Complex Drum Gating

[brandondrury]

.tom said he wanted to discuss complex drum gating. I'm curious as to what he has to say. My initial gut going into this thread is that gating is fairly straightforward. When the bleed from close mics has an adverse effect on the recording, reduce that bleed. We'll see what .tom says.

Brandon

[.tom]

ha! ok. i'll come over here next tuesday with everything i know condensed down to a few hundred words... in the mean time, for those of you reading, you might know the difference between an audio gate and an audio expander gate but if you aren't clear with it, you might not understand some of the explaination i give for techniques i've used in the past.. i said this was gonna b a complex, didn't i?? -google it er wip out ur book cuz imabout to go "joe barresi" on yo ass

[brandondrury]

I sense a new trick coming along. I sense that it uses compression ratios less than 1:1 (like 0.5:1), but I'll have to wait and see.

Brandon

[serverunion]

I just set it by ear so that it opens for the attack and keep as much of the sustain as possible without letting to much other sound in. Very scientific approach!

[.tom]

cool. i'll be talking about setting up "expander" type gates for drums and vocals. i'll also tell you how to use a expander gate as a transparent peak limiter to deal with plosives. and maybe i'll have time to write about making modern unique sounds using a gate, a verb and a source. but it'll be a few more days b4 i get time to write it. enda da week. gates r cool... knowing when to use them is cooler. knowing how to make modern sounds using gates is the coolest..

[ferguson66]

Waiting patiently for this... tap...tap...tap....

I am always looking to get the best drum sound possible out of my studio. Being a drummer it is very important to me. I love it when I come across advice such as this.

Thanks guys.

[brandondrury]

I have to admit that really playing with gates is an area that I've never really dug into like I probably should. I'm excited about this upcoming post.

Brandon

[.tom]

alright so, in light of a post i saw, i'm gonna write a bit about drum gating and catch up to other additional drum gate techniques another time.

ok, so if we're talking gates on a drum kit then we're talking close miking techniques. i start with symmetry about the snare drum with regard to all mic placement where ever possible. oheds, of course but, also rak tom mics should be placed symmetric to the snare. if 2 floor toms are mic'd then also place them with symmetric value. these mics can really fuk up a good snare sound and placement can avoid most of the problem. on the other hand, placement can really brighten up the snare and give a spacious presence to it. my experience is, mics can't hide from a crackin snare. but, i can add some intelligence to the equation -by using gates on certain mics.

one consideration in using a standard gate is it can make the drums sound mechanical -programmed. it can take the feel away. sometimes that's desired, sometimes itsa problem. another consideration is "chatter" which occurs when a source resonates excessively long at lower volume, near the gate's threshold setting.


ya so, if i start off with a fresh take of drums that's good to go for a song, i go thru each channel as a set. i start with kik and snare. they are panned center and this is where i start my drum mix with (fader)volume matching as a submix and eq. then i add the oheds into the mix -(fader)volume matching as a submix, panned hard left/right and eq as a 4 mic set. then i add the tom tom mics into the mix -(fader)volume matching as a submix, pan and eq as a 7(put ur favorite # there) mic set. and lastly i add the hihat mic into the mix -(fader)volume matching as a submix, pan and eq as a 8(put ur favorite # there again) mic set. if all goes well, each time i add a mic(s) channel, the sound gets worked a bit and the drum mix sounds better as each mic set is added. sometimes i planned to go for the sterile studio sound all along but, i typically go thru this little ritual i've just written anywayz -just to listen and get a vibe for the drum capture. then i imagine how i want it to change and go about changing it into more powerful sound or wutever i'm going for there. i then move on to applying insert fx.


starting again with kik and snare in the mix, then put up the kik. i apply a expander gate to the kik drum to cut the snare out of the capture. then i apply a compressor to the next slot in the insert chain and phatty that boom with the clik clik. this trak is definitely the one trak i always totally gate to go shut. i always hate the sound of any other drum or cymbal coming from the kik trak. the mic is usually 3 inches from the beater strike right inside of the kik.

now i get the snare kik mix going again and it should sound very powerful but abrupt and a bit sterile and no chatter. i usually look for a good snare stroke and use that section to set up the kik drum gate. then i put up the snare and apply the same expander gate/compressor inserts to it but with different settings to get wutever sound i wanna get from the snare trak. this trak can be treated many ways using a gate, it really depends on the isolation of the hihat as to how i will treat the gating applied to the snare trak and of course, the player and stylings and all that.

one thing is 4sure tho, attack will be 1ms or less. then i get into setting the threshold and put it were it generally belongs and i usually find a hi spot in the hihat/oheds trak to set the snare gate. this is the first trak you'd want to explore using the expander gate "range" setting in conjunction with the threshold to find ur best gate settings. the range knob opens a huge new menu of gating drums, as they are the most dynamic instrument. while attack predicates velocity or how fast the door opens, range determines wut the "door closed" position is -like a door stop on a door that opens and returns to the door stop. this will allow u2 use a gate on very subtle drum trax by making a sortof collapse to room ambience thing with ur release/range settings. it gives u one more tool with which to make an awesome snare sound.

there's a cool way to set the gate up so it cuts off the end of the snare resonance. then compress it upward and eq a bit and send it to a stereo verb for early reflections only -very short like 100ms and then send that to a "room reverb" can give you that "ford commercial snare drum" sound. it sounds like a long resonant ring and gets cut on the 1/8 note. so, thats a whole other thing to explore in snare/drum reverb and gating, is to calculate 1/8 notes of ur program material and use those settings to start.

moving along to the tom toms, this is a place u can really change the overall drum sound using gates. this b the best trax to apply expander gates, is the tom toms. wide open in the mix using great mics, tom tom trax can make or destroy a snare sound. most often they do the ladder cuz we all got small rooms to work with. so, here is where u can really use the range knob to create some great drum sounds from a small room and using digi verbs to put them into a sweet sounding room. sometimes it really sounds better with just a tiny bit from these mics. just a tiny bit of snare pop comes thru from those mics. and if they're equidistant there's a good bit of pop to be had -but without the (sometimes)cheap snare rattles that follow cuz they get gated lo in the drum mix as a result of ur dilligent work finding a good range/release/threshold settings. other times u might slo the attack to 1ms as this will give toms a woody sound while also effecting the snare sound in the drum mix.

so, essentially wut i'm suggesting is, the use of expander gates can add a very interesting dynamic to wut is already a very dynamic instrument by simply using the gates in a smoother way -where they do eliminate noise or spill while also sounding natural, and can also enhance overall drum sound. the idea is of course, to increase the dynamics while also making tidy work of a ruckus sound.. right?



a link to some gating info here


and more here too

[ferguson66]

First of all thanks a bunch for writing this out. This certainly spawned a ton of ideas in my head that I now need to go and play with.

You mention a couple of times about EQing as a # mic set. So when you say you take the kick, snare and overheads and EQ as a 4 mic set are you sending them all to one EQ plug-in or are you creating an actual submix and applying EQ to that?

Up until now I have been applying separate EQ to each track (each separate drum mic) when needed. Are you somehow grouping tracks and applying overall EQ to them?

[brandondrury]

I'm most interested in the equadistant tom mics idea. It's something that makes perfect sense, but it never really occurred to me. Is this something that the drummer would have to be aware of ahead of time?

I just can't think of too many situations where all the toms were an equal distance from the snare. I'm anxious to try it, but I'm trying to figure out the logistics.

Brandon