Bass drum leak

N

nelsonpaschoal

New member
Hello Friends,

I´ve done some recordings and realize that a lot of bass drum leaked to all tracks, I can minimize the problem using eq and gate, but I want to know how you guys avoid this problem, as I am not getting sucess avoiding BD in the recording, just in the mix.

I record drums using close mic technique.
 
If you mean you are getting kick in all the other drum mics I have to say this is pretty normal.
 
Its normal to get some bass drum in the other drum mics. I always have this stuff in mind when tracking the drums, One thing I have done is to put a thick blanket on top of the bass drum to reduce spill in the tom mics and overheads from the bass drum shell. Another thing is when mixing put a Low pass filter on all the mics except the bass drum and floor top, this reduces mud bass from the kick drums. Try reversing the polarity of the bass drum mic (or Mics) and see if the spill sounds beter without loosing the bass drum low end, sometimes an out of phase mic can sound muddy due to the low end phase issues. In regard to gates I sometimes gate the actual bass drum so I don't get any snare spill in the bass drum, but only if it's a problem.

Alan.
 
this is why microphone position is so critical, you have to try and get the phase of the overheads to match that of the kick mic.
 
Btyre2013 said:
this is why microphone position is so critical, you have to try and get the phase of the overheads to match that of the kick mic.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly, check the phase of the overheads to the kick, but also the tom mics, the snare mics to both the overheads and kick mic and to each other. If you listen during the sound check you can hear it as you flip the channel phase. For example don't be afraid of having the floor tom mic out of phase to the other toms if it sounds better in the overheads, it may not be the same distance as the other toms.

Phase problems can cause loos of bass, but it can also cause mud in the bass. As a side note I am not a big fan of correcting phase with moving the wav tracks later, I believe that a drum kit to an extent has a natural out of phase even if you sit in front of a drum kit so aligning the wav files does not sound natural and makes it sound more like individual samples.

Back to the main question, sorry to side track a little by the way, using blankets on top of the kick as I suggested earlier is a good start, even building a blanket tunnel out front of the kick to place a second mic in front of the kick works well by keeping the rest of the kit out of the kick mic. It does not matter what it looks like it's in the studio LOL.

By the way if spill is not a problem don't worry about using blankets, it seems to depend a lot on the kit and the player. Did I mention the room acoustics? This changes the spill quite a lot as well.

Alan.
 
Btyre2013 said:
this is why microphone position is so critical, you have to try and get the phase of the overheads to match that of the kick mic.
Click to expand...

Yes, the position is critical!!

About the phase correction, how do you do that? Any plugin or just looking at the wave? In the waves package there´s a plugin named InPhase, that seems to be a good tool, somebody use?
 
nelsonpaschoal said:
Yes, the position is critical!!

About the phase correction, how do you do that? Any plugin or just looking at the wave? In the waves package there´s a plugin named InPhase, that seems to be a good tool, somebody use?
Click to expand...

I do it before tracking, thats what I said I don't like adjusting this after. The was a tutorial where they aligned the wav forms to put it all in line with the snare, I think thats just a fix for bad micing, when you sit in front of a drum kit the drums actually arrive at you ear out of phase and it sounds natural, setting up mics in phase is really making sure that the mics are not massively out of phase with each other. That my thoughts anyway. If it sounds good then its set up right.

Alan.
 
I pretty much make sure I don't lose the bottom end of the kick and snare. I sometimes start with o/heads, kick in, kick out, snare. Or kick in , kick out, snare then overheads. Add one track at a time, flip the phase, if you lose the bottom, flip it back, if you gain bottom, leave it then add the next track and run through the same procedure. If you have everything positioned properly every thing should be in phase already, and the check will confirm. If you do this before tracking, you wont have problems after(less likely anyway)
 
witzendoz said:
I do it before tracking, thats what I said I don't like adjusting this after. The was a tutorial where they aligned the wav forms to put it all in line with the snare, I think thats just a fix for bad micing, when you sit in front of a drum kit the drums actually arrive at you ear out of phase and it sounds natural, setting up mics in phase is really making sure that the mics are not massively out of phase with each other. That my thoughts anyway. If it sounds good then its set up right.

Alan.
Click to expand...

It's not a fix for bad micing, it's an alternative technique. Combining close mics and overheads is entirely different from hearing a kit acoustically. Pretty much any mic technique other than a head mic is unnatural by that reference.

Whenever you have multiple mics on multiple sources something will be out of phase. The question is, how does it sound? Out of phase doesn't matter if the levels are sufficiently different.
 
I've always done the blanket or built a tunnel with another bass drum shell with heads removed. Lots of moving blankets, basically isolating it from the rest of the kick
 
Works to a certain extent.Reduces bleed to the BD mic from other parts of the kit but does nothing on the beater side.
Common practice is to HPF all but the kick.No need for DC to daylight bandwidth on rack toms,hi-hat etc....if kick bleed is an issue.

G
 
Izotope RX6/7 Debleed is probably the fastest way. Just be careful it doesn’t alway do a perfect job. Plus it’s better to make a couple passes with debleed. Always double check against the original track to make sure it’s not degrading the main feature on that track. First though try to get better isolation. They make sound barrier blankets for kick drums, and it can be used anywhere it’s needed not just kick, not just drums.
 
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