How to take out bleed in recording drums?

I am recording acoustic drums and the mic is catching other drum head sounds. how do I take this bleed of other drums out?

As Jonesey said, bleed on acoustic drums is just part of the monster.

But...with a good understanding of your mics, you can minimize some of it with mic choice and mic placement.  "Getting" the different polar patterns of your mics and using those to your advantage goes a long way.  Placing mics so that other elements of the kit "hide" the mic from the direct bleed sources (as much as possible) is something to think about.  

The thing is....you need to think of the drum kit as a single instrument from the beginning.  Do what you can do to make your overhead and room mics sound as great as they can...because the sound of the kit in the room is often the basis for your drum sound.

Offensive - and unusable - bleed is quite often just a function of the particular drummer in question.  A good drummer understands how to balance his playing so that the kit just sounds right from the beginning.  Not crushing the hihat and cymbals...understanding dynamics....being musical....

You will find also that some mics pickup the bleed in nastier ways than others.  Off axis sounds can sound strange/phasey when all the mics are combined, so again, mic choice can be pretty important.

I can't tell you how many times I've had different drummers in here, on the same great kit, and it just sounded like a completely different kit.  One time it's useable....the next, it's crap...

Live drums takes lots and lots of practice...and can be pretty frustrating for a long time.  Experience is essential to success....you'll get there if you really want to.

I've only recorded acoustic drums once (and mixed them another time when someone else recorded them). It's definitely a change of mindset compared to working with MIDI drums where your ride cymbal track is just the ride cymbal, etc. I had to get used to thinking of the combination of mics as a whole as opposed to individually.

I did remove a lot of the bleed on the kick and snare mics through use of HPF/LPF EQ. And I used some HPF EQ on the overheads to get rid of the kick drum it was picking up.

coda media mentioned triggers and samples. It is common practise (though I don't know how common) to record the drums, but then record samples afterwards. So maybe take samples for just the kick and snare. Might take 60 different layers at different velocities for the snare, again for the kick etc. Then using a program like drumagog, you can easily trigger all the original snare hits to play from the sampled hits, and you eliminate bleed on that track. Same again for the kick.

This is not always necessary and sometimes bleed can be what you need to make the drums really sound great. You don't always have to fight it. It can sometimes depend on the style of music you are working with, if you need to consider eliminating that bleed. A strong, processed pop song might sound better using lots of samples and gating, but a nice acoustic ballad will likely sound better with a more natural sounded bleeding, well miced kit.

The closer a microphone is to a drum head then the gain structure should help to minimise bleed. So the diaphragms of the microhopnes need to be very close to the hoops of the drums. Kick still works best inside a hole cut in the front head and minimal damping used inside. Once you set the recording level for that drum so that a normal hit produces the right level then the bleed from other drums is going to be way down.

So you need to close mike all the drums and have your overheads as usual. I have a piece of thick foam mounted above the OHeads to reduce and sound bouncing off the ceiling and coming back down onto the OHead mikes. That works quite well. Filtering the Oheads can pull out most of the sound from all the drums and leave the cymbals sound intact. Another option is to use mainly the OHeads as the sound (Full range) and bring the close miked sounds up just behind it to reinforce it.

Downward expanders work well on drums that are not played often. Norrie has a good idea with those crashguard thingies. I have used that technique between high hat and snare and it also works quite well. Hoops on the drums help to change their sound and quieten down silly overtones. (use them wisely though)

But a great quality drum kit helps and tune them too. Also a good drummer should use the variable power required on all the surfaces. eg hats and crash cymbals dont need to be smashed. Snare does not even need to be hit hard usually. Toms and kick need a stronger force. It takes skill to hit a tom hard with one hand and caress another surface at the same time. Many drummers have no idea what the low volume dynamic of their instrument produces. It is often a much nicer sound and it always records better. When drummers are not smashing others tend to play softer too.

Skull and Evans have it, but you aren't even giving your drummer a chance to play it right if his headphone mix isn't right. He needs foam earplugs and a set of closed-back headphones turned up loud. Then he'll play to what is being recorded. Did that make sense? What I'm saying is that the drummer has to have a sweet mix that he can hear over the sound of the actual drums, then he will play what he wants to hear, what you want to hear, and bleed will become a non-issue. If that does not work for you, you can use audiosnap to turn the audio into midi. You'll have to peak the EQ at the fundamental note for the kick only and turn it into midi notes and then the snare, etc, and apply the hits to Session Drummer. Then you'll have zero bleed, lots of work, I've done it, sometimes you have to separate the midi notes for the low tom and the kick, and the hat and crash are hard to separate, but generally it works. Giving the drummer the right headphone mix is the easiest way to make bleed unproblematic. If he can hear what he's doing, you can get a fine recording in a dry room with only OH and Kick (like Earthworks - 3 mics for the whole kit).

Personally, I prefer the psychadellic mixes I can get with midi drums - rides drifting left to right , hat circling your head, crash blossom, wide toms, etc.  Live kits are kind-of boaring. I can do them if I have to (and I have to, because I'm in Nashville), but I don't like the limitations. Good midi drums can sound "in-the-room" in a way that live drums just can't do.