Pumping Cymbals. How?

[noisewreck]

I just started to work on a new tune, and for the first time I feel that having those savagely pumping cymbals would be appropriate. The question I have is how does one achieve that without destroying the attacks of the kicks and snares? I'm sending the drums to a group track to compress them together using the UAD-1 EX1 compressor. The dillemma I have is that in order to get the cymbals to pump, I find that I need to reduce the attack to the point where it's starting to affect the attack transients of the kicks and snares. The only way I can think of I could achieve what I want is to sidechain the cymbals and use the kicks and snares to key the compressor. Unfortunately I don't have any stereo sidechaining capability (the only compressor I have with sidechaining capability is the KDFX compressor in my Kurzweil K2600, but that uses one side of a stereo signal to compress the other in sidechain mode, so it will only work in mono).

Any suggestions?

 

[noisewreck]

Got it!
What I ended up doing is splitting the kicks and snares to their own group track, and having the cymbals and hihats on their own. Set the compressor on the kick/snare group the way it was before, and set the compressor on the cymbal group with the fastest attack and fastish release. Left the cymbals and hihats at their original level, adjusted the threshold on the compressor so they would barely caress it. Then sent the output of the kick/snare group to the cymbal group enough to set in the compression, getting about 4-5dB of gain reducton, which is enough to pump the cymbals. I of course get the sound of the kicks and snares on the cymbal group too, but since their attacks are now chopped of, and the level is lower than the main kick/snare group, it just has the nice side effect of beefing up the kicks and snares even more. Woohoo! I'm excited.

 

[chessrock]

Noisewreck. The master of the cymbal-pumping drum compression thing.
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[noisewreck]

I think it's a thingy, not a thing

I'd still like to hear suggestions and other ideas.

 

[Raw-Tracks]

I'd still like to hear suggestions and other ideas.

This would still require a sidechain:

You could roll off the low end of the sidechain circuit. That will help prevent the kick from triggering compression. It will also prevent the snare, to a lesser degree. Some compressors have that ability built in.

 

[mixsit]

You did what I considered was the most direct solution.
As an option, you can cause a comp/limeter to 'track something (cause to triger) based on it simply being the hottest in the group mix.
I doubt it would apply in this case since kicks and snare have so much more energy, and the cymbals would be jacked way up when they were not being hit. Sort of another version of where Raw-tracks was going.
Wayne