Region replacement?

[jmh]

I have a track where the kick had a great deal of snare bleeding in. I levelizer removed silence automatic and isolated the kicks with high cut. Then selected all the kick regions, applied leading then trailing softedges (a new discovery for me - and it did work quite well).

During a section of the song the drummer struck the kick and snare simultaneously every second or third hit. These strikes are now getting a double dose of snare in the mix. I could select these by hand as they are easy to spot visually and there are not that many of them and drag them onto another track. I was wondering what approaches might be take to remedy this - maybe replacing all of the double regions with one of the pure kick regions? Can this be done en-masse?

I've got a sidechain solution in mind that doesn't involve replacing - but I'm curious how others would handle this - and of course some ways work better than others.

[Carl G.]

I have a track where the kick had a great deal of snare bleeding in. I levelizer removed silence automatic and isolated the kicks with high cut. Then selected all the kick regions, applied leading then trailing softedges (a new discovery for me - and it did work quite well).

During a section of the song the drummer struck the kick and snare simultaneously every second or third hit. These strikes are now getting a double dose of snare in the mix. I could select these by hand as they are easy to spot visually and there are not that many of them and drag them onto another track. I was wondering what approaches might be take to remedy this - maybe replacing all of the double regions with one of the pure kick regions? Can this be done en-masse?

I've got a sidechain solution in mind that doesn't involve replacing - but I'm curious how others would handle this - and of course some ways work better than others.

It may be tedious - but the option that give you the most flexibility is replacing the double regions with the good single regions - one by one. You could give it a more live feel that way by assimilating various subtle changes in kicks (feathering the base, etc)... to give it texture, tonality, emphasis, etc. (depending on type of music).

Or... mixing a (filtered) snare 180 out of phase on the double hits where you want it gone might work also.

[jmh]

Initially, I thought just turn down the snare - but the bleed was all wires on the bottom - and it totally changed the character of the sound.

Or... mixing a (filtered) snare 180 out of phase on the double hits where you want it gone might work also.

I settled on using the kick track, 180 out, low cut with an eq. I also gate keyed to the snare. I wound up with a compromise that reduced the wire sustain a fair amount without being too detrimental to the kick or the snare's snap.

Your other suggestion would have been quicker. As the issue was every other kick on a ~40 second passage - maybe remove silence to give me a palette of replacement kick regions and also I could tab to the region edges (trimmed with the correct attack time) that I would like to replace.

This was partly a rhetorical question - as every once in a while I find out about a built-in capability that does something I've been doing the hard way. It's good to find these out before you do the work...

[Cary B. Cornett]

Out of curiosity, were the drum tracks recorded by you? I have learned to do certain things in tracking to reduce leakage between kick and snare. One helpful trick is to take a heavy blanket, like a moving blanket or a down comforter, and carefully drape it around the kick drum as a kind of improvised sleeve around the shell and draped over both front and back heads (avoiding the beater, of course). This significantly muffles leakage in both directions. More recently I have also often taking to miking both top and bottom of the snare, inverting the phase of the bottom mic, and recording each mic to its own track. This lets me dial in exactly how much "snap" I want from the snare at mix time, and in a situation like yours, would also provide a better source for partially cancelling leakage from the snares into the kick track.

[jmh]

Out of curiosity, were the drum tracks recorded by you? I have learned to do certain things in tracking to reduce leakage between kick and snare. One helpful trick is to take a heavy blanket, like a moving blanket or a down comforter, and carefully drape it around the kick drum as a kind of improvised sleeve around the shell and draped over both front and back heads (avoiding the beater, of course). This significantly muffles leakage in both directions. More recently I have also often taking to miking both top and bottom of the snare, inverting the phase of the bottom mic, and recording each mic to its own track. This lets me dial in exactly how much "snap" I want from the snare at mix time, and in a situation like yours, would also provide a better source for partially cancelling leakage from the snares into the kick track.

Yes they were recorded by me. In this case I was also playing guitar too. Readying the gains in the daw, adjusting headphone mixes, and tuning up always introduces plenty of confusion to overcome the best laid plans. Your just too busy to readjust minor mic positions that players who often know plenty more about recording than I do have positioned according to their way of thinking.

I don't have that much experience recording drums, and maybe by then I didn't yet realize that although I have a kit already set up with mics strategically positioned, drummers invariably move and adjust everything. I love how the mic patterns differ with there nulls and nodes that are unique to type and model, and try to set them up to learn how to isolate or reflect off or surfaces. I really try to approach it as a very cool geometry problem. Usually a couple of micss are in experimental or unconventional positions, but it seems they never wind up positioned as I intended. So rather than evaluating mic placement theories when listening back, it becomes a post analysis of the way things wound up (what you remember of it).

Anyway, this has been my experience. I generally have put a lot of effort into being ready for recordings and may wind up being kind of tired and just have to shake off concerns, go with the flow, and hope for the best.