Bleed on tom tracks

[Heabow]

I always get a ton of bleed - cymbal mainly - in the tom tracks. When I can, I use pieces of foam to have more isolation but the result is not that good. I tried md421s, sm57s, e604s in several positions, always ask the drummer to place the cymbals as high as possible... but the cymbal are sometimes as loud as the tom hit! It depends on the drummer himself but even if he hits strongly, I get tons of bleed. So when I edit, I cut the unplayed parts and let the tom hits only but there is an annoying 'pssshhh' from the cymbal that was been played before the tom fill. It drives me crazy!

I think everything has been already said on this but nothing seems to work for me...

As an example, here is a video of Dagoba recording with Tue Madsen. Just 57s on the toms (mainly), no foam and their sound is great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vMTONYRGiY

 

[xFkx]

Well lately i've been embracing bleed more and more, and a hefty portion of my cymbal sound comes from tom and snare close mics, so that's one thought. The best you can do try to position the mics so that the cymbals is in the polar patterns dead spot

Other than that buy some triggers and blend in samples, sometimes it's hard to run away from this solution

 

[Heabow]

Sure there is something I miss due to my very short experience of drum recording. I bought Aggressive Drum recording guide which is awesome but I feel like I cannot improve this particular situation so maybe I have to learn to work with the bleed indeed...

 

[Studdy]

2 methods I use when bleed is bad.

1. Take clean samples of toms before session, and use the clean replacement samples.

2. The initial attack of the tom hit contains most of the high frequency information , the decay is mostly made up of low frequency information. Duplicate the tom tracks. , put a low pass filter on the track trying to remove most of the cymbal bleed but leaving the main beef of tom on track. On the duplicate track leave the highs in tact but gate or handcut the duplicate to just get the initial attack. Blend the 2 together. It works.

 

[Heabow]

Your second solution seems to be great. Will experiment this the next days. Thank you man!

 

[greyskull]

edit them out.

 

[Heabow]

Yeah, that's what I do. But it doesn't help when cymbals are loud when the tom is played.

 

[~BURNY~]

I love keeping natural sounds when possible but it sounds like an inconsistent drumming problem. I'd replace them in that case. You can also try drumatom...

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

Raise the cymbals as far as the drummer is still comfortable enough to play and mic placement.

 

[Heabow]

Raise the cymbals as far as the drummer is still comfortable enough to play and mic placement.

Already done.


Will try Drumatom! Thanks

 

[heshian46]

2. The initial attack of the tom hit contains most of the high frequency information , the decay is mostly made up of low frequency information. Duplicate the tom tracks. , put a low pass filter on the track trying to remove most of the cymbal bleed but leaving the main beef of tom on track. On the duplicate track leave the highs in tact but gate or handcut the duplicate to just get the initial attack. Blend the 2 together. It works.

This is actually a really great idea in theory. I'll have to try it. Thanks for the idea.

 

[chaosmonger]

I also duplicate tracks, one for the attack (highs) and the other for the body.

Two things that improved my results A LOT using the aforementioned method:

FIRST:
Try the Audix D2/D4 for toms. I LOVE them... nice clear tone and little bleed (I HATE 421's because of the bleed)

SECOND:
Use Waves C4 for the "attack" track as an expander (fast attack and release) on the desired frequencies (hi mids and highs) so the hits "jump" far above the cymbal bleed. You can also compress the frequencies you don't want ... for me that plugin (often used as multiband compressor for guitars) has worked a lot better than any other expander/gate/transient designer... try it!

Hope that helps!

 

[Studdy]

Your second solution seems to be great. Will experiment this the next days. Thank you man!

Cheers \m/

 

[ze kink]

I like SDC's or LDC's on toms because the bleed sounds far nicer with them. Other than that, miking both the top and bottom of the toms and fading out the bottom mic slower than the top mic helps; something I saw Kurt Ballou talk about in his Crativelive video. Kinda the same logic as with duplicating the toms, but natural. Occasionally just being really careful with edits is all you need though.

 

[The StabbinCabin]

Weird, I was about to post a thread about this. I spent a few hours chopping up duplicated tom tracks- it works, but it is a pain in the ass. I want to get into multiband expansion. It would be cool to have the ability to control the envelopes according to velocity and other drumming variables. Drumatom is on sale like 100-200 off the normal price on Plugin Alliance. I want to try it, but I can't justify spending that much money when I could get C6 or FabFilter stuff. Idk.

 

[Machinated]

mic closer to the drum at the expense of a slightly less natural sound, raising the cymbals as much as possible helps a ton too. edit out noise if the bleed isn't contributing nicely and use less compression.

 

[JeffTD]

Less compression, mic closer, make sure the guy is hitting the toms hard as fuck, or at worst overdub the toms.

 

[joelplagues]

Less compression, mic closer, make sure the guy is hitting the toms hard as fuck, or at worst overdub the toms.

+1 to this. the only time bleed is becoming a problem for me is when the drummer is hitting too light.

 

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

Another nice little trick that could be used while tracking is to crank the cymbals almost painfully loud in the drummers monitoring, leading to softer cymbal hits and less bleed.

 

[Hankyu]

Another trick I've heard about is to record the drums twice. First time without cymbals and the second with cymbals or just cymbals. I don't like that but I think "I, the breather" recorded their drums on the second album like this.