How To Reduce Cymbal Bleed

How To Reduce Cymbal Bleed

How to reduce cymbal bleed in your tom spot mics.
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Excessive cymbal bleed can happen for a number of reasons. The drummer could have the cymbals really close the toms or they could be hitting the cymbals really hard which is very common in rock music!⁠
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Gates don't always work as they should so here's how I manually trim them to reduce cymbal bleed.
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There are actually two methods of trimming that I use to deal with this issue:⁠
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Method 1:⁠
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Manually navigating to each tom then slicing and deleting audio that isn't needed. This can be done in pro tools with either strip silence or manually with tab to transient. Once the unwanted spill has been removed the remaining tom audio needs fade-outs applied.⁠
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Method 2: ⁠
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The second method is like the first but instead of fading out the ends of the toms I use a tom sample (taken from the actual drum kit) and replace the last hit of each tom section. The benefit of this method is that you don't lose the natural decay of the toms.⁠
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View our Arcane Roots mix breakdown video on YouTube where Chris uses this method: https://youtu.be/yJ83v2sRLYc