Bass Bleed

[Teletone]

Hi,

I have some drum tracks I recorded in a big studio.

Unfortunately, the bass bleeds into the drum tracks.

Is there a way to remove this?

Maybe a noise plug-in or something?

Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks,

Gil

[KenElevenShadows]

Not that I know of, but why do you want total isolation of the bass tracks? I usually *want* a little bleed - both a tiny bit of bleed of the drums into my bass cabinet mic, and a tiny bit of bleed of bass into my drum mics. I love it. Is your bass track have a lot of mistakes or is really obtrusive?

[bassix]

Load the bass track as well, change its phase 180 degrees and see if you can sum it out of there.

 

Might either work great or be HORRIBLE and leave you settling for the bleed afteral.

 

Edit: Typo

[where02190]

Originally posted by Ken/Eleven Shadows:

why do you want total isolation of the bass tracks?

For the same reason you want isolation on other instruments, the ability to overdub. If you have bleed into other tracks, you cannot replace or change parts later without the ghost of the former part.

[not Cereal]

there is a huge problem with trying to "out of phase" the bass from the drums.

 

it would work easy enough with ONE drum mike, but with more than one it gets tough.

 

every mike is a different distance from the bass speaker, therefore every drum mike will pick up the bass at a slightly different time.

 

each track will have to be done separately, and each track will have to be sample-aligned to the out of phase bass track. however this will throw all the drum timing off, so you have to create a separate bass track for each drum track and leave the timing of the drums alone.

 

this is going to be hard, and maybe not worth it. i have had limited success doing this kind of stuff. sometimes it works, and other times it doesnt.

 

i havent heard the tracks of course, but if it were my problem, i think i would try a gentle low cut on the drums tracks and a gate on the kick.

 

in pro tools, the newer strip silence (5.x) works wonderful for this kind of stuff (4.x kinda stunk)and you can easily undo anything you have done with it.

 

i dont know that i would try to surgically remove the bass from the drums. i maybe would try to reduce it, and augment the bass track in a way to overcome the drums/bass together.

 

i recieved a tracked project one time where i couldnt tell the bass track from the guitar track. they sounded the same due to extreme bleed from both instruments. rather than remove things from the tracks, i just reduced things and augmented things.

 

i made the bass track more bassy, and less guitarish and vice versa. it was never perfect, but it worked ok and went on the radio that way.

 

on another note that might help out, i have had a lot of live-tracked recordings on stage come in both tracked by myself and others. one common thing i find every time on every recording is that the kick/snare drum shows up in the vox track, and never timed right with the kick/snare tracks (because the distance of mikes is different). either track alone sounds fine, but put both together and the kick/snare gets fuzzy and smeary. depending on the particular recording, moving the entire kick/snare drum or vox track a few MS to align the two removes the problem - usually less than a few MS.

 

just some thoughts and advice, there is no real answer. you have to experiment and experience helps in this case. after you have dealt with this about 500 times you will have an arsenal of ideas to work with.

[KenElevenShadows]

Originally posted by where02190:

Originally posted by Ken/Eleven Shadows:

why do you want total isolation of the bass tracks?

For the same reason you want isolation on other instruments, the ability to overdub. If you have bleed into other tracks, you cannot replace or change parts later without the ghost of the former part.

Well, sure, I know that, Where, but I'm asking why HE didn't want bleed. Ever. There's different reasons for not wanting bleed, from aesthetic to otherwise, and I was curious.

 

BTW, I often have bleed into the bass bleed into the drum tracks a little, but it's ultimately very little. I've been able to punch in bass parts and never had a problem with a little bleed in the drum tracks. There again, I don't have that much bleed, just a little, good enough to create a sense of space but not enough to disrupt a potential overdub. I just punched in a new bass part last month in this exact scenario, and despite being under the microscope of various band members with very sharp ears for hours, no one even realized that part of the bass was punched in.

 

Now, if you CHANGE the bass line dramatically, that would likely cause a problem, but as long as you have the same bass track and the other bass track isn't completely fucked up, it should be fine if you only have a little bleed.