How do you stop snare mic picking up lots of hi hat?

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dastrick said:
A gate is your friend. Use it. :D
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I only ever gate the tom mics, and not always, and I gate the snare only if I want a gated snare sound.

Gates should not be used to try to fix problems, problems should be fixed at the recording stage.

Cheers
Alan.
 
witzendoz said:
I only ever gate the tom mics, and not always, and I gate the snare only if I want a gated snare sound.

Gates should not be used to try to fix problems, problems should be fixed at the recording stage.

Cheers
Alan.
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Agreed...but if you have a problem during mixdown of too much hi-hat in the snare mic, then I would use a gate to eliminate the hi-hat in between the snare hits. If you have a problem of too much hi-hat with the snare hits, then that's an even bigger problem.:eek:
 
Going back to the initial problem, the 2 reasons the hi hats are too loud are

1) The drummers technique (or lack of it).

2) Drummer using those light weight thin hi hats with the hats locked slightly apart and smashing them (see point 1) thinking it sounds good.

A bigger problem is that the hats are too loud in the overheads as for me the overheads are 90% of the drum sound:

Cheers
Alan.

p.s. the drummer in my earlier photos did not have any problem with hats being too loud or spill of any kind.
 
Hi, new here..

Im surprised no one here mentioned the fact the Matin Hannet used to record every part of the drums separately.

Listen to his work on Joy division´s first album "unknown pleasures".
Weird technique but with great results.
 
mixsit said:
Hmm. Let's see, how's this go, hat is too hot, so compress the hat' in the snare mic so the snare is now up (relatively' speaking? :confused:
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Yuh, sure you can use compression in this situation...

Dial in some fairly heavy gain reduction on your favourite compressor (hardware or plugin), then relax the attack time until you're happy with the amount of snare hit its letting through... you can set it up so that the compressor doesn't act until just after the hit, then clamps down on everything else. Sometimes an idea to pass it through another compressor just to round off the tops of the peaks and make everything nice and consistent.

Once mixed in it sounds a hell of a lot better than a gated track - more 'natural' - and you use it in various different ways, such as enhancing the transients by using a slightly faster attack time and using that close mic track for all the attack, whilst the overheads / room mics provide all the 'body' and decay. Simple steps to some killer drum sounds.

Its all too easy to look past the basics and not actually think about what a compressor is doing... get creative and exploit the tools you have at your disposal!
 
Ok, I see where you're going with that. I get the envelope shaping, and being very effective punching up or altering the primary source target. But the only time you get attenuation of a bleed/noise issue- is for a short time after each snare hit?
 
You can also use an under snare mic to trigger the gate on the upper snare mic. They usually don't have as much hat bleed in them so you can get a cleaner trigger. They also have a little more kick bleed in them so if you want you can use the snare rattle to give your kick a little more definition.

The latest edition of Tape Op magazine shows a HH damper that this guy built using a 2' bucket lined with foam that would be placed with the mouth open to the side and sitting over half of the HH. He said it helped kill the hat in the overheads and room mics.

A small room with little treatment can also be a disaster when it comes to cymbal bleed in everything.
 
TexRoadkill said:
You can also use an under snare mic to trigger the gate on the upper snare mic. They usually don't have as much hat bleed in them so you can get a cleaner trigger. They also have a little more kick bleed in them so if you want you can use the snare rattle to give your kick a little more definition.

The latest edition of Tape Op magazine shows a HH damper that this guy built using a 2' bucket lined with foam that would be placed with the mouth open to the side and sitting over half of the HH. He said it helped kill the hat in the overheads and room mics.

A small room with little treatment can also be a disaster when it comes to cymbal bleed in everything.
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I just saw that in Tape Op, myself. Pretty cool looking contraption. :cool:
 
I think Dave G. recorded cymbals separately on the Queens of the Stone Age recordings. But he is an amazingly good player...
 
zbert said:
As a drummer don't go telling me to move my equipment.
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While my initial reaction was to agree with you...

I'm a guitarist. I've spent the past couple months working on relearning how to alternate pick, using a completely different grip (previously I'd pick with an open hand, pick very close to parallel with the strings, pinkie anchored on the fretboard. Now, I'm picking closed hand, pick probably closer to 30 degrees, hand only anchored by my arm on the body and palm on the bridge). Basically, I realized that my technique was causing problems (in this case, it was limiting my accuracy, tightness, and speed) and by relearning my technique I could be a better player.

I see it as the same thing. Being told, "hey, move your kit around" mid session probably won't work, but if you're a drummer and you can't for the life of you get good snare/hihat separation in the studio, repositioning your kit and getting used to a new playing position that will give you better recordings is something that you should certainly be considering.
 
If a drummer can adjust from a small 5-piece kit to a 10-piece kit, which requires adjusting some of the drum positions...
...what's the difference with moving things around a bit for recording purposes?

I don't think anyone would ask a drummer to completely change his setup...it's more about moving one or two things a couple of inches (at most).
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
While my initial reaction was to agree with you...

Basically, I realized that my technique was causing problems (in this case, it was limiting my accuracy, tightness, and speed) and by relearning my technique I could be a better player.

I see it as the same thing. Being told, "hey, move your kit around" mid session probably won't work, but if you're a drummer and you can't for the life of you get good snare/hihat separation in the studio, repositioning your kit and getting used to a new playing position that will give you better recordings is something that you should certainly be considering.
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miroslav said:
If a drummer can adjust from a small 5-piece kit to a 10-piece kit, which requires adjusting some of the drum positions...
...what's the difference with moving things around a bit for recording purposes?

I don't think anyone would ask a drummer to completely change his setup...it's more about moving one or two things a couple of inches (at most).
Click to expand...

I understand zbert's reaction

Originally Posted by zbert
As a drummer don't go telling me to move my equipment.
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and I'd be willing to bet that z doesn't have the problem the OP is posting about, of a snare mic being mainly filled with hi-hat shing and shimmer. But if that is the problem, it's hardly going to lead to the invasion of Iran for the drum player to maybe move things around a fraction, to make it easier to place mics and whatnot. My mates that drum on my recordings do that all the time coz we're really limited in space and sometimes I want to experiment with mic placements so a tom might move a little here or a cymbal there. It's still their movements and a happy medium is the aim. Sometimes we'll use two toms, sometimes three, sometimes five and sometimes seven (these extra two will be timbales). And there may be two, three, four or five cymbals and a couple of percussion pieces like a cowbell. The point is that the set up changes frequently and if you factor in where the mics are placed, especially if close miking as well, then the drummer demonstrates their versatility and flexibility as a matter of course. The once in a while requirement to alter a little here and there is like saying "there was a wednesday last week". That is, no big deal.
 
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