Snare bleed in Kick mic making me MAD!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter vidurm
  • Start date Start date
V

vidurm

New member
Hi,

Greetings from India! I know I don't post very often, but I have been regularly going through these forums and am in awe of everything!

I have a Yamaha Rydeen Kit with a pearl demon drive that my brother plays. I mic'ed it up using (Please dont shoot me) the CAD Pro 7 drum micing set. After many months of playing around, I have "almost" achieved my desired drum sound and have gained enough expertise to make the drums sound the way I want to having song to song variations.

BUT

There is one big issue. I recently delved into the world of drum trigger(ing) and realised that it is actually possible to get that dreamy bad ass metal kick drum sound without having 2 kick mics and a very good drummer (haha! my bro has been playing for the last 10 yrs! But dynamics associated with reocrding arer new to us all). There is one issue that I am having, currently the mic is placed on the right side of the beaters, towards the edge of the bass drum, between the floor tom and the bass drum, pointed a little downwards. The problem with triggering is that even though I have tried all possible gate settings, sometimes the snare and the floor tom end up triggering the kick sample, which gets very irritating.

Is there any way I can reduce this bleed? My BD is full of blankets and pillows, maybe I should try to make a BD mic tunnel thing and try it out? Any advise would be welcome! Thanks!
 
Use better mic techniques next time. I've recorded drums a billion times and I've never had snare or tom bleed so bad in the kick mic that it could false trigger a freaking sample. Did you mic the outside of the drum or something?

Even though you say you've tried gates, I suspect you're not doing it right. If you're flat out using a sample and not blending the original in, then use a gate and limiter to accentuate just the kick transients. Or manually go into the track and cut out the hits you don't want.
 
Thanks Greg!

Yes am actually micing the outside of the drum only, not the inside. Will definitely explore the gating further. But the thing is that at those moments when the bass and snare are to be played almost simultaneously (I say almost because if played together then it would not matter), at those times the sample is triggered twice..

Maybe I will try micing the inside, shift all the blankets to one side and put the mic inside, maybe that stops the bleed.

Am open to any other ideas anyone else may have! Thanks!!
 
If you're only using one mic on the kick, mic the inside. Blankets, pillows, underwear, dead cats, etc do not stop bleed. Mic inside the drum up near the batter head with the mic pointed downwards at the contact spot. That's about as bleed free as you're gonna get on a kick.
 
Greg_L said:
If you're only using one mic on the kick, mic the inside. Blankets, pillows, underwear, dead cats, etc do not stop bleed. Mic inside the drum up near the batter head with the mic pointed downwards at the contact spot. That's about as bleed free as you're gonna get on a kick.
Click to expand...

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please dont say this!!! haha!

Will try the said position and get back tomorrow... (Did that sound cheesy or what..)

Thanks!
 
Another thing you can try is if you have a case for that kick drum (like a padded SKB hard case) put the mic in it and push it up to front of the kick to where the kick just starts to go inside it and then drape a blanket over the joint.
It will help a bit to get the mic away from the player side of the kit.
 
Yeah, I agree with Greg L on his suggestion. For recording purposes it's usually good to get your kick mic inside the drum and up near the beater (and hopefully it's a hyper cardioid) and pointed down a bit is a good solution. I have a hole cut in my reso head at about 4 o'clock and I use this for live as well. This allows you much more control over the sound you want from your kick (and it must be on a totally devoted track so that you can play with it afterwards). I can also understand the want and need for some drummers to keep the reso head undisturbed, but it creates more problems when using a mic.

Even after all of this, you may get some very faint bleed, but don't worry about that because it will disappear (or should I say, become unnoticeable) once the snare gets into the mix.
 
Take all the pillows and blankets out of the drum. All they do is make the drum quieter and deader. If the kick is quiet and the snare and floor tom are loud, that is half of your problem.

If your kick rings too much without and dampening, put a blanket in it to just touch the heads. You don't need to fill the thing up.

Micing from the inside will help as well.
 
Well it depends on what sort of drum sound you want. Miking the outside head gives you a different sound then miking the hole, or even miking halfway inside, or up to the batter head. All different tones, depending on what you want.

But if you're using triggers, then I guess it doesn't matter.
 
Seafroggys said:
Well it depends on what sort of drum sound you want. Miking the outside head gives you a different sound then miking the hole, or even miking halfway inside, or up to the batter head. All different tones, depending on what you want.

But if you're using triggers, then I guess it doesn't matter.
Click to expand...
But he is talking about micing the batter head from the outside. It is a valid sound, but the bleed is going to be an issue.
 
Wow! Thanks for all the replies! Am soon going to set a few days apart just for trying out all of the suggestions and then get back and post some samples!

Thanks everyone!!
 
If you need to get really aggressive, some guys take the front head off of the kick drum and then stick a mic in the drum. Once the mic is in there, then cover the front with a big packing blanket. I guarantee you won't have any bleed with that setup.

You probably won't need to do that. Just porting the resonant head and sticking a mic in the hole should do the trick. Good luck!
 
Another thing to keep in mind, especially if you need to make your previously recorded tracks trigger properly, would be to set up an extreme low pass eq on the kick track before triggering it. I'm fairly certain that with some clever eqing and careful adjustment of your trigger threshold/retrigger interval time you can get some useable tracks out of what you've already got. But miking inside the drum is definitly still a good idea for the future.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top