www.shortscale.org

[Ian]

Here is a little trick I made up today whilst working on a mix.

This is a little time consuming but... It's worth it.

Assuming you have a nice editing program like pro tools...

Step 1 Chopping

Cut out all the blank space between tom hits. Leave a nice tail end for a natural sounding fade later. Make sure the region starts at the very beginning of the transient.

Don't do any fades yet.

Step 2 EQ and Fading

Bust out a stand alone EQ (not one that affects the entire track) and set it to cut the hi end from 500 herts up, not a steep cut, just a nice gradual one. And not just -10 DBs. I mean use your LOWPASS filter.

Go to your first region and highlight from right to left almost all the way. EQ the highlighted region with your stand alone EQ. Move the EQ'd selection over just a tad revealing the unEQed wave and then do a crossfade. Then make a nice even fade from a little after your cross fade to the end of the region. (Fade, not automation)

Step 3 Listen

You might need to refine your technique a little before you move on to the rest of the hits. What you should be accomplishing is keeping the punch (high mids/treble) of the transient without the cymbal bleed of the resonant tail, also while keeping the natural (500 hertz down) decay time of the tom hit. Depending on the section of the song and what is going on behind the tom hits you can leave more unEQed tom decay in.

For build up tom hits, the softer strike of the drum stick makes for less hi end "punch" - - you can use your lowpass EQ on these hits as well.

Also when I said "Move the EQ'd selection over just a tad" that doesn't mean to actually move the timing, but pull over some of the unEQ'd region to make a better sounding crossfade.

[cobascis]

Interesting tip -- will try it out asap. I've been cutting out the noise between snare hits, but haven't tried with toms yet. Thanks

[Sloan]

manual editing toms is THE ONLY WAY just about. for quick demoing, i throw up gates, but fine tuning gates on toms is retarded.