Hihats must die.

[Sloan]

Ok, we've all got too much fucking hihats in overhead tracks. I do not close mic cymbals, and there's a fuckton of hihat coming into these fuckers. I experimented with sidechaining those bitches to a compressor on the overheads. THERE HAS GOT TO BE A BETTER WAAAAAAYYYYYY. right?

 

[FIXXXER]

dunno if this works but if you had a direct mic track you could
flip the phase and try to eliminate the hi hat in the overheads track,
just an idea. please correct me if i am bullshitting

cheers
S.

 

[Tommy Gun]

And that's why I close-mic cymbals.

 

[Sloan]

I would have close mic'd but i just upgraded to 16 channels and don't have enough mics/cables. LOL

 

[El_Gato]

You can't replace the drummer's technique. Automation like crazy maybe?

 

[Erik Monsonis]

EQ them out of the mix then

 

[B36arin]

Using the hihat track to sidechain a compressor/limiter on the OHs sounds like the best way to do it using plugins imo. Andy has said that he uses a sidechained limiter to get rid of snare in the OHs, I don't know if this would work on hihats as well. You could also try EQ...

I don't know how your song arrangements are, but if it's not super complex you can just automate the OHs down where the hihat is being used. If it's pretty standard music(hihats in some sections, other cymbals in some sections) it shouldn't take too long.

 

[John_C]

dunno if this works but if you had a direct mic track you could
flip the phase and try to eliminate the hi hat in the overheads track,
just an idea. please correct me if i am bullshitting

cheers
S.

not gonna work unfortunately, the 2 OHs will be picking up the OHs with vastly different phases and the HH mic will be out from them too.

My advice is persuade the drummer to hit them less hard (cranking the HH mic in their headphoness will often help with this thanks glenn), or persuade them to have them a little tighter, which will make them less noisy.

 

[Sloan]

I'm just fishing for ideas/suggestions. This is for my punk band's album and none of these people are very good musicians at all, the drummer is actually a bass player, two of the people involved are seriously bipolar (pita) etc... Shouldn't be stressing over this for what it is, but any type of spice to cover the taste of this turd of an album would help.

 

[Sloan]

Fuck it. I'm just banning hihats and chinas completely.

 

[Tommy Gun]

Fuck it. I'm just banning hihats and chinas completely.

...Don't do that! Automation FTW.

 

[DestroyTheColossus]

Sidechain compressor triggered by a high hat close mic makes it manageable for me.

 

[Sloan]

Sidechain compressor triggered by a high hat close mic makes it manageable for me.

I did close mic it and thought about this, might give it a shot. This playing is very erratic so it may not matter anyway. :Shedevil:

 

[BLUElightCory]

1. Good high hats (thin/quiet/dark - Zildjian K or equivalent FTW!) - Beg, borrow, or steal some great hats because if the hats don't sound great, your drums won't sound great.
2. Good drummer who can mix himself (i.e. hits the drums hard but doesn't kill the cymbals) - sometimes you have to really kick the drummer's ass to make this happen.
3. Point/position OH mics away from the hats

These three things will help you more than any fancy processing/automation tricks.

But since it's too late and you've already tracked, then you're stuck trying to fix it with processing. I'd dial in a separate EQ to tame the hats and automate it to turn on whenever the drummer is playing the hats (but leave it off when he's not). This way you're not completely compromising your OH sound just to fix the way the hats sound.

The suggestions of using a sidechained compressor and/or automating the volume of the overheads could work too.

 

[greyskull]

Yeah... Hats are a nightmare... Always fighting to get them out of something...
But as Cory said. Quieter darker Hats, and beating the drummer to play them quieter is the best cure for next time round!

 

[Sonic75]

You could also try a de-esser...some times ago I used it on some OH with too much HH with good results.

 

[B36arin]

If you're still tracking you could try the ancient trick of close mic'ing the hihat and cranking it in the drummer's phones so that it sounds WAY too loud without you telling him what you've done. If he listens to what he's playing it could help him hold back on the hats, you never know...

 

[~BURNY~]

Agreed, open HH are evil. Forget about deessers, side chain stuff. Don't be lazy. Ride the fucking OH like grown men do.

 

[MetalSound]

another vote for deesser.

 

[Tommy Gun]

Agreed, open HH are evil. Forget about deessers, side chain stuff. Don't be lazy. Ride the fucking OH like grown men do.

+1 and