How do you stop bleeding?

andycerrone

andycerrone

Banned
I'm having problems with bleeding with drums. I know that it's impossible to stop completely, but I feel like it's a whole lot stronger on my recordings than others. Any suggestions?
 
andycerrone said:
Is there you can physically do, like a certain way of aiming your mics so they don't pick up so much?
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Yes.

Or, try using different types of mics. some mics are omni directional and some are meant specifically for recording single instruments so they mostly pick up what's in front of them.

If you really wanted to go do it yourself style you could probably rig up some kind of noise insulation around the mic so it doesn't pick up from the sides so much.
 
you need coagulation.

take some vitamin K.

but seriously though, when you pan the seperate tracks, do you get decent stereo seperation? it doesn't matter too much if you have what seems like a lot of bleed in your individual mics. as long as you're able to pan things the way you like and it doesn't sound mono, then don't worry about it.

or you can move the mics closer.

also, what is bleeding? if it's the cymbals, move them higher. A lot of drummers play with their cymbals waaaaaayyyyy too low and it causes a lof of bleed into the other mics. most find it difficult at first, but after a couple practices or sessions with them up higher most will find that they prefer it.
 
bleeding?

between drum mics? which mic(s) is troublesome?

bleeding into other instrument mics?
 
You can minimize the bleed by the mic's you use, and how you place them - of course - but anyways, try moving the mic's a little, depending on their pickup patterns & what type of mic it is. Of course like you said, you can't stop it totally. Things like a gate, EQ & compressors can fix it USUALLY, depending on what instrument is played.
 
if it's your bass mic, try sticking a blanket over the drum/mic

if it's your toms, try taking the bottom heads off (if you can get a decent sound with just a top head) and sticking the mic INSIDE the shell.
 
Bleed is part of the gig. Let it work for you. It's all one instrument. What you're looking for is a cohesive recording without any particular drum or cymbal dominating or dissapearing. The best case scenario is to capture the sound of the drums in the room in such a way that the listener isn't distracted by the sound of one instrument or another. The goal is for the song to be the focus, not the engineering or the drum sound. Just like a good journalist strives to write in such a way that the journalist himself is never the story.

Most of that can be achieved without miking the toms or bottom hats or ride bell or whatever. It's nice to be able to "fix it in the mix" by bringing up a mic or two. However, since mics have "voices", using many mics sometimes results in a buildup of of that "voice".

I think my limited experience with live sound put me in a mental space where I wanted to gate and eq each source. The resulting sound is not very natural, and maybe even a little creepy. Being a drummer, I can say that the treated drums sound "interesting", and maybe even "good", but they don't sound like live acoustic drums do, to my ears, while I'm listening in the room.

Good overhead mics and pres are valuable here, as can be some dynamics processing, since the OH mics are going to be doing the heavy lifting here. Throw in suitable mics for kick and snare and everything else is just gravy. Tom mics are not going to make or break your drum sound. OHs will.

Try and get a good "faders up" sound on the core sources (OH, Kick and Snare) before the red light comes on. Then add some additional sources if you must. But really, the less the better.

As always, YMMV, IMHO, etc.
 
I think it really depends a great deal on the type of music.

Cubase has a realllyy nice gate with automatic release, much better then the WAVES 5.0 gates or other standard gates.
Gating is your friend !!

-Also moving the cymbals higher is farout the best way to cancel out cymbal bleed into the toms.(as said by
-The drummer himself determains a big amount of the sound, try training him:
Give him 2 mics and let him drum until the sound is good from those 2 mics.
Or just give him an 10 000 volt shock everytime he hits the hi-hat or cymbals too hard. And another shock when he doesnt hit his toms/snare/kick hard enough ;)
 
As I always say, embrace the bleed. It's your friend. I'm very serious. However, the room you're recording in and the player will by far have the biggest impact on the drum sound.
 
Part of this is the drummers problem. There are only a few situations that bleed ends up being a big problem for me.

1. The drummer beats the crap out of his cymbals and lightly taps the drums, forcing you to turn the drum mics way up to the point that the cymbals in the drum mics are louder than they are in the overheads.
Solution: Smack the drummer upside the head and tell him to get his shit together. The dynamics of the performance are his thing. You should be able to put one mic in the air and one on the kick and get a well balanced drum mix. If you can't hit the drummer again.

2. The drummer has 12 toms and 50 cymbals that are 1/2 above the rims of the toms.
Solution: Raise the cymbals and remind the drummer that he needs to leave room for the kit to be miced. No one will ever hear his brilliant performance if you can't get a mic on the drums.

3. The rack toms are at a 90 degree angle to the ground so the tom mics are all pointed at the snare or the hihat. (because if you pointed them at the head like you normally would, the back of the mic would poke the drummer in the eye)
Solution: Unless the drummers arms are only 3 inches long, beat the drummer within an inch of his life and change the angle of the toms. The extreme tom angle posed two problems, A. you can't really mic it. B. the drummer can't hit the tom the right way, he can only poke the stick at it. (that sounds like crap and has no power)

Sometimes, you will have to deal with a combination of these problems. These are all drummer problems and the drum sound will suffer for them.

Drumagog can help. For situations like these, I have a bunch of triggers. There is no point in micing up a kit that I'm just going to have to replace anyway.
 
I was going to leave a detailed post, but Farview already covered everthing pretty well. If you have any of the problems he mentioned, gates won't help at all, because when you turn up any given tom mic to a useable level, the cymbals will be screaming into it. When the gate opens for a tom hit you'll get a sudden burst of cymbal coming from nowhere. That always sounds like garbage.

As Farview mentioned, the only way out of this perdicament if you can't get the drummer to move anything or change his playing style, is to replace the toms with sampled hits with Drumagog or something.

We'd all love to throw 3 mics on a kit and get a wonderful sound, but the ball is in the drummers court in that case, not the engineer's.
 
Drummer Mic

I thought I had read something on the net about a mic more suited to drummers that was very directional and would minimize the bleed from a drummers mic. Anyone ever heard of something like that or know of a mic with that directional pattern?
 
Guardsman said:
I thought I had read something on the net about a mic more suited to drummers that was very directional and would minimize the bleed from a drummers mic. Anyone ever heard of something like that or know of a mic with that directional pattern?
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I think you are talking about a vocal mic for drummer that sing. This thread was about getting too much bleed between all the mics on the drums. (5 years ago)

The trick to minimizing bleed is always making the thing that you want the mic to pick up sufficiently louder in that mic than everything around it that you don't want it to pick up. Being close to the mic and singing strongly will be the easiest way to minimize the amount of drums that the drummer's vocal mic will pick up.
 
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