Hi Hat bleed in snr mic....!

[indie]

So, what's your secret for keeping hat bleed out of the snr mic while tracking a hat happy drummer??
I'm going to try some darker hats on monday.
Micah

[wwittman]

Throw a bath towel over the High Hat and let the centre pole poke through to hold it in place.
Make him play THROUGH the towel.

seriously

[indie]

Originally Posted by wwittman

Throw a bath towel over the High Hat and let the centre pole poke through to hold it in place.
Make him play THROUGH the towel.

seriously

Thanks William...I'll give that a shot. Anybody try making a small barrier between the hat and snr mic? Like maybe a piece of light foam?

[SK1]

2nd the mic placment ......

Also try a more directional snare mic w/ good "off axis rejection" I've had luck with the beta 57.

Position of the drums in the room could be an issue too ....... what's reflecting back to the snare mic ...... (besides everything )



I think the foam idea is worth a shot too

Good Luck to you !!!!!

[heyman]

Make sure Top snare mic capsule is pointing away from the hihat..

So if you are sitting at the drums and the Hihat is on your left, position the mic in between them with the capsule pointed at the snare (see pic)

[indie]

I appreciate the advise on placement...but believe me...I try that first with every instrument before I eq anything. I didn't have this problem in the same room with a different drummer/kit before. I'm just wondering if there are any out of the ordinary techniques for this.
The last drummer had vintage hats and that always helps. But I don't have those hats for this session.

[SK1]

Is the kit against a wall ?? what's on the wall ??

Is it acoustically reflective ????

[marchhare]

Pop filter, ski hat. Put hat over pop filter. Clip filter to hihat stand. Position between
hats & snare. Works great.

[jonnyclueless]

I would think that a towl on the hihat would make in unbearably dull sounding.

[indie]

Originally Posted by SK1

Is the kit against a wall ?? what's on the wall ??

Is it acoustically reflective ????

A wall is about 3 feet behind the kit -- but I've had this problem with this drummer before in a different room. The playing is great, it's just a heavy right hand and hats are to bright. The studio has some darker hats that I'm going to try...I'm also going to crank the hats in his headphones.

[indie]

Originally Posted by marchhare

Pop filter, ski hat. Put hat over pop filter. Clip filter to hihat stand. Position between
hats & snare. Works great.

NICE! Thanks.

[not_so_new]

My advice for hat in the snare? Don't freak'n worry about it..



That might not work for you but I get most of my drum sounds even for heavyer stuff from the room mics and the overheads. My snare mic is there for filler most of the time now a days.

I tried all the mini gobos and little foam deals, they work okay but nothing that made me want to try them again.

The only other thing that I have tried and liked was the William Wittman bath towl method (I learned this from William right here at gearslutz). I use this now actually and it is not a crazy as it seems. Between this trick and just not worring about it... I just don't worry about it much anymore.

[Yetti]

Originally Posted by indie

So, what's your secret for keeping hat bleed out of the snr mic while tracking a hat happy drummer??
I'm going to try some darker hats on monday.
Micah

In addition to minimizing bleed by the mic placement, I sometimes find that using a Drawmer DS201 gate works great. There may be a spot here or there where you need to ride the threshhold, but it really seems to eliminate the bleed problem.
I clone the 1 snare track to 2 tracks, and gate only the channel that I am eq ing in the high and upper mids. The other channel I use for the lower mids, and I don't gate it since I roll the highs off a little. This also helps to mask the effect of the gate on the high channel opening and closing.
It works for me, I hope it may help you too.
Or just tell him to take it easy on the fricken high hat!!
Good luck Brotha!!

[joeq]

you need my new plug-in "Hat-Be-Gone"®

look for it at a quality music vendor near you (as soon as I find somebody who can write the code.)

[heartofantares]

try sample replacing the snare (drumagog)

or if you wanna keep the original snare sound, have the drummer play a snare hit by itself and make the sample outta that, if there are snare rolls and stuff that sometimes don't sound real sampled, just use the original for that part (since he probably won't be on the hats at that point)

eq is bad .. bad... you need those highs in the snare badly

[AlexLakis]

Originally Posted by Yetti

Or just tell him to take it easy on the fricken high hat!!
Good luck Brotha!!

Yeah. Good luck indeed.

In some past sessions, I might even go so far as to rather have had a guy who can't keep a beat, but can play the set evenly then a guy who's rock solid who bashes the cymbals to all hell. Do these "drummers" even realize how much louder their cymbals are from the rest of the kit??

It's all about placement and mic choice. A 57 should get you plenty of seperation. If you've been trying to place it at an angle away from the hat, try placing it straight down on the drum. The angled placement might be picking up reflections from the direction it's facing. Bury it in the drum.

[Guarnanene]

can someone take a picture of what you are talking about with the towel please? are you really saying what I think your saying?

[Mark107]

One of the signs of the amateur drummer is slamming the hihat, with resultant spill into the snare mics. Kill these people, please.

That said, invest in quieter hihat cymbals, like Zildjian New Beats. Seriously. Loud hihat cymbals have you beat before you even start. And all the above mentioned tips on mics and placement, of course. But if you go shopping hihats, you may well be surprised and how different they are on the volume front.

[AdamJay]

have you tried a Beyerdynamic M201?
killer rejection on that mic.
i use it with the gate on my Drawmer DL241, also a little bit of DL241 compression seems to pair well with that mic and a punchy pre.

[AdamJay]

Originally Posted by indie

.I'm also going to crank the hats in his headphones.

that's cheeky, but i like it.

[superburtm]

Originally Posted by indie

So, what's your secret for keeping hat bleed out of the snr mic while tracking a hat happy drummer??
I'm going to try some darker hats on monday.
Micah

explain to him that if he hits the fricking hats harder than the snare then there is gonna be problems in the mix.

[Jack Ruston]

Some drummers insist on hitting the hats really hard, and some insist on having them almost on top of the snare. Sometimes a drummer comes in who immediately puts his hats a foot and half higher than the top of the snare and way off to the left. These guys just go straight on the christmas card list.

I got one of those thick foam tiles and cut it into 6 inch'ish squares with a hole poked through the middle. I stick them around any spot mics which are picking up too much spill. It works ok but doesn't cure the problem. It's all in the drumming.

J

[dobber]

This really has nothing to do with mic bleed, but.... Crank the hi-hats up in his headphones. If he's using them.

[Coldsnow]

I've had some luck with those gooy moon things that you use on toms placed either in between the two hats or on top. Also, I like multing the snare off and gating one that only goes to the reverb (not in the mix), that way you arn't reverbing the hat, use the other more natural one as the stand alone sound that gets sent to the mix, can also make a difference. Sounds more natural to me than gating the snare track alone.

[tommymakestapes]

haven't used it but.....

auralex has something Just for this. Check out the http://www.auralex.com/sound_isolati...n_xpanders.asp

I've used a combination of gate/deesser

[kellyd]

First it starts with the drummer and the kit. How close is the SN to the HH? Further the HH is from the SN the less bleed and the better the mic palcement. Then there is the size of the HHs. Then there's the drummmer's technique. Some drummers cream their HHs. Big problem. I also crank the HHs in the drummer's cans if he's killing them. With my house drummer there's no problem but I've had players in here that are insane. This concept of indv trks on the drums in some drummers minds make them think that they're not reponsible for mixing the indv components of their kit. "Can't you just turn the HH trk down"? Dude! There is no HH trk, that's you're snare trk. By then it's too late.
Then there's placement and rejection. I took a 57 apart, pulled of the capsule and reattached it on an angle. I place it under the hh facing across the kit. The capusle faces down towards the center on the snare. This gives me the best separation results but you're still hostage to the drummers playing. Floating samples helps but it's never as good as getting it right from the start.

[blackcom]

Make shure to put a trigger on the snare and record it through a mic preamp.
Use SoundReplacing on this one adding a snare sample for like 20/30% of the sound just to bring the "snare" a little up... also, use the trigger track to side-chain gate the snare mic. And yeah, using a Beta57 on the snare help too...

Alot of drummers out there "refuse" to play differently, thats their "style" and you should just do the best out of it...so whenever they say that crap I blend a little samples in and blame it on their style...

[wwittman]

Originally Posted by jonnyclueless

I would think that a towl on the hihat would make in unbearably dull sounding.

I think that maybe you shouldn't do it then.

It DOES look probably the way you imagine it.. that is you drape a really big towel over the whole thing so none of the high-hat shows... then you pull it down HARD so the post punches a hole in the towel.
Now he hits the hat THROUGH the towel.
You can put a mic up underneath if necessary.
Often it isn't.
If the guy's hat is too loud to BEGIN with, then why would you need a mic on it?

But you can, with a mic, get it every bit as bright as you want it.

myspace.com/action-action
On their new record I think we did this on EVERY track... or alternatively, of course for a less recent example, you can listen to Money Changes Everything. I don't think the hat sounds "dull".


My basic feeling is that the balance needs to be right in the room or the drum sound will never be right.
You'll always be trying to fight against the leakage on one mic or another.
The drum KIT is supposed to sound right... it's not 12 individual things for you to reassemble later.
So my approach is to try to attenuate the high-hat at its source.. thinner hats, the towel, whatever... so that EVERY mic hears some version of the RIGHT balance.

That way the inter-mic leakage and the room and mics and everything works for you instead of against you.

[Mike Caffrey]

Try different hi hats. They very in their potential loudness.

When I've been given a track that I need to cut the hat out of the snare mic, I HPF the bottom snare mic, slid it ahead a couple of sample or 1ms and then gat the snare with the bottom mic snet to the gate's side chain. There's rarely anything besides the snare and a little kick drum in the bottom snare mic.

I don't set the gate to cloes compeltely either, just a little reduction.

[Jonathan Starr]

We use a Beyerdynamic 201 with a triangle of scrap Auralex foam with a hole in the center that we push the mic through.

Works great.