Noise Gate on Snare

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Hey all,

How do you apply Noise Gate (if any) on the Snare Top microphone in a recording ? The hi-hats bleed a lot through this mic in the mix I'm doing, and when I get rid of it with the Noise Gate, since the hats only passes thru when the snare does, it gives me a very hi-freq snare, a mix of the snare and the hi-hats if you understand what I mean. Any advice would be welcomed ! =)

Thank you,

Brett

 

[Kevin Kitchel]

Well, I know Andy does this, and I do it too:

If your gate has a "key" input, hook a trigger up to the drum, and route the analog signal straight from the trigger into the key input. The trigger opens the gate, not any loud kick, hi hat, or tom hits. You could also put some absorbtive material in between the mic and the HH. A mini-gobo. But none of that helps you if you've already tracked the bleed from the drummer who can't balance his HH with the rest of the kit!

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Hi Kevin,

Thanx for your answer but actually, the tracks are already recorded... Any other suggestion ?

 

[Andy Sneap]

trigger it!, sample a hit with no hat, mix it in

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

And completely remove the original snare ? I guess no... But I won't get rid of the hi hats then... though it will lower it indeed. Shall I use multisampled snare trigg ?

 

[alexrookie]

hi brett and others,

i know your problem - i have it on my own, too!
i mix a triggered snare with the exs 24 in logic to my "expandered" original snare. the expander i use, works a bit like a gate, but isn't that drastic and more natural! i always use the original snare drum, too - because a triggered snare sounds like a fucking machine gun in a fast fill in, but combined with the original snare it is o.k.! sometimes i have to correct the trigger in time, because logic build me some wrong midi notes out of the original snare track!
that`s my way! tell me what you think about it - thank you

bye
alex

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Thanx alexrookie for your tip,

I tried it (though using Cubase and Drumagog) and I'm not quite satisfied with the result in fact... Doesn't sound very realistic to me. Maybe I should dig deeper and try harder to make it work by tweaking but before losing too much time on this, I'd like some opinions about the hi-hat bleed through the snare mic. Do you guys think this is a real problem or I should leave it as it is ? Here is a sample file of the unprocessed snare top track :

http://tinoo.free.fr/andy/snare.mp3

Actually I think my main concern about this is that the hi-hats, coming from the overheads and the snare mic, is not well placed in the panning image, it's too much in the center while I'd like it to be more on the side. This center position also increases its volume obviously.

So, should I tweak or should I go ? ;-)

Thanks for your answers

Brett

 

[alexrookie]

hi brett,
after listening to your snare i think you should keep it as it is !
the overheads level+hh is absolutely o.k.!in my case they are louder and so i had to tune the snare like i told you.
bye
alex

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Thank you Alex,

You've just prevented me to spend too much time on something that wasn't worth. If it ain't broke, don't fix it they say

Thanx again

Brett