Bringing drums out of mix

[TL4500]

Hi.

We are at the very early stages of putting song ideas together and I did a quick/rough recording the other day.

We made a quick recording of drums, bass and rhythm guitar using a Zoom H1. I dropped the wav file into a Pro Tools track and now want to eliminate guitar and bass to just leave drums. I realise obviously that whatever frequencies I cut are cut on everything so to get what I actually want is not possible. So far I have just looked at 7 band EQ and cutting out the bass (which is straightforward and successful) and trying to find the best guitar frequency to cut (not so successful). The result is extremely "thin" sounding.

Q. What is the best method to get the optimum result here.

As I say, I am not doing this to get a great recording, just trying to make the best of the most convenient recording method at this stage.

Thanks,

T

[nige108]

I believe you will struggle as the frequency spectrum of guitars is very broad.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by TL4500

Hi.

We are at the very early stages of putting song ideas together and I did a quick/rough recording the other day.

We made a quick recording of drums, bass and rhythm guitar using a Zoom H1. I dropped the wav file into a Pro Tools track and now want to eliminate guitar and bass to just leave drums. I realise obviously that whatever frequencies I cut are cut on everything so to get what I actually want is not possible. So far I have just looked at 7 band EQ and cutting out the bass (which is straightforward and successful) and trying to find the best guitar frequency to cut (not so successful). The result is extremely "thin" sounding.

Q. What is the best method to get the optimum result here.

As I say, I am not doing this to get a great recording, just trying to make the best of the most convenient recording method at this stage.

Thanks,

T

1. Smack yourself in the head for not doing it better to start with.

2. Rerecord the drums by themselves.

3. Use a Drum VI.

You are probably not going to be able to use Slate Trigger (or similar) to try to replace the drum on that recording.

What you do all depends on what you are doing with the recording. If its compositional stuff, or you can't rerecord the drums, I'd be tending to just throw down a VI track.

[Craig F]

RX Spectral Repair and a lot of time

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Craig F

RX Spectral Repair and a lot of time

And even then the op will lose a lot the the cymbal work and definition between the different drums.

Or hire Mike Thornton aka Mr. RX

[AlexLakis]

Play it again, Sam!

No good way of doing it without taking A LOT of time (sidechain, EQ'd gating/replacement, etc..)

The best suggestion moving forward to the next time you record (if the Zoom H1 is what you're rolling with) is to re-position the recorder in the room and find a spot that provides a more balanced level between the three instruments.

I know the "fix it in the mix" mentality is popular these days, but spending 15 minutes finding the best place for the recorder to live will eliminate a lot of future work.

[Wall2Wall]

Not sure if this is out yet:

Zynaptiq Unmix Drums

UNMIX DRUMS is the world’s first plugin that allows suppressing or boosting drums in mixed music, in real-time. Using advanced source signal separation technology (a.k.a. de-mixing, unmixing, sound extraction, sound isolation), UNMIX DRUMS provides drum level control that ranges from up to +18dB of boost to virtually complete removal. Sporting an intuitive multi-level GUI, frequency dependent control of key parameters, our high-precision analyzer display, M/S operation and an output limiter, UNMIX DRUMS opens up exciting new options for mastering, music production, sample-based music creation, mash-up artists, remixers and DJs.

Applications for UNMIX DRUMS include:

Balancing drums against the rest of a song in mastering.
Restoring dynamics to over-limited music in mastering.
Unique EQ alternative for mixed music.
Suppression of drums in sampled audio to remove “clashing” or “flamming” when mixing with new content.
Drum extraction for creating new drum-kits.
Drum removal for Mash-Up creation.
“Drum Kill Switch” for Dj applications.
Pre-processing for voice extraction or similar applications.

UNMIX DRUMS supports all common sampling rates from 44.1kHz to 192kHz, mono and stereo, as AAX native, AU, RTAS and VST, on Mac & Windows.

[albee1952]

Zynaptic is definitely worth a look(and they should have a free trial). Ditto to recording the drums again to get the best results. The only other option I can offer entails a LOT of work on your part. That's basically building new drum tracks by using drum replacement plugins(to provide new sounds for each drum) and copy/paste the leading edge of each drum hit to its corresponding new track(so these small clips of drum hits can trigger replacement sounds). I have done this with very decent results, but it takes hours(had an old 8 track reel with just stereo drums and needed to update all the sounds).

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Zynaptic is definitely worth a look(and they should have a free trial). Ditto to recording the drums again to get the best results. The only other option I can offer entails a LOT of work on your part. That's basically building new drum tracks by using drum replacement plugins(to provide new sounds for each drum) and copy/paste the leading edge of each drum hit to its corresponding new track(so these small clips of drum hits can trigger replacement sounds). I have done this with very decent results, but it takes hours(had an old 8 track reel with just stereo drums and needed to update all the sounds).

Were those just drums? The op apparently has a mix of other instruments as well; he's given us no idea of how prominent or not the drums are in the mix. If they're more prominent it will be a bit easier but not that much.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Were those just drums? The op apparently has a mix of other instruments as well; he's given us no idea of how prominent or not the drums are in the mix. If they're more prominent it will be a bit easier but not that much.

Good point on the lack of info from the OP. In my case, I reconstructed the drums from a bad-sounding stereo(drums only) track. It took several hours, but was worth it in the end to keep the performance(since the actual drummer had passed away)