I am going to be recording drums next weekend and I have never had the chance to record isolated pieces until now, after I bought the lewitt drum bundle. I will now be able to work with processing individual pieces on the drum besides just kick and snare and some room mics (thats all I really had to work with in the past).

I will be recording the kick beater and know I need to duck out the snare rattle when the kick is hit. There are many ways to do this but wanted to see if anyone here has either tried this and think it is worth it? If anyone has any insight on which virtual compressor would be best used for this process?

I have the bx_focusrite I wanted to add to each drum channel and then use the expansion/compression side chain feature... but didnt know if there were any other good compressor options that are good for sidechaining key inputs..

Thnaks!

 

I'd be more concerned with snare hits bleeding hard into the kick drum mic in that case,

anyway, some sort of multiband sidechain compression (targeting parts of frequency spectrum with different attack/release ratios) usually works on that,
Melda MDrumLeveler or SoundRadix Drum Leveler also work well for such thing

 

Usually, you'd be using a gate to achieve this. Best with internal sidechain, so the kick gate opens triggered by its low freqs and the snare gate opens by its root or higher freqs. Since the focusrite has a low and high cut which you can route to the gate this shouldn't be a big problem.
The main disadvantage of ducking is that they can't sound at the same time or even very close to each other.

 

Big up thanks for the tip, thats what I was worried about. I am going to experiment with the focusrite this evening. I do very much enjoy editing, and the fact I am not going to tape or anything allows me more control to be able to fix any problems with this limitation of this method.

Ive been watching a bunch of mix with the masters drum recording with Albini, Tchad Blake and Puig getting some awesome ideas. Its great how they all have a completey different approach and I'm mixing their ideas to fit my application. This ducking process was one from Albini I thought would be beneficial for the sound that we are going for, but of course only recording for real like this, about 8 times total with shit equipment, I am unsure if routing things like this is even necessary. That's due to my lack of experience working with complete isolated drum mic setups...

Hell I may do away with the bottom snare mic and use a mono mic like I have done in the past... I love experimenting

 

This looks awesome... But I'm one of those mac guys.... and I just dropped 1k on some lewitt mics lol

 

A little bleed hasn't hurt any...drum recording. I'd be more worried about hihat into top snare mic.
I figured Steve Albini had tons of bleed in his recordings. He uses room mics as a way to camouflage it.

 

which DAW do you use?
there's really powerful script called MK Shaper for Reaper, there's even illustration example of howto dampen snare from overhead mics

 

I tried and I couldnt figure it out, I think for what I am going for the Softube Tubetech channel will be in order. I managed to key the snare with analog obsessions dbx comp and that was nice, but an attack and release time would be helpful. Looked around and the tubetech should work well and I'll test tonight. I broke apart an old ghetto ass twin giga-tube stereo set and wired one of the woofers to an old TS cable I have and thats awesome for the kick sound... so I may not be needing to use the beater mic anymore and will do a speaker on the outside of the head and my new kick mic inside the kick, so that way I dont have to mess with the snare bleed for kick stuff. That speaker gets literally no high end which is helpful

 

here's a workaround which might make more sense for you:
duplicate a track you want to use for keying or sidechain key source, do any plugins/processing on it, and THEN use it as sidechain input source
(you'd need to disable master send/output of that track, as you don't want to hear it yourself, only use for the sidechain feed)

 

Most of the time, you don't NEED to duck this. It's not an instrument bleeding into another instrument's mic. It's just part of the drums sound. And it will be still present in overheads & rooms mics. Even in the kick mic itself if you boost enough the highs. Cymbals and hihat bleed in the close mics is way more problematic.

 

If you can find legacy version of these plugs

drumatom by accusonus - Microphone Leakage Suppression Application (kvraudio.com)

drumatom player by accusonus - Microphone Leakage Suppression Plugin VST VST3 Audio Unit AAX RTAS (kvraudio.com)

I always did magick with this one...too bad accusonus people seem to have parted for other dimension

PeaceR

 

Yeah, Facebook/Meta killed them. I've been using it a lot in the past. iZotope RX has a "debleed" feature that can do something similar, and not only with drums, so I'm using that now (when it's needed).

But in OP's case, it will not help, as it's NOT one instrument bleeding into another's mic (it can remove the kick from the snare track, remove the snare from the kick track, but it can't remove the rattle from the snare).

But again, I've never ever felt the need to do something like this about snare rattle. You don't need to put extra-pressure on yourself because of this.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 11, 2023

Then maybe this free plug can do it

SnareBuzz | Snare rattle simulator | Free audio plugin (wavesfactory.com)

 

In which way?

From ducking to gating to none of both, interesting progress.

 

As in I couldnt figure out why when I had the sidechain routed to it and the key button pressed anything I affected it kept affecting the compression of the entire track.... like the key wasnt doing anything at all. I'll send pic when I get home.

I'm pretty sure I'd be able to use the tubetech channel wouldn't I?

 

Have a look at the yellow and green LEDs

I hope so, but the internal sidechain for a compressor is just for moving the low freqs out of the detector - in most cases. You'd need to switch it to external input and use the kick for this input. Then the snare track will be compressed when the kick plays, but this would be similar to a ducker with the problem I already mentioned.

 

Cool find I love wavesfactory stuff. This is good for making our $99 practice snare sound better for demos

 

OHHHHkk I missed this. I try to do stuff on my own first and with being new to compression tricks like this wasn't sure what I was supposed to be lookign for. THANKS!