recording drums: snare nuisance

rats

New member
I posted this in the drum forum but I'm not getting anywhere so I'm appealing to a higher court. Trying to record drums on one stereo track. I'm using 4 mics; kick, snare, and a pair of overheads. My problem is that the snare rattles on certain kick drum beats and on whacks to the hi tom in particular but is becoming a nuisance. How does one tame that snare so it still works on the snare drum but not vibrating on the other misc low freqs running around? Some suggest changing the tuning of the drums (?) detuning the snare side head of the snare drum, tightening the snares, applying tape somehow, and someone told me they thought there was some piece you could but that clips on to the rim of the snare and presses on the skin(?)! Help! I have a session scheduled 2-NITE!!!:confused:
 
Can you gate the snare?

I know that won't eliminate the problem (as the overheads will still pick up the snare rattle) but it may reduce it.
 
Doug Quance said:
Can you gate the snare?

I know that won't eliminate the problem (as the overheads will still pick up the snare rattle) but it may reduce it.

please explain!:confused:
 
You could defineatly try to patch a gate in and see how it works, try a software gate as it sometimes gives you decent look ahead and wont clip transients as bad.
Try tightening the snares up, if they are too loose they will rattle a lot.
Other than that, get another snare. :)
 
Do you have a gate rats? What I have done is to attatch a trigger the the head of the snare, and insert that into the sidechain of the gate. This is good cause you can gate agressivly but still be able to pick up ghost notes and softer hits.

If it's just the kick and tom rattling the snares, you could try to retune the kick (or tom) a little, perhaps theres some frequency that is exciting the snares. You might end up working on the kit for a long time, and never really solve the problem. Also try some sort of treatment on the floor beneath the kit- just throwing out ideas, any little adjustment could help, so it might be worth trying.

good luck.
 
Maybe some tape on the metal snare. Or a piece of foam pressed up against the snare-side head. Use part of the drum stand to brace the foam up to the bottom head. It will deaden the snare a bit so just hit it harder!
 
Another trick is to shim the strainer off the head just enough to keep it from rattling. This will screw with the sound of the snare though so use at your own risk.:D

Personally I just let 'em rattle. It's not that big a problem here with the heads torqued way tight and the strainer a bit on the loose side.;)
 
Well, rats, I hope you were able to solve your problem tonight...

A gate is a device that opens the channel when a signal reaches a user-selected level... then closes after a user-selected period of time.

The crack of the snare opens the gate... the gate then closes shortly thereafter... thus "squelching" any lower amplitude signals coming in from other sound sources.

To get a feel for these, heres a few links:

http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/Articles/Expansion/

http://www.odysseyprosound.com/acp22.html

http://www.bayviewproaudio.com/drawmer_ds201.html
 
try changing the tuning of both the snare (mostly bottom head) and the drums causing the vibrations to occour.

sympathetic vibrations occour because the snare is tuned so it's resonant at the same frequencies the other drums are producing.
 
Well, imagen this:

You standing in front of a drumkit while that animal-drummer hits his ass of on those skins.
What do YOU hear? Do you hear the snares rambling?
I guess you do!

So, does it mather in recording?
Well, that's ofcourse the big question. I think it also depends on the music style that's being played. Loose played music (stoner for example) is great for having the snare make noise.

The real secret is (sorry but it's true) TUNING your kit.
I know, 90% of the average drummer is NOT tuning because the lack of knowledge of how to do this.

Almost every studio session I do included tuning a drumkit... I myself am a drummer for about 20 years and have always tuned my kit. Like every time I play I adjust little thing.
The snare drum is one of the hardest to tune. I like tight screwed skins. Cranck it up, don't be afraid, just screw it (eh)
have GOOD quality snares underneeth. And detune the screws at both sided of the snare A LITTLE to get rid of the extra noise.

Oh, the GATE is very important. Don't mind the overheads; they will not pick up the rambling that much (especially when the drummer hits many cymbals)

good luck with it, don't worry to much.
 
The recording went OK last night. We figured out that the majority of the big rattling was coming from hits to the high toma that were reverberating heavily which we remedied by removing the bottom skin from the that tom. It killed the major rattle, and the tom sounded fine.

Unfortunately with my limited resources I can't do much with a gate right now. Maybe if I had an external unit, but I'm pre-mixing the 4 mics onto one stereo track in cool edit pro. Thanks for all the ideas!:D
 
how about POST-GATING in CEP!!

Gating is done during mixing stage (where you're in a this moment) and NOT during recording, so you should get thinx fine by now!

just experiment with the gate (it's wise to put a compressor in the chain as well)
 
roman said:
how about POST-GATING in CEP!!

Gating is done during mixing stage (where you're in a this moment) and NOT during recording, so you should get thinx fine by now!

just experiment with the gate (it's wise to put a compressor in the chain as well)

I do most of my gating when I am recording, even when I am recording to a multi-track. This way, I can use triggers to open the gates, which works MUCH better than the audio signal. The gate picks up the sound about a microsecond or so before the mic, and so it opens the gate just before the audio signal gets there, so I never miss a thing. I can also set the threshold very low, and the attack very fast this way, and it will not be affected by the other drums. Works great. I made my own triggers for this out of the pezio crystals in doorbell buzzers from rat shack.

I even have a friend who has a set of little laser sensors which he puts on the rims of the drums, so that the gate is opened just before the stick hits the drum. Cool, but WAY expensive.

I know many people like to gate during the mix, but not me. For me, gating during recording works much better.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Im a gating nut, and am finally happy that we have a full featured lookahead frequency conscious gate in ultrafunk r3

but

like bleyrad said, its a tuning thing. Sympathetic resonances are a nono, even if there WERENT going to be a mic on the drumset.


http://www.drumweb.com/profsound.shtml

that should help, but the trick is to stop them from talking to each other....trouble is, according to Murphy's Law, special revised statutes for Audio Engineers:

" Whosoever shalt tune thy snare to a non multiple and or non sympathetic tuning towards thine kick drum, SHALT suffer that now thy snare and tom tom are in sympathy"

good luck
 
Doug Quance said:
Er... uh, psssst.... roman....

rats IS mixing while recording....

four mics into two tracks....

eh... (bang my head) .. stupid, stupid... I should learn to read one of the days. lol.


oh, LIGHT, you shed some interesting LIGHT on this matter.
Triggers is something I haven't used before... I'm a big ACCOUSTICS fan myself.. so it will probably not even happen in the near future. But the laser idea sounds very cool.. hmm..
thanx
 
roman said:
I'm a big ACCOUSTICS fan myself.. so it will probably not even happen in the near future. But the laser idea sounds very cool.. hmm..
thanx

The triggers are not triggering sounds, just opening the gates. The audio signal comes from the mic. The distance between the mic and the drum head gives that little micro second delay, so the gate opens before the audio gets there.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
yeah, but gates are something else like triggers, doug.
atleast I understand from light.

I've checked the triggers ofcourse and they are just little devices mounted on the rim of snare/tom/bass.. whatever. They tend check for intens waves/skin-tremblings to react as a gate for example. Like Light said, the mic will pic up the sound a fraction later so, it will capture that important first attack, something a gate on the mic, for example, will not.
Triggers can be seen as a 'look-a-head' gate I think.
am I right here?

Again, haven't used them at all, and probably will not. But it sure raised my attention!
thanx for that.

ro
 
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