Making snare kick more ass?

[twonky]

Happy Yuletide!

I could use a little wisdom from the smarty-pantses if you will...

I am currently working on a mix for a band. The music is kinda heavy "Thursday/ At the Drive In" kinda stuff.

I am having problems getting a good consistent snare sound. In a fairly major section of the song the drummer just went APESHIT in one of his crash cymbals and it bled into the snare mic. The snare, subsequently, is not played nearly as hard it it should have been because he was too busy trying to put his stick through his cymbal.

I actually used two mics on the snare for experimenting w/ later. An SM57 on the head pointed at the center and an Earthworks TC30k on the shell about 3 inches a way. Together they make a pretty great snare sound. Overheads are ADK A-51s, so there is plenty of cymbal in the take.

Can anyone suggest some ways to either eq or gate or whatever these f*cking cymbals out of eather of these snare tracks so I can compress the crap outa it w/ out bring them way up?

Unfortunately, re-tracking is not an option.

Any advice would be considered a nice X-Mas gift!

Thanks in advance

Twonky

[twonky]

As you may have guessed its a combination of High Hat and Crash cymbal. Do w/ that, what you will.

Twonky

[chessrock]

When I run in to situations like this, I know it's time to pay a visit to the Gog.

www.drumagog.com

[twonky]

Indeed

But Mr. Rock, I tried the "GOG" and had a beee-otch of a time getting either of the snare tracks gated enough to make Drumagog trigger correctly. And how does one flam in the drumagog?


I hope Santa brings me a clue for X-mas

[chessrock]

That's a tough one.


Make a copy of the snare track, and boost the hell out of 200-500 hz, and use a low-pass filter on everything above 2 khz. Then gate it . . . then pull out the gog.

If that doesn't work, then I'm afraid there's not many options left.


Anyway, if you can somehow manage to get some gog samples triggered, you could possibly use that to replace the snare tracks on the parts where the cymbals get too loud, or you could just bring the gog snare in as it's own track and use that to help beef up the original snare and help balance things out a little. It would work best, of course, if you could take an actual snare hit from earlier or later in the song as your gog sample so it's a better match.

[twonky]

Ok, I'm following.

That sounds like a good approach. Good advice from Chessrock as usual

If that doesnt satisfy I may just have to pull the super tedious job of simply drawing volume curves between every snare hit...WHOOOOOPEEEEEEE!!!!!




Thanks again

twonky

[Simman]

You said in your post that the drummer tries to kill his cymbal a section of the song. Here's my question, why are you in need of a flam? Since 1 stick is hitting the cymbal and the other is hitting the snare, it’s pretty hard to flam with 1 hand. Is the drummer a mutant with 3 hands?

Sounds like you may want to try some frequency selective gating. Use the side chain of the gate and inset an EQ. Feed the signal directly into the gate as well as through the EQ connected to the side chain. Try to “tune” in the frequency ( roll off the highs) of the snare with the outboard EQ and the gate will respond to only the drum. The result is by adjusting the EQ such that the desired signal is strong enough at the insert of the gate; the gate becomes more selective in opening.

Give it a try.

[ChristopherDawn]

If you're just going to gog it you might as well copy and paste clean snare hits at the area where he goes ape shit.

[twonky]

Originally posted by Simman
Is the drummer a mutant with 3 hands?

+


...Yes, and the band is VERY sensitive about it so when he goes nuts on that cymbal, we just let him and hope that we can fix it in the mix. He does tend to bag the most chicks at shows though...

I am not very hip to sidechaining, I have never tried it. I am Using Samplitude 7.X but have tha ability to rout out to either a DBx compressor or a JOEMEEEK VC6Q. The DBX has a sidechain.

For the the flams, there is a different section of the song where he uses them. I want want things to sound consistentand realistic. And my experience w/ the GOG has been hit or miss.

Twonky

[Simman]

I'd try the DBX but, since you're using Samplitude, I tend to agree with ChristopherDawn. Some simple wav editing maybe the best way to go.

[TexRoadkill]

Copy one of the OHs or the far snare mic and then gate it using the close 57 as the trigger. That should give you a good isolated snare track. Then EQ it to taste.

[Pahtcub]

Ever tried adding distortion to drums?? Sounds killer!!

Pat

[Scott Tansley]

I have had some success removing hats from a snare track by mixind down a two track mix of just the snare and hats. The trick was to invert the phase of the hat track and if your carfull and line it up right it'll remove its self from the mix without too much swooshing in place. Render that mix down for a new snare track.
Havn't tried it with an overhead but might be worth trying.



Scott.
www.feel-rock.com

[Track Rat]

Haven't seen you around these parts in a while Scott. Merry Christmas.
I've fooled with that technique and had very limited success. The artifacts were pretty audible. But if retracking ain't an option, you gotta do what you gotta do.

[Scott Tansley]

Merry Christmas to you too Track Rat and everyone else. Been super busy doing my day gig (animation). Which unfortunately I love doing as much as music so it eats my time totally. Im in a rare two week break from working on farscape. So Im snoopin around here for a few days. For a change.
twonky, hope you snare gets there.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by twonky
...so when he goes nuts on that cymbal, we just let him and hope that we can fix it in the mix.

That's the start of the problem....... NEVER "fix it in the mix", fix it... NOW!

Obviously it doesn't help you now but this is a lesson for your next tracking session -- if you hear it during tracking, it will be 10 times more obvious on mixing.... and 10 times harder to correct. Concentrate on better tracking technique and you'll save yourself a lot of headaches....

[starch]

You may try something like chessrock said earlier. Copy that particular piece of the song, use a lowpass filter to eq out everything above 2-3k, maybe add a little boost at 200-300hz and compress. Then use that track under the original to bring out the snare. (I haven't had much luck myself with drumagog, probably operator error) Hopefully if blended carefully you can make it sound natural. You may need to automate the levels on the original snare track as the volume will obviously increase as you add the new track.

Maybe worth a shot, maybe not.

[SilentSound]

i don't know really know about drumagog but this is something i do to enhance the snare. it seems that drumagog might be a similar answer.. this only takes sever limiting, gating, and eqing.

if you're working in a daw, copy and paste a snare track to a new track. heavily limit the snare track then cut lows below 500 hz. gate so only the snare hit comes through on all parts of the song. experiment with addittional eq and maybe even reverb. add this about 30-25db beneath the original snare track. listen to the the snare and "flack" track together. make sure the flak doesn't dominate. bon chance

matthew

[twonky]

Fellers thanks for the advice.

After much expirimentation I finally ended up grabbing a snare hit from a part of the song w/ no cymbals (no easy feat w/ this drummer). And replacing his hits manually. Not terribly efficient but it worked.

Next time...

thanks again
Twonky

[rvdsm]

Originally posted by twonky
Fellers thanks for the advice.

After much expirimentation I finally ended up grabbing a snare hit from a part of the song w/ no cymbals (no easy feat w/ this drummer). And replacing his hits manually. Not terribly efficient but it worked.

Next time...

thanks again
Twonky

Man, I hate doing that!

I'm getting pretty good at reproducing realistic snare drum rudiments from 2 good clean snare hits. Damn low-rent rock bands! GRRR!!!

[philsaudio]

I know this will not win the mr. congeniality award, but when I get a guy who does that I just leave it that way and tell them to learn how to play when recording.

Here you go bonzo jr, listen to your ass shit cymbals fuck up this track and then if you hate it maybe the next time you play in the studio you will think about what you can do to make yourself play better.

Unless of course I am being paid by the hour to fix up their fuck ups, they get what they play. Life is to short to follow around amature's and try to fix up their mistakes. Life is good when someone is paying me $75.oo/hr to fix up an amature's shit ass drumming so he sounds professional. Perhaps when they get the bill they will hire a pro drummer.

Happy New Year
Phil

[Track Rat]

I'm with you Phil. When I see everyones nose wrinkle up like they were just served a steaming shit sandwich served in a dirty ashtray, I love to tell them I can "fix" all of that at only $75 per hour (and it'll take about 8-10 hours per song).

[twonky]

Originally posted by philsaudio

Unless of course I am being paid by the hour to fix up their fuck ups, they get what they play. Life is to short to follow around amature's and try to fix up their mistakes. Life is good when someone is paying me $75.oo/hr to fix up an amature's shit ass drumming so he sounds professional. Perhaps when they get the bill they will hire a pro drummer.

Thats just it. These guys are paying me a pretty good daily rate. It actually wasnt that big of a deal to fix it. It took me about 45 minutes. No biggie.

Unless a band is paying me to produce I usually don't tell them how to play their parts. But this was a case where I should have said, "friend, you are playing that cymbal like it is covered w/ bees you want to kill, have a heart and play your snare drum like that."

Thats kind of the rub w/ my type of studio and the clientele I get sometimes. I have a modest little project studio w/ some decent gear so I am not always getting studio savvy musicians/bands. So sometimes you have to deal w/ dum dums. I certainly am not telling you guys anything you hav'nt already learned the hard way. I'm just saying.

This kid is actually a very good and musical drummer and the records going to be pretty hot.

Anyway thanks for the help

Happy 2004

Twonky

[RightOnMusic]

phil, life's also too short to be a jerk to guys that just want to record. maybe it would be more productive to explain to him how his playing style has affected the mixing process, and thus the end product rather than telling him to "listen to [his] ass shit cymbals fuck up this track." i find i get more work when clients dont think i'm a mean spirited person.

[RightOnMusic]

holy jeez, didn't realize i was digging up such an old thread. i did a search on adk a51s LE's and this thread came up. haha... boy is MY face red.