Cymbal "thock/pop" Driving Me Crazy

  • Thread starter Thread starter DigitalDon
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DigitalDon

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First off, I took a year off from recording to build the studio. It's gonna take a little while to get my experience level back up.

Recorded a rock band last weekend. It all went well except for drums, specifically crash cymbals. I used a spread pair of condensors overhead, mic'd the kick and snare. Here's the problem. The drummer insists on mounting his left/right crash cymbals too high and flat (not slanted toward him). This causes him to strike the cymbals directly on edge a little over halfway up his sticks. Talk about chewing up some sticks. Anyhow what this creates is a loud "thock" or "pop" sound. No it's not a clipped signal it's the actual sound. I convinced him to slant the cymbals a little but it wasn't enough. Most hits he would still strike directly on edge. We ran out of time even though this was a freebe for a friend in the band. These guys live a pretty good ways away so I really don't want to re-track.

I'm sure a lot of you have run into this before. Approximately what frequencies did you have to cut to tame the thock/pop? I played around with it but just can't seem to get a lock on it.

Thanks,
DD
 
Ugh, that's a tough one. I guess I'd try a lowcut and work my way up until about 200-300 Hz. But you're gonna losse the kick and lots of the snare doing this, so if it's too much, try a lowshelf at the same frequency.

David
 
Thanks for the response David. I mic'd the kick and snare separately so I'm not too concerned about loosing them in the overheads. Even though I got some pretty good snare from overheads. I mic'd the underside of the snare (inverted) with the intention of adding a little reverb and mixing in with the overheads.
 
Just play with a parametric EQ and find the freq range. Boost the gain on the EQ and sweep the frequency until the offending noise is at it's worst. Sweep the Q until you have it pretty well defined then drop the gain back down.
 
If you can.

I know this is a bit of pain but if you can do it you could always edit the cymbals out and replace them with samples. It's not the best way of doing things but can work out very well for when options are slim to none.

All the best,
sonicpaint
 
Thanks everybody. I isolated the freqs with a Waves Parametric EQ and tightened up the Q to nail them. Lost some of the attack on the cymbals but it really did the trick. I looped them in Cakewalk and played them over and over and over ....... I woke up this morning still hearing that loop. Glad that's over. Next time the drummer WILL angle those cymbals down!

DD
 
Right on!

DigitalDon said:
Thanks everybody. I isolated the freqs with a Waves Parametric EQ and tightened up the Q to nail them. Lost some of the attack on the cymbals but it really did the trick. I looped them in Cakewalk and played them over and over and over ....... I woke up this morning still hearing that loop. Glad that's over. Next time the drummer WILL angle those cymbals down!

DD
Click to expand...

That's great that you were able to nail that problem, glad to hear it! I agree about you getting the drummer to angle those symbols next time, it's sound like it would save you some time and headaches fixing problems that could be avoided while tracking.

later,
sonicpaint
 
Wireneck - I'm near Albany. Our band will be playing over there sometime after first of the year. I've heard Statesboro really parties and you can draw some big crowds there. What's the club scene like there? We have a Contemporary Country band and a Heavy Metal band.

DD
 
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