Minimizing Cymbal bleed on tom tracks

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Wireneck

Wireneck

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I was just curious if anyone has any tricks to help lower the amount of cymbal sound in tom mics. It seems like most of the drummers ive recorded lately have their cymbals right above the toms and beat the hell out of them.
I usually use sm-57s on the toms close mic'ed. I mainly recording metal type stuff where the drummers are on the cymbals alot. It seems like when i push the toms up loud enough to be in the mix theres as much cymbal coming through on the toms as there is in my overheads.
I know i can use a gate but i was just curious if there were any other tricks I can try before i spend money on a channel or two of gate?
 
I guess im the only one who has this problem. That sucks
 
i'm sure someone will have ideas ... give it time

would you need to spend $$ on a hardware gate? could you just do it with software?
 
there are a number of ways to clean up your tom tracks:

1) gates/expanders (either hardware or software)

2) deleting or muting the sections of the tom tracks when the toms aren't actually playing

3) using sound-replacer, drumagog, or triggering a drum module or other source of drum samples to replace the orignal tom tracks with a sampled alternative (which, obviously, won't have any cymbals bleeding in).
 
It's a miserable endeavor. But I have a few suggestions that might work:

Use mic placement to your advantage. Try to find the spots that pick up the drum OK, but minimize cymbals.

Hyper or super-cardioid mics might help as they only pick up sources that are close (supposedly...you have to take that statement with a grain of salt). Or try removing the bottom head and micing the inside of the drum/head.

You can try moving your overheads to grab the toms as well. It takes a little work and isn't always successful, but it's a suggestion. The tom mics then might only be used for the initial attack...experiment.

You could try lowering the gain a little on your tom pres and use gating and compression, or editing if your're using a DAW, to bring up the hits.

Maybe mic the bottom heads or the drum's soundhole?

I have the same problem with some tracks right now, but after everything else was mixed in (mostly guitars) the problem lessened. How does everthing sound when it's all mixed together?

I think I'm still gonna have to resort to Drumagog for these tracks...meh.
 
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littledog said:
there are a number of ways to clean up your tom tracks:

3) using sound-replacer, drumagog, or triggering a drum module or other source of drum samples to replace the orignal tom tracks with a sampled alternative (which, obviously, won't have any cymbals bleeding in).
Click to expand...

Actually, if you put an extra mic on the cymbals, you could even use the "ducking" mode in drumagog. The cymbal track could then be used to duck the tom tracks out every time the cymbal is hit. You'd set the cymbal track up as the "send" track, and the tom tracks as the "receive" tracks. It's something you'd have to play around with a bit to figure out, but it works great.
 
Get some spring loaded clamps, some cardboard and a couple of mic stands, and use them to shield the mics from the unwanted noise sources as much as possible
 
It sounds like you are referring to the Tom track being opened all during the song. If not then please explain to me how it is that the drummer is playing a fill or striking the Toms yet he is playing on the cymbals widely at the same time?.

Even if that is the case.....just delete the track untill he hits the toms. Then let it rip and don't worry to much about the bleed in the mic's.
 
- raise the cymbals, so that they are farher away from the toms, as long as the drummer is able to play that way.

- use cardioid mics facing away from the cymbals. Hyper or supercardioid won't work as well, though, as they're also picking up sound from behind. (For more on this read Harvey's big mic thread).

David
 
int said:
It's a miserable endeavor. But I have a few suggestions that might work:

Hyper or super-cardioid mics might help as they only pick up sources that are close (supposedly...you have to take that statement with a grain of salt).

Click to expand...

Get out the salt. Anything other than cardioid mics will increase the problem.
 
thanks

Ok thanks for all the thought and opinions. I can't at this current time use software plugins because im recording with adats and mixing down into a masterlink.
I think im going to attempt muting the tracks when hes not playing the toms, essentially this is the same thing a gate would do , correct?
Ive tried different mic placements before and they didnt help much. As a whole it doesn't sound that bad with guitars and everything mixed in but the problem im running into if i want to really hose the toms down with some cheesy 80s reverb or something the cymbals are getting soaked as well.
Can anyone recommend any usable gates that won't blow up my wallet? I guess i need at least 2 channels.
 
Try a dbx 266xl compressor. They are cheap (150 new, less used). 2 channels, with a gate on each.
If you have enough tracks available, solo the tom tracks and play them while recording onto blank tracks and mute as necessary as you go. Then you'll have basically cleaned-up tom tracks to use that you won't have to fuss over.
 
Flatrockrecordin,
how are the compressors on the dbx unit? I have been looking to invest in some more compressors, getting a gate/comp together would really be nice.
 
They are probably a step up from Alesis 3630s, but no where near RNCs which I use more than any other but they have no gate. The dbx sounds pretty decent on individual drums and bass guitar but I personally don't like them on vocals.
 
Ive had this problem many times. One time I had a drummer that was so inconsistant on his snare that at times the hi hats were coming through the snare mic louder than the snare itself. I have a DAW and all the DAW tricks wouldnt work. I couldnt compress the track because the hi hats would still overpower the snare, I couldnt gate out the hats because the snare would get cut too. I even tried to boost an extremely narrow band of frequencies to try to get just the snare hits to trigger drumagog, but to no avail. The hi hats were triggering the sample as well. In the end i think its all in the drummer and the way the drums are set up. A week or two before recording, make the drummer practice with the cymbals as high as comfortably possible and the toms as low and as flat as comfortably possible. He won't like the idea, but hey, hes a drummer (no offense to cool drummers). It will have a tremendous impact on how his drums sound on the record, and he'll thank you later. Also make sure he doesnt tap those drums like a pussy if hes wailing on the cymbals. I cant stand that. :mad:

Ok I'm done.
 
Uladine,
thanks for the advice. I think i may have been unclear, the tracks aren't really inconsistent or bad sounding but I feel they could sound better with a little more control on the amount of bleed ive got coming in on tom mics. Oh yeah, don't worry he beats the daylights out of the entire kit, it isn't just the cymbals.
Ok back to the topic of a gate, i did a little research with the search function and it seems that the general consensus is that the dbx unit isn't the greatest investment in the world. I noticed that behringer sells a 4 channel gate unit (multigate i believe) for about the same price as the dbx . I would really like to get another channel or two of compression out of this if at all possible. So another one i was thinking about was the composer Pro but im not sure if it has the gate function?
 
You'll want to get more info from others on this, but my experience with simple the gates (the early dbx166's) that had preset release times, was that they were ok for general noise control, but not so great on drums. The 166xl at least has variable release (but still no hold) and works for me in this respect and has all the other compressor goodies.
But I also got blasted pretty good one time for suggesting that one was of 'respectable' guality.
So to be safe...HMMV?:)
Wayne
 
OK I'll ask again

does the problem occur when the toms are playing or when they aren't and the bleed is what is bothering you....
Are the toms playing all through the track or during the whole song they are hit 6-7 fills? Is this a groove based on Toms playing like a "Jungle" type groove?.

If you can mute the tom tracks and open them during the hits then why go out and spend money on gates....
Do u understand that with gates...every time the gate opens you'll still hear the cymbals?
 
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