de-boinging a djembe

T

tollbooth

New member
hey guys

i have a track recorded by someone else that has a fairly poorly recorded djembe on it (big whumpy drum for those unaware) - the drum has a lot of bas end decay but little top end crack to it.

as it's fairly exposed in the track (it backs a medieval vocal ensemble) i can't 'resample' it too easily with another sound (which i was tempted to do)

it needs a little reverb to help it sit with the rest of the track, but on doing so (i'm using TrueVerb) i just get a wash of BOING!!! i've put a hipass filter on the reverb and that helped a bit

in the end - i ran a compressed and gated drum track out of Digital Performer and out into a hardware SPL Vitalizer Jack and then back in on another track - this is normally designed for ADDING psychoacoustic bass into tracks, but you can also tighten the bass quite a bit with it too. this seemed to o a passable job. i needed to keep a lot of bass in the drum track as it is the only thing adding any low end (all the vocals are alto and soprano!).

the resulting track sounded ok, but i was just wondering if anyone would have gone about it a different way?

i suspect i may have more from this client in the future of a similar vein so i would be interested in any other ideas.

thanks guys

paul d
 
How about boosting a really tight Q and finding the most "boinging" frequency, dipping by a few dB and then make it really wide?
 
hi guys

thanks for that! i just checked my EQ curve that i ended up with and i'd already done the apx 5K lift without even being conscious of it (you know how you do?) - i just tried the 'notch searching' and strange thing is, i end up with quite a wide frequency range as it sounds as if the drummer hit the djembe at quite different velocities and so the skin has tightened and loosened, therefore the frequency of that boing seems to change quite a bit (an analysis of the dynamics levels confirms this - that and my ears!)

thanks - just wanted to check i wasn't missing anything too obvious!

paul d
 
i tend to use about 60ms pre-delay, same as for vox, you think this is contributing?

i cut most of the early reflections right out as i only wanted something to add a little space in the sound.
 
Well, for drums, that is a bit on the long side, unless you got the 80's ballad snare drum thing going on :)

Maybe try around 10ms and adjust the early reflection level to taste. Usually, I am not much of a fan of too much early reflection level on reverbs, but if the sound is "blowing up" too much, often, having a "phase problem" between the source and early reflection can possibly help the attack be a tad more pronounced, and not emphasis the 'boing" of the sound.

Another thing is that maybe the reverb has too much low frequency content on it's output? Try a high pass filter set to say around 400Hz and increasing the decay time of the reverb a bit and see if that "airs out" the sound a bit.
 
thanks sonusman

all fantastic suggestions; it's a good example of wishing it had been me that had recorded the darn thing in the first place!

i managed to tame the beastie a bit, i'd taken the low end off the reverb, but i tried dropping to the 10ms pre-delay and it tightened everything up, thanks. i also notched as suggested above, and found a really really tight frequency range +/- only 5hz around 80hz! it was remarkable, notch filter with a a tight Q helped.

i also added some psycho acoustic bass back in with my old spl vitalizer and that gave some 'whomp' without 'boing' which sounded really nice in the end.

thanks for everyone's help !

paul d
 
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