Idea for controlling bleed on toms

[tgs]

I've been going through the usual task of cutting out silence on tom tracks today (luckily only two toms on this recording) and I've had to deal with the usual cymbal bleed. Lots of decisions on cymbal bleed vs tom decay indeed, but in the midst of it I decided to experiment a little.

The floor tom has quite a lot of bleed from the ride, so at one very obvious point I decided to use the pen (in Cubase) to try to draw away the transients. The tom decay is still dominant, so I just kind of followed the shape of the waveform to remove the squiggly-ness so to speak. This actually worked like a charm! The downside of it is that it takes AGES. But it got me thinking: wouldn't this be possible to actually do in an automated form - given that the bleed is not too extreme and the tom signals are kind of "in control"? Is there already something similar available? And if not, could someone PLEASE create it? :Spin:

 

[topsoul182]

I don't track natural drums too often but I read somewhere on here that the best way to control bleed is take samples of the tom after recording and paste in the sample for the last hit of the fill so you get the full decay with no bleed.

- that doesnt really answer your question but it could be another solution

 

[sawtooth]

Did you take triggers of the toms? If so you could put gates on the tom mics and feed the side chain from the triggers.

 

[if6was9]

I don't track natural drums too often but I read somewhere on here that the best way to control bleed is take samples of the tom after recording and paste in the sample for the last hit of the fill so you get the full decay with no bleed.

- that doesnt really answer your question but it could be another solution

I do this but sometimes the hit can stick out if it's a little louder and cleaner hit than the other hits. It helps to take lots of mid velocity samples of the toms when recording the samples and be choosy about the samples you use

 

[crillemannen]

Bleed is your friend. I love bleed. You mentioned that the floor tom and the ride. Well i usually get more separation with the bleed from the tom mics. The high tom usually picks upp the hh --> tada you wont be needing a hh mic. Floor as you mentioned ride and china --> tada you can use that as a ride mic.

Just ride faders and use the bleed in a positive way.

 

[tgs]

I of course work with all of what you mention (I always record samples of the kit, I sometimes replace the last hit with a clean sample, etc etc etc) and I expected to get some answers like this. But if we can please refrain from any COMPROMISES, I specifically want to know if anything like I mention would be possible in some way. It would be a very interesting solution if it was possible to have it done in an automatic and not so time consuming way. Basically, something with a automatic variable LPF may be an option here since tom sustain is mostly present in the lower frequencies.

Crillemannen: I hear ya, and I'm all for solutions that work for people. When I visited Sunlight Studio back in the days I was surprised to see that Thomas didn't even use overheads, he took all the signal from the tom mics! I've never grown fond of this method myself, I always find the cymbals coming out very harsh sounding through the tom mics with the kind of EQing I prefer so my goal is rather to minimize the bleed. To each his own.

 

[crillemannen]

^

My point is just that you can make the bleed your friend. I used to hate it but once i started using it it has become a part of my sound and it can add allot of glue to the rest of the kit I usually automate the toms and raise the volume with 4-6db when the toms play.

 

[Heabow]

^

My point is just that you can make the bleed your friend. I used to hate it but once i started using it it has become a part of my sound and it can add allot of glue to the rest of the kit I usually automate the toms and raise the volume with 4-6db when the toms play.

Same here.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Bleed is your friend. I love bleed. You mentioned that the floor tom and the ride. Well i usually get more separation with the bleed from the tom mics. The high tom usually picks upp the hh --> tada you wont be needing a hh mic. Floor as you mentioned ride and china --> tada you can use that as a ride mic.

Just ride faders and use the bleed in a positive way.

works as long as the mics sound decent off axis. The tighter the pattern, the worse it will be off axis.

 

[tgs]

^

My point is just that you can make the bleed your friend. I used to hate it but once i started using it it has become a part of my sound and it can add allot of glue to the rest of the kit I usually automate the toms and raise the volume with 4-6db when the toms play.

I know. And like I said, if it works for you then that's great. For me it's too much of a compromise: I can make the toms sound exactly like I want them but then the bleed sound very annoying. So I'd have to sacrifice the sound I'm after for a compromise with the bleed.

That said, it would be unfair not to take into account the HUGE difference in different drummers' playing. I've worked with a few where I could just leave everything open and it sounds great. But this is far from the norm! Most drummer I work with go from slamming the toms hard to carefully fondling them.

But this is a whole different story. Again, I am curious about a practical appliance of the method I mentioned, someone who programs plugins might have some interesting input perhaps! Other methods for controlling bleed with different compromises have been extensively discussed elsewhere and there's really no need to bring it up in this thread.

 

[voidar]

If you absolutely have to decimate it, use something like C4 or C6. Either pull down the offending frequencies by band and add the gain back on hits, or pull the mic down and add gain by band only on the hits (this way you won' t be EQ'ing all the time, which changes phase).

This is similar to what people would do when splitting a tom or snare track intro a low-frequency, slow decay-component and a high-frequency, fast decay-component (parallell gate/EQ).

As the others say, try to see how much bleed you can get away with. A 4-6dB reduction can be enough.

 

[ratsapprentice]

I love it when people completely ignore what someone is actually asking.
I'm pretty sure someone could figure out how do what you're saying automatically.

 

[-Noodles-]

I use Metric Halo CS. The inbuilt gate is AWESOME.

 

[coreyb]

Sweet idea...did manipulating the waveform not detract from the tom sound at all ??

 

[Fandus]

You could use an l1 to squish the bleed and automate it to be bypassed on the tom hit and kick in after the hit?