High Hat bleed in snare track

[qbert1]

I think I need to hear from the voices of experience. I was listening to my snare tracks solo yesterday and noticed a lot of high hat bleed (rack tom too). How do you guys work with that? Prevention solutions and solutions on what to do after-the-fact would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance!

[jimbob]

this may be obvious, so sorry if am patronising you, you can put a gate on. which can help

[Chris Cavell]

Obviously, mic placement, choice, and technique can all have a profound affect on the bleed.

One cheap trick though would be to take a cheap midi trigger with an analog 1/4 inch out and track it. You can easily eq and gate it then feed it into the sidechain of a gate on the "real" snare track(s). A cheap contact mic puttied to the side of the snare would work for this as well.

[Third Eye Studios]

Gating, using strip silence, eq, all of that stuff. I usually duplicate the snare once or twice, and do the butchering to the duplicated tracks, then mix back with the original. Hi hat bleed has been my nemesis. Use the polar pattern to your advantage and point the mic away from the hi hat as much as possible. I will also take a piece of cardboard and with a clamp, attach the cardboard (to the mic or hi hat stand) between the hi hat and snare to try and block the sound bleeding into the snare mic. Also try and get the drummer to move the hi hi hat further away if he doesn't kill you.

[qbert1]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem. As to the gate, I've never been able to tweek it so it sounds musical. Any further tips there?

[qbert1]

Or better yet, can anyone post their gated snare track in solo so i know what the possabilities are?

[Chris Cavell]

http://store.musicbasics.com/t-cm100.html

(Here's a really cheap contact mic that would probably do the trick for triggering a gate...just clip it to the rim.)

This method (or the method of "destroying" a duped track with insane eq) allows you to be far more precise with the gate...and helps to keep it from being falsely triggered. Use a loose gate...don't make it an auto mute...semi-fast attack with a medium-slow release and an audible floor should work well.

[Third Eye Studios]

Sidechain the gate to a duplicated version of the snare that is nudged back a ms or so (the nudge value dependes on how fast the gate is). You can achieve a 0 attack time like that. You can also sidechain the gate to a duplicated version of the snare that has been "strip silenced" (and nudged back if you need to). It just depends on the snare. Slow beats are easy, but get some fast snare stuff with lots of rolls gets hard. I think that using a little bit of 3 or 4 of these techniques, and then blending it back with the original is how I have to compromise.

[tapani]

How do you guys work with that? Prevention solutions and solutions on what to do after-the-fact would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance!

an ounce of prevention is to have a baffle around the hihat.

You could use fiberglass matting or plaster on an umbrella for instance, or my favorite which is to assemble something out of rubber car carpets.

The hihat is mostly hi frequency sound so being directional and having less energy it is easier to baffle out than lower sounds.

Some extremists play and record the drums one by one. I have heard some succesful results. Not something that I would suggest though.

Tapani

[rockrev]

Duplicate track, use Strip Silence & SoundReplacer on the duplicate, mix back with the original. If you don't have SoundReplacer, I'm pretty sure there's a demo on your PT install disc.

Hope that helps.

rockrev