Have you ever had a snare that just has way too much kick and hi-hat bleeding in, and then you spent hours messing around with the gates and all kinds of other things, but still didn’t get the results you were hoping for? Well, then this is the trick for you!
This trick actually comes from Manny Nieto, who is a very well-known Los Angeles producer, engineer, and mixer!
While this trick can be used on all kinds of drums, today we will be using it on the snare and toms. The best part about this trick is you don’t need any kind of fancy plugin, or anything else. All you need is a compressor, which you should already have right in your DAW!
In the track I applied this trick on, there was tons of cymbal bleed in my snare, and I am going to use this trick to remove that. To start, I am going to take the snare top, and duplicate it – this includes the audio file, any plugins that have been added to it, and everything else! Then, I am going to reverse the polarity. This nulls out the two tracks, so we actually have no snare now.
Next, I am going to grab my compressor. I am going to take just the duplicated snare, and compress it really aggressively. After doing that, I will put the two snares together. I have now created a gate from a compressor, and there is virtually no bleed now and my snare sounds so much better!
I have also used this to eliminate bleed in my toms, and you can use it on all kinds of drums as well!
READ ALSO: Plugin Boutique Scaler 2 Review
READ ALSO: Ableton Push 2 Review
READ ALSO: 5 Best Shotgun Microphones for Your Home Studio
This tip is available as a cheat sheet so you can always have it on hand! Click here to download the cheat sheet!
Watch the video below to see this trick in action!
