Reducing tom decays?

[mrinaldotnet]

How do people generally go about reducing tom decays in a tom track? Is it done by muting/tuning of the kit before tracking or is it done later by manually enveloping or compression or some other technique? For example, I just checked out Andy Sneap's drum samples and they seem to have pretty long sustain, especially the floor tom. If I'm replacing a track with samples then I can always envelope the samples myself before replacement, but what do people do on a real tom track?

 

[nwright]

I just edited them in my wav editor and faded them out for a shorter decay. Once I did that, I ran a compressor on them. In the context of a song, you can't really notice the decay sounding artificial or anything. Just by fading it out to shorten the length of the decay, it still sounds natural.

 

[chadsxe]

You can try a gate but for a drummer that is not a machine this could be a very hard task.

 

[~BURNY~]

I often just kill the disturbing harmonics with a notch filter. This doesn't reduce the decay but helps a lot.

 

[chadsxe]

I often just kill the disturbing harmonics with a notch filter. This doesn't reduce the decay but helps a lot.

Never thought about that. Does this not take away from other thing like the attack.

 

[~BURNY~]

Never thought about that. Does this not take away from other thing like the attack.

No problem as long as you use a small Q plus the attack is in the high mid area while the ugly overtones are in the low mid most of the time.
It's also a great ear training exercise.

 

[chadsxe]

No problem as long as you use a small Q plus the attack is in the high mid area while the ugly overtones are in the low mid most of the time.

That would make sense.

 

[Gomez]

No problem as long as you use a small Q plus the attack is in the high mid area while the ugly overtones are in the low mid most of the time.
It's also a great ear training exercise.

Sound like a phase problem bonanza to me, but if it works, then it works.

 

[mrinaldotnet]

I took some tom tracks which had a typical "pitch bend" in the tom sound, and notched out the fundamental note at which the tom sound ends, thus leaving mainly only the attack (which is at a higher fundamental note). It feels evil to do this, but it kinda works..

 

[Ermz]

I think taking out too many 'musical' rings out of the tom destroys the sound of the drum. You can hear with more and more modern metal productions, after people have totally killed the body of the sound and only left the attack, it gets hard to differentiate kick, from snare, from toms.

If you want to kill the decay of the toms, the most logical way I can think of is to simply use a gate, and adjust the hold/release settings until you're happy.

 

[alexrookie]

my choice would be the transient designer or trans x or enveloper!
you can pull down the length of the toms as short as you want them to be, but normally you don't hear the long decay of the toms in a proper drum mix - just when the toms sound bad themselves and fade out with a very ugly uaahh!!

 

[chadsxe]

I think taking out too many 'musical' rings out of the tom destroys the sound of the drum. You can hear with more and more modern metal productions, after people have totally killed the body of the sound and only left the attack, it gets hard to differentiate kick, from snare, from toms.

If you want to kill the decay of the toms, the most logical way I can think of is to simply use a gate, and adjust the hold/release settings until you're happy.

This is the most logical approach (at least I think so). But you need a really even tracking of the toms.