Track Clean-up

Question is why are the sounds bleeding all over the place? With care you could keep nearly all those tracks quite separate with very little spill.

The guitar cabs can be miked up very close so those mikes should really only have guitars on them. Bass is direct so no bleed there. If the kick is inside the kick drum ie (hole in front) then should be pretty OK in there and snare as well. OHeads are your only main concern but with mikes like Rode NT5's they are amazing at rejecting almost everything except the drums even in very loud situations.

Vocal mike should be a SM 58 and get the singer right on top of the mike. No time for condenser mikes 1 foot away in this senario. Use a mic modeller plugin to change the sound of the 58 into something else. They can do wonders.

If it's a rehearsal then do it again and take a lot more care to keep the bleed to a minimum. If you record this way then a gate on the kick and snare and downward expander on vocals (during mixdown) should give you nearly a perfect result.

I have recorded this way even with a PA in the room and got nearly perfect tracks without much spill at all.

If your present tracks have a lot of bleed all over them then you are going to have a tough time getting it all out. Downward expanders sometimes work better on a vocal track with spill on it. If you get the vocal level right in the mix you might be able to get away with it. Try using EQ on the drum Oheads. Were the toms used a lot. If it's cymbal crashes mainly then you might be able to salvage the drum sound with kick and snare mainly with just a little OHeads. (EQ on Oheads can take out a lot of excess sound there)

Most of all how loud was the band when it was recording? If it was very loud, try telling them to simply shut up a bit and calm it all down. It will sound way better.

Hope that has been helpful.

I agree..... after the fact it's hard to fix and remove mic bleed in the mix. Best to get a nice clean track to start with using techniques like isolation to keep bleed to a minimum. 

Well it's good to have a challenge :D
And gives me something to do this weekend

Apart from lurking on the forum of course

i routinely remove all waveform (using alt-mouse swipe across the waveform and hit DEL) on all tracks, that have gaps.

such as vocals...
i'll tip and tail every single wave form, so that the edge goes right up against the beginning of the waveform.

i can do this very quickly, across multiple waveforms (if i line them up above and below each other, and they have the same basic arrangments).....


but drums is trickier..

because you have decay on toms, decay on cymbals, and if you clean those up, you have to wait for the decay to subside, and by then, the other drum tracks have started to creep into the other tracks (bleed) and when the 'cleaned up' waveform drops out, you can really hear it.


so in the case of drums, i say, mix it as is, but you can chop out all other info, and save on cpu cycles for NOT using a gate.

it's a surgical cleaning up, and it works.

drums are the big culprit when i record like this..threres always a bleed factor,i use the transients to detect my different pads,exc.and the use drum replacement.

There are a number of ways to replace drums:

Audiosnap:  http://www.cakewalk.com/support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013031
Drumagog:  http://www.drumagog.com/
Aptrigga:  http://www.apulsoft.ch/aptrigga/  (This is like a less expensive version of Drumagog).

I'm sure there are many, many others.  I have used Aptrigga, but I don't do a lot of drum replacement anymore.  I have used it to enhance the kick.

As far as bleed is concerned.  If you are going for a very live sound then bleed can be your friend. If you are going to process all of your tracks then it can be your enemy.
So what kind of sound are you going for?

I (we) used to record this way sometimes years ago. What we did was play through all the material with no vocals and record all instruments live. Keys & bass went direct, and the guitar was adequately isolated to minimize bleed into the drum mics. If a vocal cue was required to signal a transition, then that was easy enough to do and get rid of later. The following night we would add all the vocals live. As long as you have enough headphones for everyone, then it's a good work around.

bitflipper

 I am taking some liberties with the "live" mix, overdubbing additional keyboards. Because the project's purpose was to create a video, I can't sneak anything too blatant in lest the overdub be obvious. But I can always point to the synthesizer in the video and say I did it with that - never mind that I was playing Hammond in the video. Nobody will notice, I'm sure.

Kinda reminds me of a ZZ Top concert.... when you listen to the albums, there is obvious overdubs on the guitars..... so at the show.... yup.... there was a second guitar...... but only Billy was on guitar on the stage....... hummmmmmmmmmm

Thanks for all great suggestions. I spent quite some hours this weekend to salvage the recordings. But I think my mixing inexperience is limiting me.

So I'll try to make some cleaner recordings the next time.

Another option which nobody has mentioned and ties in nicely with Bitflippers advice about no getting rid of it completely because of jarring transitions is to use automation.

Set up track Volume Envelopes and drag the bits with excessive bleed down to a level where they can still be heard but not affect the flow of the music.

Bristol_Jonesey


Another option which nobody has mentioned and ties in nicely with Bitflippers advice about no getting rid of it completely because of jarring transitions is to use automation.

Set up track Volume Envelopes and drag the bits with excessive bleed down to a level where they can still be heard but not affect the flow of the music.

this is a great idea and will prove helpful for me as well.