Gating Drums – Cool Tip of the Day

From Dave Rat, audio guy extroidonaire for the Chilli Peppers and owner of Rat Sound in CA…

If you have the spare inputs available, “Y” the drums that you want to gate into two channels each. Then insert gates on one set and not on the other. Assign one VCA to the gated drum channels and another VCA to the non-gated channels. Now you have full control over whether your drums are fully gated, non-gated or anywhere in between with the slide of the VCA’s.

This is handy thing if your band plays soft songs that don’t fire all the gates but you want tight gates for the loud songs. Also, by setting a 50/50 mix of gated and non-gated, it acts like and expander with soft hits extra soft and loud hits that jump out.

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