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What to do with that snare?
#1
Hi,

i have a hard time getting the foudnation of that song working, because i can´t work with that snare.
i don´t know how to deal with the overhead bleed on the snare top. i don´t want to replace it because of the nuances on the quieter passages and i like the punchy sound from the raw files.
any tips what i can do?
i tried some surgical work with digital plugins and some squashing and tone shaping with vintage stuff.
i also tried to eliminate the phantom center from the overheads to fill it with the bleed from the snare channel, but this just not sounds right.

best regards
Max
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#2
It's been a while since I worked on this one. I always try a lot of fancy dynamic/gate tricks but I feel like it always winds up as a compromise and I'm never happy.

I do think I and a lot of others wound up replacing or at least blending. Blending at least has some of the original ghost hits but impact of the replacement.

One thing I've tried on other songs is placing a really fast, clean compressor/limiter on, in this case, the overheads, and keying it with the snare. So on the harder snare hits it limits the overheads but the compressor is set so fast that it only really works on the snare hit. Now, one caveat, this probably doesn't work well on a washy track like overheads but does work on, say snare leakage on a kick track.

Did this one have a bottom snare mic? That usually works well for ghost notes. Bottom snare are somewhat naturally compressed.

Often what I have after trying a lot its to take a step back and take a lot of the processing off realize I was doing something that contributed to the problem.

Or, don't worry about it so much. It's a pretty busy song. Sometimes not every nuance comes through. Maybe wait until a certain section (like the bridge) for the drummer to get his due when things calm down. Or bring the overheads way down. People can deal with quieter overheads than lack of snare.

I'm just guessing on a Sunday though.
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#3
Thanks for the fast response.

yes. replacing the top was one thing i wanted to try another time.
the song coems with a bottom mic. compressed and eq´ed it also adds a nice high end ...paperish impact to the kick.
i also tried some sidechainig stuff with the overheads but it soudned unnatural to get every now and then this high cymbal impact in the center.

yeah, i also started from the beginnig several times with the snare.
seems i have to deal with replacement. maybei can keep the bottom end of the snare top where no cymbal bleed is and blend in a replacement for the rest of the spectrum.
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