Tips to avoid bleeding on drums?

[Jevil]

'Bleeding' is the right word? Anyway, I guess you'll undertand it.

When recording drums I want to avoid snare mics to record so much hithat.
Tom mics gets too much sound from other toms too. Sometimes almost at the same peak than the miced one!

Gate and editing is a part of the solution but I need advice to do the cleanest recording and then do less postproduction work.

How do you manage to avoid this?

 

[greyskull]

try and place the mics so that the drums you want to avoid are in the null points of the mics pick up pattern.
This can be VERY tricky on snare.

 

[Ionei]

A piece of foam on the end of a mic works well.
Atleast for snare, although i could see it being a problem depending on snare mic position.

 

[Morgan C]

I've never found a huge problem with bleed, unless the drummer isn't very good. Hit the drums soft and the cymbals hard. Focus on that and a good drum sound will follow.

 

[Jevil]

I've never found a huge problem with bleed, unless the drummer isn't very good. Hit the drums soft and the cymbals hard. Focus on that and a good drum sound will follow.

That could be one of the problems.

 

[AllanD]

I've never found a huge problem with bleed, unless the drummer isn't very good. Hit the drums soft and the cymbals hard. Focus on that and a good drum sound will follow.

I think you meant hit the drums hard and cymbals soft?

 

[gabriel g.]

It´s a pain in the ass with bad drummers

But otherwise just work with the bleed. It is a part of a hugh drum-sound

 

[plague_rider]

Hope i'm not throwing redundant info out there, but if you use the below diagram with an Dyamic shure as an example, best way is to make sure the area that picks up the least sound is aimed at the Hi-Hats

Basically, you want the arse end of the Dynamic (example mic, adapt for your own mic) is pointing at the Hi-Hat

 

[006]

Yeah aiming the mic correctly with the null directly behind it (best possible situation) will do a lot to begin with, and help you along the way to the end. After that, gate it well. With toms I always go through each tom track and do Strip Silence on them, and then clean them all up after that manually (doesn't take very long) and consolidate so they are a whole event again. This is important, to me, because if you think about it, that's 3-5 mics with bleed - it adds up. I'm not upset when there is "too much" drums in the overhead tracks, usually snare, you can use a comp/limiter keyed to the snare to duck the tracks a little and then use EQ to try and weed out as much of it as possible without making the OHs sound terrible. Basically though, getting the toms chopped up and deleting the bleed on those will do a lot to begin with, after making sure to track with mics placed as mentioned. The worst bleed usually after that is the snare/HH mics, for me anyway.

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

If the drummer is okay with it, place the hihat as high and as far as possible and confortable for him from the snare. Try to position the mic of the snare with it's tail as much as possible pointing to the hihat. In terms of toms, unless you have a good drummer there, then there's not much else you can do but a lot of editing/cirurgical gating, I've worked with pretty bad drummers and it is a pain in the ass but it isn't THAT bad seriously

 

[cloy26]

I'm not upset when there is "too much" drums in the overhead tracks, usually snare, you can use a comp/limiter keyed to the snare to duck the tracks a little and then use EQ to try and weed out as much of it as possible without making the OHs sound terrible.

any tips on doing this? I'm slightly confused... I've suffered from bad OHs for quite some time. haha

 

[kaomao]

Want separation? you need strong hits to get things separated!
Tell the drummer to hit hard on those skins!

 

[HandsOfDespair]

I don't have a hard time with bleed except the kick in the OH. Any tips to reduce it? Is there a way to completely reduce it, so you have the equivalent of a trigger track, just a ''tik tik''? P

 

[BLUElightCory]

A few tips, some of which have already been mentioned:

1. Get the drummer to play properly and to mix himself as much as possible. This means playing the kick/snare/toms with some power and consistency and NOT playing the cymbals so hard. If the drummer can mix himself properly you're already 90% of the way there. Loud snares are nice too.

2. Use the null in the polar pattern of the mic / use a mic with a tighter polar pattern / use a mic with decent-sounding off-axis pickup - this way the mic is picking up less bleed, and the bleed it DOES pick up sounds better. Point the null of the mic at the hat - be careful not to point the front of the mic at any other cymbals, or you're just trading one potential problem for another.

3. Use quiet, dark-sounding hats. Zildjian K / A series hats (and their equivalents in other brands) are excellent for recording.

4. Get the hat as far from the snare as possible.

5. Build baffles - I have a couple of foam baffles attached to goosenecks (like a pop filter with a slab of foam attached to it). I can put this baffle between the snare mic and the hat to reduce some of the high end in the hat bleed.

6. Take samples of the snare drum - this way if all else fails you have some natural sounding hits to replace the bleed-tastic ones.

7. DON'T rely on EQ/gating/compression to salvage your snare sound. That is, get it right going in so you can focus your energy on more important things down the way.

 

[nwright]

I don't have a hard time with bleed except the kick in the OH. Any tips to reduce it? Is there a way to completely reduce it, so you have the equivalent of a trigger track, just a ''tik tik''? P

Of all the drums, I've had the least bit of trouble from the kick in the OH's.

Are you high passing your OH tracks? Just doing that should be enough to make the kick just sounds like "tik tiks" on it's own?

 

[kaomao]

I forgot:
Last but not least, tune the kick really low, this way it will be filtered away from the OH's easily, cutting down from 700hz and below.
Almost the same goes for toms, of course you'll tune them higher, but don't tune them so much higher, you still need low end from them.
For snare it's up to you, I don't mind having it in the Oh's that much.

 

[Uladyne]

Want separation? you need strong hits to get things separated!
Tell the drummer to hit hard on those skins!

+1


All the mic positioning tricks in the world won't help you if the bastard is tapping on the snare and smashing his hi-hats. Make him play right. You might hurt his ego a bit, but the recording is more important.

 

[HandsOfDespair]

Of all the drums, I've had the least bit of trouble from the kick in the OH's.

Are you high passing your OH tracks? Just doing that should be enough to make the kick just sounds like "tik tiks" on it's own?

Yeah I did hipassed them. I don't know why, maybe he hit it very hard or I didn't put enough stuff in his kick, or maybe it was the way my OH were places. I suppose using SDC instead of LDC should help a lot too.

I forgot:
Last but not least, tune the kick really low, this way it will be filtered away from the OH's easily, cutting down from 700hz and below.
Almost the same goes for toms, of course you'll tune them higher, but don't tune them so much higher, you still need low end from them.
For snare it's up to you, I don't mind having it in the Oh's that much.

700hz seems very high, doesn't it remove a lof of fatness from the cymbales?

 

[AudioPhile777]

Geeeeez... what kind of gross/kinky shit are you into?

 

[plague_rider]

obv, the best isolation around... stops hihat bleed...

...rectal bleeding however