Cleaning out crud from kick and snare tracks n stuff

[WhiskeyJack]

All,

Myself, and some old mates of mine are doing a cover collab from our respective locations within Narnia, and three of us are going to also take a stab at mixing. Mixing a live real drum kit isn't something i have done in years and really the last time i did it, it wasn't the best learning experience as i was fraught with so many other road blocks by the time i actually got to mixing i was wildly over budget and going into my own pocket, and the guys weren't going to pay me any more so i said fuck it and shit out their demo horribly in a weekend.

So, I have all my tracks locked / loaded and now i want to clean stuff up. Starting with the kick and the snare I want to remove anything that isn't snare out of the snare track and same for the kick.

A: Is that even a meaningful exercise.
B; If so whats the best way to go about it? Set up a gate? Or actually go and manually cut it up like a maniac?

If the latter seems like a good idea is there anyway that reaper can go in and do that mechanically for me?

it should be noted this is buddys first time micing a drum kit and i am sure it could have been done better but we all have to start somewhere and work with what we got right?! So perhaps his mic technique / placement may not have been ideal or whatever but this is a tester exercise wit hopes for more down the road of "Gettin the old band back together"

thanks in advance.

[Greg_L]

Well definitely do not manually cut it up like a maniac.

Gating the kick is okay. Gating the snare is sometimes passable but it's really tricky and you gotta be a scientist with the gate's controls. Usually the thing you want to gate out of a snare track is hat bleed. But if it's so bad that it needs a gate then the opening and closing of the gate on the snare track is gonna sound weird so it's best to just leave it as is and work with what you got.

[Farview]

Some of it depends on how you generally mix the kit. If you use the overheads to get most of the drum sound and the spot mics a little definition, gating the snare will work. If you are using the spot mics for the main sound and the overheads primarily for cymbals, gating the snare is going to sound strange.

If your drummer is consistent in his dynamics, you can use an expander on the snare to some effect.

This, like a lot of things, depends on what is on the tracks. Unfortunately, the more you need a gate, the less it will work.

[Lt. Bob]

so you're wanting to remove the bleed from other drumbs and/or any bleed from guitar amps and such?

I can't speak to using a gate since I've never used on but in my experience often removing the room sound which is really what bleed is, makes things sound weird

[vomitHatSteve]

I don't know if editing is the best way to do it, but Pipeline audio has you covered for how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfVHvd3aRJQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx7bJ4ePu8E

[WhiskeyJack]

Ok cheers every one. I'll give those vids a watch when i go into my boring meetings [mention]vomitHatSteve[/mention] !! Didn't that guy hang out here for like a week?

Thanks [mention]Greg_L[/mention] and [mention]Farview[/mention] that is all very sound advice. the kind i was looking for. this gives me something to think about when i go back at this. Farview what you said is something i wouldn't have thought to consider while trying to approach this from the get go. Great suggestion. I'll play around with the gates and stuff and see where i end up.

I didn't really want to slice everything up to clean it out and the snare might be kind of tricky in this case. there is a fair bit of everything coming into the snare mic itself. The snare (top only) is still the predominant piece in it's track but there is a fair bit of bleed coming off the hats, ride and kick.

[mention]Lt. Bob[/mention] Luckily there is no guitars or anything else in this stuff thankfully so nothing like that worry about here. It is just drums and stuff. but this guy is new to micing drums and i don't know that his mic placements are as focused as they should have been. Learning curves.

[vomitHatSteve]

Ok cheers every one. I'll give those vids a watch when i go into my boring meetings @vomitHatSteve !! Didn't that guy hang out here for like a week?

Actually... he might have? His videos are just close enough to Kenny Goia's that I get confused.

[Tadpui]

I've had pretty good luck using a gate on the kick and tom spot mics, but like was mentioned above, it's hit-or-miss on the snare.

I tend to use ReaGate because it's got some really cool features that can help make the gate less destructive. The pre-open setting is great to make sure the initial transient doesn't get clobbered (I usually set it to 6 or 7ms, or in that neighborhood). Then the hold and release allows you to tailor how much of the "lifespan" of the drum hit you want to pass through. And the hi and lo pass filters are great for getting it to only open the gate for the kit piece that you're wanting. It's a great plugin.

[Greg_L]

I almost always gate my toms. I tune them for big open boomy sounds, and they sound awesome to me, but they also will sit there and ring into the mics while I'm playing the rest of the kit.

[WhiskeyJack]

I've had pretty good luck using a gate on the kick and tom spot mics, but like was mentioned above, it's hit-or-miss on the snare.

I tend to use ReaGate because it's got some really cool features that can help make the gate less destructive. The pre-open setting is great to make sure the initial transient doesn't get clobbered (I usually set it to 6 or 7ms, or in that neighborhood). Then the hold and release allows you to tailor how much of the "lifespan" of the drum hit you want to pass through. And the hi and lo pass filters are great for getting it to only open the gate for the kit piece that you're wanting. It's a great plugin.

man that sounds great. Full transparency i have never ever used a gate before so this is foreign to me. But I had fully intended to use ReaGate.

And just so we are clear this gate useage is all in post/mixdown state right? Like i just apply the gate to the track as an effect yes like i would ReaEQ or anything else? ? Like i don't set it up as a send on it's own strip or anything?

[Greg_L]

And just so we are clear this gate useage is all in post/mixdown state right? Like i just apply the gate to the track as an effect yes like i would ReaEQ or anything else?

Yup, usually put it first.

[WhiskeyJack]

And just so we are clear this gate useage is all in post/mixdown state right? Like i just apply the gate to the track as an effect yes like i would ReaEQ or anything else?

Yup, usually put it first.

Awesome.

[vomitHatSteve]

And just so we are clear this gate useage is all in post/mixdown state right? Like i just apply the gate to the track as an effect yes like i would ReaEQ or anything else?

Yup, usually put it first.

That puts it pre-mixdown, right? You want to be gating individual drum mics before you do anything else to the kit.

You definitely don't want a gate bus tho! Sending multiple tracks would get all kinds of silly results like your kick opening the gate so your toms ring through again.

[Greg_L]

That puts it pre-mixdown, right? You want to be gating individual drum mics before you do anything else to the kit.

Yes of course. You can EQ before gate if you want, but usually the gate is one of if not the first thing in the chain.

Sometimes...rarely but sometimes...I'll gently compress a snare or tom track to even out the hits a little to make gating a little easier. My own ham fisted hard thwacking drum style of play makes my own tracks pretty even.

But I've mixed a lot of drums for people that are really inconsistent, and/or they use a lot of ghost notes and accents that a gate would kill. Using an expander, compressor, and gate in some combination can bring out the good and minimize the bad. It just depends on the track.

Once the whole kit is sent to a submix or bus then you can do broader stuff like fine tuning EQ and compression and reverb.

[WhiskeyJack]

You definitely don't want a gate bus tho!

Never. I have enough of a working knowledge of a gate that that would be silly. All i meant was like, a gate buss for the kick and gate for the snare. Which after i posted and read aloud sounded dumb in and of itself.

Once the whole kit is sent to a submix or bus then you can do broader stuff like fine tuning EQ and compression and reverb.

I will likely have questions about this too. Having used primarily EZ drummer for ages i'm spoiled with relatively good sounds that don't really need heaps and heaps of treatment. I'll give your drum thread a read too.