Compression and Gates FOR DUMMIES. Drummer out of his depth!!

Saxter

New member
At school I was into History not maths. Numbers and formulas weren't floating any of my boats and still don't. So anyway move countries leave my drums, learn that I can play guitar and sing a bit. Ok cool. Write some songs, buy a Fostex 4 track (outgrow the four track) and buy me a 'nice en perty' Yamaha AW16G - digital workstation. Plan to take a week or so to learn how to use it, and here we are some 10 months later and I reackon I've got 15% of it sussed.

The AW has some fine drum loops but for a drummer in a guitarists disguise they don't cut it. So I'm borrowing a kit from a friend of mine in a week to lay down four tracks or so and have hired a mic for each of the AWs simultaneous inputs - 2 OHs, Rack Tom, Floor Tom, Snare, Kick, HHs and room. I then plan to mix these down to 3 tracks. The AW has 16. So anyway the hirer guy talks to me matter of factly about gating and limiting and of course I go..."oh yeah, sure..."

So get home and open up my Thesauras-like manual for the AW check out gates, ducking, compressing, companding etc and let out a wail a wolf would be proud of. Shit this is maths!!!! Graphs and equations...eeecckkkk.

Can anyone let me know in the most laymens of laymens terms what I should be doing re: gating the drums. What have you done in the past and just what is the concept.

I'm sorry that I have to finish up here...the nurse is calling me, I have got my next patient all ready to go, what with me being a brain surgeon and all.

Cheers

Sax
PS any AW16G 'ers out there?
 
LONG WINDED!

all you need to do is ask the question....life background not required....different things work for different people....the best way to do your compression and gating is trial and error...have another drummer get on the kit while you toggle....same method as if you were playing a show and the soundman usually wants you to hit your kit in this order.....kick, snare, toms cymbals, whole kit. take each one piece by piece and pace yourself. and for future reference..just ask the question and give us a list of the equipment pertaining to what your working on
 
I've never gated my snare, or anything else for that matter, when recording my kit.

Gating is supposed to stop other drums sounds bleeding into that mic. But if you gate your snare for example, you're going to remove all those little ghost notes, subtle flams etc. As for gating the kick & toms, well who cares about a little bleeding. I guess I'm not that much of a purist.

Another option worth exploring is using triggering software such as Drumagog. This will replace your hits with its own samples. You control the threshold level so only hits of a certain volume get replaced.

Of more concern to you during recording will be to position the mics to eliminate phase cancellation
 
Also if you have drumagog you can get a pretty good results with an ordinary sounding compressor/gate. I have a really cheapy gate that I use on snare and kick and it does the job perfectly for drumagog. basically the less bleed you have the better the results if you are relying on the drumagog samples for your snare or kick sound. you just have to play around with your gate, mic positioning so that you pick up the most for your track and reduce bleed.
cheers
 
One of the benefits of drumagog is that you can control the level at which the sample is triggered, so you probably don't even need to gate
 
Thanks for the replies, very helpful. I'm recording this weekend.

- distorted rumble point taken.

Cheers
 
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