I was mixing a track today and there was very nasty hi-hat bleed in the top snare mic. Usually I let it pass but this was simply too much and I started tweaking gates and expanders with not-good-enough results. I started thinking "there has to be a way..." and here's what I ended up doing:
- Copied the snare drum track to another track
- Reversed the phase of the copied track and set it to the exact same level, the result of course total silence (my intention)
- Now that the hi-hat was dead silent I needed to bring in the snare...
- I compressed the sh*t out of the phase-reversed track and VOILA !
- The compressor removed the snare from the phase-rev track which brought in the snare on the original track. The hi-hat was still phasecancelled.
- Tweaking the releasetime of the compressor gave control over the sustain in the snare and the attack was set very fast to remove the transient of the snare. I compressed a lot, maximum ratio and as much gainreduction as possible on the snare without affecting the hihat.
- Some fine-adjustment and I had the snare only, not the hi-hat !
The result felt a lot more musical than any gate or expander I tried. Don't know if it's an old trick, but it worked. Worked very well :)
Comments
It is a good little trick to know, did it once a long time ago a
It is a good little trick to know, did it once a long time ago and had to burn the result back to the 2" machine to free up the channels on the console. Did you burn it back to your DAW (assuming that you're using one)?
Most of the time now I have drawmer 201's on hand because they have the filters to help zero in on what you want to poke through. A 'frequency dependent" gate if you will.
genius, i will try that, for that happens to me all the time.
genius, i will try that, for that happens to me all the time.