Sidechain Gate in Reverse!

[RecordingMaster]

Hi there,

Here's what I am trying to do...

I did a recent hard rockin' session and, although the snare I tracked sounded great in the top/bottom mics, oh's and room mics, it still didn't cut the mustard. So I'm using a few layers of Slate Trigger samples that I meticulously put together to sound as natural as original snare, but just bigger sounding, and of course cleaner. It sounds stellar, so that's great, but one thing i am losing is all of the tiny little ghost notes and ghost rolls when i am grooving. I guess I played the snare way too dynamically and it is making the little ghost notes/rolls as quiet as the hat bleed or kick bleed (not much bleed in relation to the loud snare hits, nothing more than usual). So when i bring the sensitivity of the Trigger up so that it Triggers those little rolls it sounds phenomenal and still pretty natural, but now the hats and kick bleed are triggering it. I couldn't find a happy medium so I set it to Trigger on most of the medium top loud dynamic off beats and the hard hitting downbeats. Sounds great but...

I've lost my ghost notes in the snare close mic, they are only really audible through the overheads, but I want to hear those little ghosts a little louder without turning up the OH's. It doesn't make or break the mix, but the groove really would be way tighter with those in there. SO...I thought I could use some DNA from the original top and/or bottom snare mic tracks to bring those ghost notes back in (without using a trigger sample on those of course). So I want a way to make the real original snare duck out when the kick hits or really loud snare downbeats occur, leaving mostly just the little ghost notes left in the signal. I tried side-chaining the kick and snare trigger to a compressor on the original snare, but that had some audible unpleasing artifacts. I really want to duck it - not just a gentle couple db's. So a compressor is not the answer. I want it close to silenced on the kick and snare parts, not compressed. I find a gate silences things while a compressor squashes them. Don't want to squash, I want it gone.

Any idea how to do this in PT9 or does anyone else have any other ways of doing this? The only other way I can imagine would be to manually go in and cut out any kick or loud snare parts in that original snare mic, leaving only the ghost notes/rolls. But then I'd need to fade in/out a million times throughout the song and I'd imagine it would sound unnatural.

Thanks if you can help! Cheers!

 

[Mo Facta]

The opposite of a gate/expander is a compressor. Duplicate your original snare track, set a compressor to a very fast attack and a very high ratio, like 10:1 or more, to duck the 2 and 4 snares. This should let the ghosts come through more. You could also filter out the low end to stop the kick from being accentuated.

Or is that too obvious of an answer?

In my experience, too much clownfucking only gets mediocre results at the best of times but YMMV.

Cheers

 

[RecordingMaster]

The opposite of a gate/expander is a compressor. Duplicate your original snare track, set a compressor to a very fast attack and a very high ratio, like 10:1 or more, to duck the 2 and 4 snares. This should let the ghosts come through more. You could also filter out the low end to stop the kick from being accentuated.

Or is that too obvious of an answer?

In my experience, too much clownfucking only gets mediocre results at the best of times but YMMV.

Cheers

But I REALLY like clowns!

Nope, no clownfuckery here. Yes it was somewhat obvious, but I'm sure someone else will benefit from reading that - sometimes the simplest way of doing things is the most effective. Thanks for the reply!

Follow up: What i ended up doing was my initial thought. I sidechained the triggered snare to a comp on the real snare track (used bottom mic only as the ghosts on that track combined with OH's sounded nice and natural with little attack than top mic). That way, it's only compressing any audio put out by the trigger - so I'm working by subtraction, adding back in what the trigger is missing and reducing the volume in the real track of what the trigger ISN'T missing. Yes, the artifacts are still there on those loud snare hits that I am compressing (or ducking if you will) on the real snare, but when combined with the triggered snare and most importantly in the mix, you can't hear those artifacts. If anything it adds almost a little more punch under the trigger track. To soften the blow on those compressed hits, I put an SPL transient designer on there after the comp insert, to reduce the attack and lengthen the sustain a bit.

Actually yesterday I opened up my DAW and pressed play, not remembering I had done this to the real snare track. I didn't realize it wasn't muted either. As I was listening I thought to myself, oh wow I guess there really IS enough ghosts in the OH's alone. Then I realized it was on. When I muted it, the ghosts were audibly quieter. So it sounded so natural with it in, that it sounded much more unnatural not having it in there. I left it at that. Oh yeah, I put a high pass on it as well to reduce the low end on the kick in the signal. Checked the phase with the internal kick mic and we're all good there.

Instead of deleting the portions on the real snare track where I'm not playing ghost notes, I left it in so there's no audible cues of it coming in and out. That way it's a constant signal of the snares when any element of the kit is being played. It makes for an AWESOME kit glue and sounds very realistic as if you were right there in the throne - just like you'd hear the sympathetic snare rattle when you hit a tom or the kick. Love it.