Best way to EQ kick/snare bleed out of overheads?

[3tuxedo]

Hey guys, I recorded some drums the other day and they turned out pretty good for the mics i have, but I got a little too much bleed, I am replacing the kick and snare, so i don't want ghost hits. I have heard of people using compression for this, i have been EQing it and i am afraid that I'm making my OH's way too weak by taking out too much from them. Ideas?

 

[Machinated]

if bleed is a problem try to compress less. compressing things will make everything messy.

hopefully you'll have some good overhead tracks, instead of doing what everyone here tells you to do, try and get as much "kit information" as you can from those. it will also help keep it feeling a bit more natural with the sampled drums. squashed room mics can be cool too depending on what your room sounds like.

tbh, you might be surprised how little compression you need on individual drum mics, try going easy and you may have a more usable sound than you realise. I'd try and get the snare tracks sounding the best you can with none or very little compression and blend the samples with those on another fader so you can control when you want the natural snare with ghost notes up.

 

[visceral]

Well the kick can be greatly reduced with a HPF. Dont be afraid to set it fairly high. The snare on the other hand....wel lets just say if you figure that out I'd like to know as well haha.

 

[C_F_H_13]

If The OH sound good, I'd just sidechain the kick/snare to the overheads and have it dip quite a bit whenever they hit. Better scenario even is to put in volume automation on every hit so you can change how much or how little they did depending on what's actually happening.

As Machinated said, all compression is going going to do is make the bleed more apparent/messier.

Eqing out the bleed would be a nightmare, best bet is level automation or super fast limiting sidechain.

 

[egan.]

Aside from the good advice you've been given, if you have unlimited time and patience you can get rid of them with RX2.

 

[Trevoire520]

If you wanted overheads without shells in them then you should have just recorded cymbals and an e-kit. I don't see the need to kill snare in the overheads unless you've recorded the shittiest snare drum known to man.

 

[Deuteronomy]

Filter them at 500HZ and the kick can be basically cause no problems at all.
about the snare-it mainly lies on the body,and sometimes on the 1000/2000HZ,it really depends.
Use EQ mainly and compress them,but not that much

 

[Studdy]

Put Waves L1 on the overheads and pull it down until the point where only the snare hits are affecting it. Let back it off a touch. That with an eq roll off should get you close. Even deeper you could find the spike in the snare around 5k or so and do a couple db's of side chain compression on the snare. You'd now be polishing a turd at this point. The fast limiter on the overheads with a roll off is a quick fix/trick.

 

[Axell Strad]

Sometimes make the cut to 2 kHz sounds good, depending on cymbals of course. so, try this. There should not be snare sound.

 

[Daybreak]

Often times I don't worry about snare in the OH too much - They're too broad frequency-wise to try too EQ away, in my humble opinion.In the drum tracks I've gotten to work with the snare actually sounds pretty decent in the OH, and complements the snare-track quite nicely, so I'll just leave it as it is. Other processing I do to overheads is a highpass at around 600 Hz (might sound extreme, but IMO in a mix it's required), compress LIGHTLY, maybe add a high-shelf and some reverb.

 

[mva801]

Well it depends on how you mic things. If you mic the cymbals only then an aggressive HP can clear out some of the mud and leave you just the sparkle of the cymbals. If you mic'd it with say an x-y or ortf style stereo pair, then no wonder you're getting a lot of bleed.

The first thing to consider is the kit, tuning, and the mic placement. Maybe you didn't place the mics in a position where you maximize the cymbal sound and minimize what you pick up from the other drums.

That said, all these suggestions are good. Just be careful if you're limiting or side-chaining the overheads down that you aren't causing them to pump weirdly. Don't overdo it - short release times will help if you're sidechaining. If they are recorded well in a good room you probably don't need to HP at too high of a frequency, but of course that's all dependent on the cymbals, the micing, the room and whatever else is present in your mix.

Also it helps if you can post a sample and give the recording details....

 

[amarshism]

C6sidechain

 

[Ermz]

The idea behind overhead tracks is to give you an entire representation of the kit. Attempting to remove the shells from them entirely is a self-defeating process. The mics exist in order to augment the close-mic sounds and give a greater picture of cohesion and glue to the drums. The kick can quite easily be minimized with aggressive HPF, which removes most quantization and sampling issues in regard to kick editing, but trying to remove the snare or toms is self defeating. If you side-chain compress the close mics into the overhead tracks, you will be ducking the cymbals every time a shell is hit. If you stick a limiter on the back end of the OH processing chain in order to minimize snare attack, you will likewise duck the cymbals at odd points (albeit transparently, if done with a light touch).

If you want a super-separated sound it may be best to record cymbals and shells separately. Otherwise recording real cymbals and e-kit shells can work or vice versa. Whatever is most practicable for you.

 

[crillemannen]

Im totally with Ermz on this one. You want the recorded sound to help the samples, make em sound more natural. I actually like the mids that the OH brings. And if it is to much just HP up to 3-400hz and cut a bit around 800-1500hz. I usually use some light compression on the OH, just so the needle moves a bit, makes the snare snap a bit more and it creates depth. I never like the whole limiter idea on OH.

You can get both great sounding drums and great NATURAL separation if you mic the OH right.

 

[amarshism]

+1. More and more I attempt to maximize the shell tone in the ohs.

 

[El_Gato]

If you wanted overheads without shells in them then you should have just recorded cymbals and an e-kit. I don't see the need to kill snare in the overheads unless you've recorded the shittiest snare drum known to man.

This.

I usually fight the opposite: too much OH's bleeding. There are drummers who hit cymbals like it's no tomorrow.

Too much snare? Great, thanks for that. (Like Trevoire said, given it's a good, nicely tuned snare)