Mixing Toms with cymbal bleed.

[xmortumx]

Question: Whats the best way to mix toms that have a lot of cymbal bleed... i been mixing this song and im usually okay with leaving natural toms but this song has a lot of toms hits next to cymbal hits so theres bleed in most toms. I tried low passing them but the cymbals still manage to come out.... What other options do i have besides triggering?

 

[AllanD]

Copy paste from hits that don't have bleed?

 

[joeymusicguy]

Copy paste from hits that don't have bleed?

+1

Or replace with seperate recordings of the toms (which wouldn't have any cymbal bleed)

 

[greyskull]

edit the silence in.
compress them less.
and maybe replace them

 

[gabriel g.]

gate the toms (with a smooth fade out), dont use too drastic eq´s and less compression

 

[Ronnie_Rocker]

i always cut the noise inbetween hits. i call it manual gateing
Or use Ddrum mics as gate opener

 

[musickey]

i always cut the noise inbetween hits. i call it manual gateing

Same here

 

[Ermz]

Assuming you've chopped up the toms and the bleed is still an issue, your only real option is to replace those offending hits with clean samples of the toms. If it's a really rampant problem and you get the bleed on most hits then consider just straight up replacing the toms with samples of themselves. See if you can get away with augmenting 50% or so and make the bleed manageable.

Still, when I get badly recorded toms I lose a ton of respect for the project. I really love great sounding natural toms, and anything less is failure IMO.

 

[xmortumx]

Yeah I did chop the toms hits but the cymbals manage to come out on some hits... so quick question when tracking whats the best way to track toms to avoid cymbal bleed, is it all in the mic placement? or is this issue something we just have to work with?

But yeah thanks for advice meanwhile ima replace the tom hits with other tom hits that came out clean

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Same here

same here.

 

[ahjteam]

Yeah I did chop the toms hits but the cymbals manage to come out on some hits... so quick question when tracking whats the best way to track toms to avoid cymbal bleed

mic choises, placement, angling, recording tests and raising the cymbals a bit. It really takes maybe 1 hour more when recording compared to 10 hours of editing. Also using baffles can prevent some of the bleed

 

[Ermz]

Those mic baffle things rock hard.

 

[jangoux]

also make sure the drummer hits the toms like a man. I always record drummers that have two personalities : one man-ish for hitting the cymbals and one, like a little girl, for hitting the toms

 

[drew_drummer]

This is exactly why I recorded the underside of the floor tom recently. I was just getting way too much bleed from the ride cymbal.

Mic positioning is absolutely key if you wish to have acoustic toms without cymbal bleed.

 

[xmortumx]

I use sm 57 on toms, and ill look into mic baffles
What im thinking is of getting some ddrum pro triggers so that i can have more accurate triggers,and try that gate opener idea...btw how to tom rolls with ddrum pro triggers sound more (realistic) ? or about the same as mic triggering?

 

[hurdy]

Dude you need to place the cymbals alot further away from the toms!
Just raise them higher & trying pulling them out away from the kit abit more
And when the drummer whinges, slap him in the face with your shoe (at the same time slap him again & tell him he hits the toms like a fucken homo)

 

[Uladyne]

+1 to the statements about cymbal placement and drummers hitting drums like sissies.

If their ego prevents them from moving their cymbals around, be sure they realize that a good drummer would have no problem adjusting to the new cymbal placement, and that if they knew jack shit about recording drums, they wouldn't have their cymbals 2 inches above their toms and they must be somewhat new to the recording thing. Let them know that their ego will cost the band money in all the hours spent fixing their retardation in order to fool listeners into thinking that they're actually a decent drummer. Get the rest of the band involved in making him feel like a dumb puss nuts piss for brains asshole.

Yea I've been drinking.

WHAT.

 

[JamesNorman]

To use the triggers as a side chain there is two ways to do this, record the trigger and the tom signal then run a gate with a side chain on the toms with the side chain being the triggered signal.
The second is to run the triggers straight into the side chain of a hardware compressor/gate and set it manually. then just record the tom signals that run through the gate.

 

[wishtheend]

+1 to using triggers to sidechain gates. Even if I don't plan on sample replacing a kit, I'll still record all triggers just for this option. Still need to have proper mic placement, and get the drummer to hike his cymbals up and away from the mics as much as possible - but really beats manually editing all the hits.