Gating drums during or after recording?

[Mr. Moon]

Hi. I will be doing some drum recording sessions soon and would like to know how folks deal with gating to control mic bleed (mostly hihats) on the snare mic. Do most folks gate during recording, or is it better to record dry and then apply a software gate after the fact? Or, am I missing the boat altogether on this one and are there better options than gating?

I have searched the forum, but most of what I have found deals mainly with compression, and not gating per se.

I would greatly appreciate any/all constructive comments!

-mr moon

 

[xstatic]

Gate after tracking, never before

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

I'll sometimes gate during Live-Off-The-Floor sessions, but that's about it. For normal production tracking.... no gates!!! You can always gate later, but you can never restore something gated out during the recording!

 

[Chibi Nappa]

When I do gate I gate durring mixing. However, working with drum bleed isn't hard at all, and many times produces a favorable sound to gating. I'd say 70% of the time I don't use gates. When I do use gates it is usualy only on the snare for the purpose of a clean snare reverb, and even then I might only gate the actual send going to the reverb and leave the snare ungated in the mix. After a while you get a feel for what each drumset needs in each song.