OK, my major focus is a recorded acoustic kick drum track. And if you mic the kick, typically you will hear the snare bleeding in on the two and four. How are you guys dealing with this bleed?
I understand, like me, that many people are manually editing/removing the bleed. Does Cubase offer a solution that I have missed?
I do see that when you quantisize the kick, the slices free up the basic kick beat. Is there a way to just cut all the beats at once that do not register past a certain volume? I think this would be ideal but… this is not in C6, right?
Sure, I get the idea of a gate (software version and analog), too, and I see where it possibly could do what I want but I wonder if there is an editing feature I am missing?
If you think gating is the solution here, is there one you prefer?
You also might consider Cubase’s “Extract MIDI” function. Page 291 in your Operation Manual. You may find that sample replacement may be an interesting alternative to gating as a solution.
Additionally…something you might consider on your next recording: gate the kick.
The trick is to not set the gate to shut down to compete silence. It’ll ruin the recording, sound unnatural and possibly gate out low level beater strikes. Set it to reduce the signal by no more than 6dB.
Leakage will still be present and it will sound almost normal when soloed or recombined with the rest of the kit…but the advantage will be found in post-processing. That 6dB of reduction will give any gate you plug in during mixing, a better chance of working more accurately and less invasively than had there been no gate used on the initial recording in the first place.
Or use a triggered sample replacement plug like Drumagog.
I don’t usually trouble too much about snare bleed on the kick track, it’s way down in level. Much bigger problem is generally hi-hat bleeding into the snare mic. Specially with the 90% of drummers who hit the hat far too hard and the snare far too soft (Drummers who have good control of this, take a bow)
I actually all but stopped using gates in the 80’s because it’s either ineffective (can’t gate out the very loud hat even with frequency conscious gating) or very audible (you hear the hat on the snare beat louder than the rest of the bar).
The BEST solution is to train the drummer, second best is to physically mask the snare mic using home-made or proprietary screen/reflexion filter arrangement, third best is use drumagog.
Generally, the snare/ hat is the only part of the kit I want to keep apart - for all other drum mics, bleed is part of the sound, and can sound great (eg snare rattle on tom hit). That’s a personal opinion, natch.
Thanks for the helpful answers. Understood, a perfect drummer is the perfect answer. However, well, however.
I doubt I will pursue the midi-beat replacement idea much as it appeals. But I will think about it and I appreciate those suggestions.
You know, as far as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ sounding kick drum tracks go, I go back to Pearl Jam’s first album. The recorded kick drum was accomplished by strapping 3 kick drum shells together, layering blankets over this, and placing a condensor midway in the tunnel. At least this is what I heard. At any rate, there is not a lot of snare bleed on that mic. And the results are obvious I think. You will always get full kit information in the OHDs and I am OK with using them as a source of overall drum enhancement - you can’t gate/edit these of course. The hi-hat, as you said, is an issue when the snare gets in there - especially with a suddenly energized rimshot from hell. And it happens.
I rebuilt a few projects here after reading your posts, particularly the gating ideas with mix down. I gated the snare and the kick - slightly, using the Steinberg gate - and batch recorded the results, brought them back into the project, and remixed. What I didn’t say originally is that when I group edit, if I persue the quantize idea, a super busy kick or snare track is even harder to lineup because of all the bleeding beats. So, the gated versions made the job easier of course, and yes, I had avoided this. Unfortunately the particular drummer has a great right foot but plainly ‘lost his place’ at one point so group editing became a problem. I found no work around here and mainly because of the OHDs. So this is a return visit for him.
So thanks for the input you guys, you have helped.
