Threshold – The dB at which your gate will open and allow audio to flow through.There are a few important parameters here that you will need to play with in order to get it just right for your situation: Here is an example of a simple Ableton Live gate: They will allow sound to play once it breaks a defined threshold of dB. The first line of defense in preventing bleed from your drums will be to apply a gate plugin to your vocal track. There are still many ways to help suppress it and achieve much cleaner tracks on a DAW level. If you’ve already recorded your vocals and your audio track still has bleed, do not fear. Here are some acoustic panels that will help combat the bleed: This is to stop the room reflections from the drums bouncing back into the microphone from the front angle, where these will be most prominent. If you’re not already recording in a treated room, the last addition to your shield setup would be some acoustic panels placed in the area your microphone is facing. It does not necessarily shield in all 360 directions, so this is best when pointed in the direction of your vocalist and their microphone. If you have the space, a drum shield will shield the whole kit from other instruments in the room. You can use a close proximity microphone shield that’s pointing in the direction of your drums to get the best effect of bleed reduction.
ShieldingĪdditional shielding around your vocal microphone and drum kit will be a great help in reducing the bleed. They aim to narrow the width of sound the microphone can pick up, catching fewer stray sounds apart from what is directly in front. There are two more similar patterns following the normal cardioid, which are supercardioid and hypercardioid. This is great, as you can position the back of the microphone toward the drums to help prevent a little bit of bleed. The cardioid pattern is heart-shaped, positioned in such a way that the microphone mainly picks up audio from the front and sides but not from behind. This is great for when you wish to capture sound from every direction, but sadly this will grab a lot of drum bleed in your vocals.
Omnidirectional microphones pick up audio in every direction from the microphone. The two main patterns are omnidirectional and cardioid. It will not completely drown out the bleeding, but every little bit helps. One of the first considerations to make here is the pattern of the microphone you wish to use for your singer. The best way to deal with this bleeding problem is to catch it at the source, the time of recording! Microphone Using the latter method, you may not be able to remove bleed completely, depending on how prominent it is within your track. Keep in mind that prevention is always better than the cure. You can deal with this issue in two ways: You can deal with it at the time of recording or during mixing/editing of the track later. Today I want to talk about this issue, and the ways you can minimize and deal with these nuances in situations you can’t control. In some recording circumstances, you cannot help but record alongside other instruments, which will introduce bleed into your vocal track.
When you’re dealing with a vocal track, you ideally want the vocals and nothing else present on the track.