any drum edit tricks to share?

[skyking]

i dont have the luxury as of yet to have any noise gates so on a recent drum tracking session i have cymbal hits and snippets of hi hat hits on my snare track that sound weird.......although i have stuff much better than it was originally im wondering if drums are just time consuming to edit or if im doing stuff wrong...got any tricks to share for cleaning tracks up? chas

[Chris Cavell]

apply noise gates after the fact...i've got a remarkably huge assortment of plugs, expensive ones too, but I find myself using the digirack gate instead of the others (it's pretty much the only digirack plug I use). It's actually pretty good and very intuitive. If you don't want to use it, try the strip silence function and then apply fades afterwards using the fades command.

[graveleye]

careful with the strip silence... you can strip more than you want in a heartbeat.
Man, I edit drums all night sometimes. Personally I enjoy it. I usually dont worry about stripping the hi-hats, snares, OH or even the bass drums... gating works well for those. Mostly I just cut out the air on the tom tracks, or wherever the instrument is not being played... it is usually pretty simple, but everyone has their own set-up and tastes so what works for me might not work well for you.

[stevegrisham]

I record drums with the noise gates and a tiny bit of compression on.
No compression on the overheads. And of course no gates on ovr hd.
I have a drum kit that stays set up in the studio though.
Steve Grisham
http://www.cdbaby.com/ghostridersband

[skyking]

i know what you mean about editing all night.....i think ive even editted all night and then didnt hit save......i should be the poster child for the learning the hard way .....my left hand is in the shape of a chicken claw now but man can i hit control/shift and E in a hurry thanks keep em commin .....chas

[where02190]

I record drums with the noise gates

Why? one mistriggered gate could mean ruining a perfect take, and it means additional hardware to run through before you record. there is absolutely no advantage to gating on the way in, and alot of disadvantages.You can jsut as easily gate when mixing, and not be commited to what you recorded.

Automation is IMHO a much better recourse than gating if you must adjust levels to reduce bleed. You can tailor it to the dynamics and performance much more detailed and precisely than a gate.

Of course the key to drums is getting good tracks going in, so you don't have to fix in the mix.