How to: cancel a click in program material?

[rodrigo]

Hi.

Is there a way to cancel a specific sound in program material? I know it's been tried by changing polarity of one of the channels to get rid of vocals for karaoke tracks.

I have some tracks that consist of music (bass, guitar and synth) without drums. But with a loud annoying cowbell sound used as a click. I want to record drums and get rid of the click sound; unfortunately, I've got no access to the original tracks, this is all I've got.


I'd like to get rid of the click sound both because of its annoying sound quality, as well as its terrible time consistency. (Not quantized, played by hand). Is there a way to do this? I also have the isolated sound available, if it's of any use to achieve the cancellation.

Thanks for any help!

Regards,

Rodrigo Montfort

[Thumper]

If it was tracked live, with a human playing it, it's going to be near impossible. Human inconsitancies with the power of the hit, where on the cowbell it was hit, where it is in relation to the mic... It's going to be hard.

Do you have the separated cowbell track (full length of the cut) or just the typical few hits in the countoff?

You should be able to cut it back quite a bit, but it won't be completely gone. And it's going to be a hell of a lot of work.

If you're running PT, the tab to transients feature MIGHT help, depending on how loud the cowbell is.

Be prepared to hit the -TAB- key a lot!!!

[rodrigo]

It's not an actual cowbell hit and miked up. It's sampler/beatbox generated, just played on a keyboard note with someone's finger. All I've got for isolated clicks are the countoff clicks (about 4 bars). The click is not constant throughout the songs; it varies quite a lot. But it's annoyingly loud.


Thanks for any help

[rodrigo]

I'm using Digital Performer, I forgot to mention.


These tracks were meant to be as a guide for the drummer to rehearse the songs, so the cowbell sound is kind of loud. I know I can't make it disappear completely, just looking for tips to minimize it as much as possible.

[Ethan Winer]

Rodgrigo,

If there's even one place where the cowbell sounds by itself you can probably lower it by a fair amount. The key is to use a noise reducer program, the type that "learns" what to do by sampling just the noise separately. I use the Sonic Foundry (now Sony) Noise Reduction plug-in from Sound Forge, but anything that works along those same lines should do.

--Ethan

[Adebar]

Renovator will do the job.

http://www.algorithmix.com/en/renovator.htm

[rodrigo]

ReNOVAtor looks sweet, but at this point I can't justify spending $2,500 on a piece of software. And since I don't own a ProTools system, I couldn't just use the demo.

How about Bias SoundSoap? it's much more affordable, but maybe not quite as effective. Any opinions regarding this software? Thanks!

[stagefright13]

If it's a sampled cowbell can't ya just flip the phase of the sample and slide it in place on another track? Shouldn't it cancel it? You could adjust the volume of the flipped track to taste. Kinda like killing a vocal track for kareoke. Well worth a shot. and you could slide the sample back and forth for each hit. I hope it isn't a 17 minute long Iron Maiden song ...

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by stagefright13

If it's a sampled cowbell can't ya just flip the phase of the sample and slide it in place on another track? Shouldn't it cancel it? You could adjust the volume of the flipped track to taste. Kinda like killing a vocal track for kareoke. Well worth a shot. and you could slide the sample back and forth for each hit. I hope it isn't a 17 minute long Iron Maiden song ...

The click was played by hand, that will not work but good idea..... The only answer is to use a Noise Reduction plug-in of some kind and have it learn the cowbell sound.

Honestly at this point you are probably better of just re-tracking the whole thing, not what you wanted to hear I know but.....

[cajonezzz]

Is there a way to cancel out the chick singer that insists on bringing a cowbell to the gig?

[rodrigo]

Thanks for all your replies,

The click was played by hand, that will not work but good idea..... 
The only answer is to use a Noise Reduction plug-in of some kind and 
have it learn the cowbell sound.

Honestly at this point you are probably better of just re-tracking 
the whole thing, not what you wanted to hear I know but.....

The first time the drummer came to me, I told him that. He didn't have access to the original tracks and said he wouldn't mind if the cowbell stayed. However I DO MIND. First of all, the cowbell is not a click reference at all, it was played by hand, not quantized, etc. If it was perfectly on time with the recorded music, I could think of leaving it, but it's not, so...

I'll try a Noise Reduction demo. Any recommendations? I'm using MOTU Digital Performer and OSX (Panther)

thanks!