Ride cymbal tick in OH

[snedley]

Hi,
trying to mix a track here. Because of the hat bleed in the snare mic I'm trying to use the OH and room mic as the main part of the drums and just add the individual mics to blend. It sounds better except the stick ticking on the ride cymbals is too loud. Any ideas?

[papiel]

I have a similar issue with a mix I'm currently working on.
I found out that the ambiance stereo track captures the best part of the snare.
It works well for almost the entire song, yet there's a section in which the drummer turns to the ride, and the ambiance track turns into a giant "shhhhhhhh" with "ticks" from the stick hitting the ride.
I still wanted the snare from the amb track in this section, so I gated that ambiance track using the snare track as a side-chain. I automated the gate (talking in the box with Logic) so it's enabled only during the ride section. I tweaked the gate so that when it's closed it doesn't shut the track down, only ride it a few db's quieter.
With some little more EQ and compression I managed to get rid of the giant ride for most that part and still get the snare coming from the ambiance.

Hope this can help you out.

[snedley]

Thanks P. My problem is I'm getting too much tick and not enough sshhhh.
Not sure how to do the sidechain thing in SX2.

[bobby yarrow]

I've never succeeded in getting the tick out of an overhead or cymbal track. It seems to me that one of those transient designer plugs should work -- set the trigger on something lowish, like 500hz or something, and then filter fairly broadly -- but I've never had any real success just carving out the tick.

Usually, I find that if it's terrible, it's only terrible in 1 microphone. So, maybe the overheads have too much tick, but the cymbal mic is fine, or even the room mic, or whatever.

In the end, I try to compromise a little in track balance to keep the tick as low as possible, and then leave it. Mostly, once the rest of the mix is up, the tick isn't nearly the problem I thought it might be.

(Was just talking to a guy about a mix I did where there was a lot of rim hit on the floor tom. It bothered the crap out of me, because it cut really well in the overheads and moved the floor tom way out in what was otherwise a pretty narrowly centered drum kit. This producer guy asked me about the sample I used for the floor tom, was really impressed with how life-like it sounded. Of course, it wasn't a sample . . . don't know what that says about my treatment of the toms or the presumption of this producer, but I did think it was funny.)

[snedley]

Thanks BY. I'll solo those OHs and see if it's more in one or the other. Thought maybe a fast comp with a narrow bandwidth............

[Jay Kahrs]

No no no...compression is only part of the answer and geneally creates other problems or leads to creative envelope shaping of the cymbals. That's a cool thing, but it's a whole other bag.

If all you want to do is get rid of the attack on the ride cymbals...try taking a really narrow, super surgical parametric EQ and set the bandwith about as narrow as it'll go and then boost it ALOT and sweep it around until you really bring out the attack.

When you've really got it centered in and it's at it's loudest, do a full cut at whatever frequency you've dialed in and it'll kill it. That also works for acoustic guitar squeaks, snare drum ring and about a zillion other things.