Editing tom tracks - your approach?

[Emerson Scott]

I cut the up the toms and just leave the hits, and cut out all the bleed.

[bassmac]

I leave it in. It sounds more like a real drum set, and the bleed helps thicken things up. In a dense mix, it might be too much tho - just depends on what type of sound you're going for.

[vlad]

I edit them out. This way when you turn up a Tom, you turn up the Tom hit, rather than the "wowooowowwoow" ringing that heppens everytime they hit something else.

If you leave them in, you'll also get phasing problems since those mics pick up a bit of the other drums. Doing so does "open up the kit" in respect that you dont have channels in the mix that cancel each other. Sometimes the phasing is negligible, sometimes it's a lot depending on your micing techniques.

I edit out just about everything like that, I leave the Overheads intact to provide that space in between the close mic'd tracks. sometimes this is a chore (try being in a death metal band) and sometimes it's not all that hard (my rock band is a cinch.)

Dont forget about strip silence, it takes some tweaking, but it can save you some time...

Hope that helps...
Martin

[tantejo]

i edit them out and trigger them also for a midi track. i don't edit or gate the snare, although i also make a midi track of it.
maybe if you're going for a more organic drumsound you can leave it, but the rumble and phase don't contribute to a tight drum sound in my opinion.
btw i use beyer opus 87 for toms and like them really well. check them out !

[lcouri]

leave'em. Otherwise I may as well just record a midi sample. Natural can still be 'open' - use a gate to balance out the ringing overtones.

[where02190]

The sound of a drum kit is the sound of the whole kit, not just the sum of the parts. A well tuned kit has a tone that is reliant on all the parts that make it up to produce that sound.

Since I rarely use tom mics, when I do I do not edit the tracks. Typically I use Overheads, room mic, kick and sometimes snare only.

Hope this is helpful.

[rwhitney]

I edit them out (and never use gates) because it cleans up the sound tremendously. When all those different sources hit all those different mics at different times, the kit can sound very messy. Removing the time between tightens it up a lot. As long as there are overheads and room mics, there's always enough organic material to fill in.

[Burton]

Well as long as everyone's in agreement, that settles it then. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[byteme]

It totally depends on the type of music. If it is a more organic sound (jazz, or something similar) I try to mic the kit as a whole and leave the mics open. Phase is extremely important with this technique, not that it isn't with others, you just can't cover it up later. If it is a more in your face Rock/POP sound, I usually try to get all the principle mics as in your face as possible. Thus I get as much bleed as I can out of those mics with editing, then use the overheads and compressed room mics to balance it out. In these situations I usually will mix in a sample on the kick and snare, just for extended low (kick) and high (snare). This is extremely common, some people think it is not cool, but almost every big engineer I have worked with does it, and it usually sounds great. Then I recompress everything but the overheads in an 1176. I love working with drums, sorry for rambling.
AJ [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[dkrz]

If the drummer knows what he is doing, the drum set should resonate as a whole instrument and should sound "great" without cutting out the transients or requiring too much isolation. Proper micing is also crucial.

Problem is, most drummers these days know absolutely nothing about tuning their own instrument, and, with editing capabilities being as advanced as they are today, seems to negate the necessity of learning how to play and/or even tune ones own instrument properly.

That would be like editing out a horn players attack on the mouth-piece. Or like a past discussion here on this board about cutting out a vocalist's breath noises.
The breath is what makes it natural sounding. Might as well just use vocal samples.

"Yeah., we'll just fix it in the mix". [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] It is almost as if players require no talent whatsoever. What we end up with on the radio is a bunch of over-compressed, mechanical and generic sounding crap...

It's like the whole Auto-Tune thing; just cause you can doesn't mean you should. Maybe the singer should learn how to sing? Or the drummer should learn how to tune? Oh, that's right...

dk