rock/metal, so I'll either gate those two tracks and compress them a lot, or I'll take samples of their kit before I actually record, and then when I'm mixing, I'll leave the normal snare and kick alone (compression wise), and I'll layer in a sampled kick/snare right behind their natural kick/snare that I can compress and EQ the crap out of, but not have to worry about affecting the bleed.
 
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MrWrenchey said:
I actually manually gate my toms. I don't trust automatic/plug-in gates. I'll go in, cut out any bleed on the audio track that isn't tom hits, and then put in fades manually however it sounds best.
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Okay, that's work. I'm not complaining, mind.
 
I too manually gate my toms. Its really not too much work if you just eyeball the spots with toms and make a broad cut in the track and then narrow and do the fades. 10 minutes tops. I agree that kick and snare are too frequent but I feel that gates have a negative impact on these sounds. I usually use an enveloper to bring out some attack and occasionally cut a bit of sustain. There is spill on these mics obviously but honestly it sounds pretty natural in the mix.
 
Yeah, okay, I tried the manual gate thing. I like it - it allows me to raise the level on the toms, which is great. Thanks Mr W and JG.
 
Amazing what you can pick up around here... not being a drummer, or using real drums, the incredibly long ring of toms in software versions always bugged me, so I tend to edit the envelope to take a lot of it out - and while that might seem easier, the edit options don't often run to gating. Never actually thought of doing either a manual automation, or putting an auto gate on them.

Must try. Cheers guys...
 
I too edit the tom tracks, unless the drummer is really consistent, then I will be lazy and use gates.

I started recording for a living before computers, so I got good at gates because that was my only recourse.
 
I've been mixing for 15 years and never used a gate until this year to get rid of some hiss on a vocal track added by a distortion plugin. I was really impressed how well it worked. Right tool for the job etc.
 
jimmys69 said:
I am either lucky or stupid.

Never have found a need to use a gate on any drums ever...
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You either don't mix a genre where it is necessary to add 15db of high shelf, 9db of low shelf and then compress the crap out of it. If you did, you would be gating the crap out of everything.

When I do more organic styles of music, there is no need to gate as long as the drummer has his dynamics together.
 
Farview said:
You either don't mix a genre where it is necessary to add 15db of high shelf, 9db of low shelf and then compress the crap out of it. If you did, you would be gating the crap out of everything.

When I do more organic styles of music, there is no need to gate as long as the drummer has his dynamics together.
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I really hope that I never have the need to do that.

15db boost of anything seems crazy! I'll start tomorrow. :)
 
Armistice said:
...the incredibly long ring of toms in software versions always bugged me, so I tend to edit the envelope to take a lot of it out...
Click to expand...

Same here.
When I set up a software kit with my drums sample choices, at that point I'll adjust the envelope tails of the toms, and often cymbals too.
That way, once I lay out the drum track, I don't need to go back and edit/gate/etc.
 
MrWrenchey said:
I actually manually gate my toms. I don't trust automatic/plug-in gates. I'll go in, cut out any bleed on the audio track that isn't tom hits, and then put in fades manually however it sounds best.

Kicks and snares are too frequent; it'd take too long to manually gate those, so I put an actual gate on kicks and snares usually. I'm typically mixing rock/metal, so I'll either gate those two tracks and compress them a lot, or I'll take samples of their kit before I actually record, and then when I'm mixing, I'll leave the normal snare and kick alone (compression wise), and I'll layer in a sampled kick/snare right behind their natural kick/snare that I can compress and EQ the crap out of, but not have to worry about affecting the bleed.
Click to expand...

Just so I make sure I understand you, because I've never done anything to reduce or eliminate non-tom sounds in my tom tracks, and I just recorded something where it should be easy to try it out on...

Say you have a minute-long song. The only times the 16" tom is hit are between the :33 and :36 mark. Does that mean you delete ALL sounds from the 16" tom track except what's between :33 and :36?
 
NotThatBright said:
Say you have a minute-long song. The only times the 16" tom is hit are between the :33 and :36 mark. Does that mean you delete ALL sounds from the 16" tom track except what's between :33 and :36?
Click to expand...

That's what they mean. Clip everything and fade the tom ring out and you're done.

I never do it. I'll gate my toms sometimes, but I'm not manually editing that shit.

Gates are simple to use. You can make them shut gently so it sounds natural.
 
The only problem with gates is when you really, really need them, they don't work. Like the guys who have their cymbals an inch off the top of the toms, then proceed to ride the crash the entire song except when he is light tapping the oms in the fills...

I never have to gate the toms when I play, but my kit setup and my playing style makes that possible. I play the drums heavier than the cymbals and there is enough space between the cymbals and the drums to give enough isolation. But even with that, if I need really wet sounding toms, the EQ is too extreme which makes the bleed sound odd.
 
Greg_L said:
That's what they mean. Clip everything and fade the tom ring out and you're done.

I never do it. I'll gate my toms sometimes, but I'm not manually editing that shit.

Gates are simple to use. You can make them shut gently so it sounds natural.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I never fucked with tracks on my computer (just my mixer), so I've never used a gate. This thing sucks.

I played something before where there are only a couple spots where toms are hit... I'm cleaning out the unused portions of the tom tracks to see what kind of difference it makes in a final song.
 
The difference I found is that it enabled me to turn up the toms more easily if I wanted, cuz there wasn't a bunch of other stuff coming up as well.
 
I only had to use a gate once, and that was with manual editing.

Recorded my bass drum with an At4047, got tons of cymbal bleed, no way to get rid of it, definitely noticeable on the overall mix and I couldn't mix the bass drum without it affecting the cymbals in an obvious way. So I had to cut it out for every god damn bass drum note. Which is a lot.
 
dobro said:
The difference I found is that it enabled me to turn up the toms more easily if I wanted, cuz there wasn't a bunch of other stuff coming up as well.
Click to expand...

Just got a mix done. I found myself turning up the overheads more... I must have had a lot of cymbals bleeding into the toms.
 
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