Gate
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What Is a Gate?
A gate is a switch that turns off your track when it goes below a certain threshold.
While it might appear that this would be an awesome way to isolate a snare hit so that you wouldn't get bleeding, gates are most often used today with an external trigger/side chain configuration. Keep in mind that just because you can gate your tom track to only let signal through when its hitting, your kit could potentially lose some of its breath and feeling without the phasal characteristics and vibrations off the tom heads that you would normally be hearing. Unless you want a drum machine type sound on a live set gating individual drum tracks is unusual.
The following example can be tailored to apply to any combination of compressor's or gates with sidechains connected to any signal.
Gate Tips and Tricks
Using a kick to trigger the gate on an oscillator
Say you recorded your drums and are listening back during mixdown and the kick just doesn't boom on the low end, setting up an oscillator at 40-60hz with a gate set so that the oscillator is side chained to the kick track. In essence you are putting a gate on the oscillator but having it operate off of an external trigger (the signal of the kick track). You can mix in the oscillator and get a great heavy bass.
Gated Verb
Most commonly used on a snare but potentially could be used on anything. It is often heard distinctly in 80's rap beats but can still be found in use today in any genre, though most often in a less recognizable form. 1: bus the snare to an aux track. 2:add a (usually long 2-3second) reverb at 100% mix to the aux track. add a gate keyed to the original snare, play with attack and release to make it hide below the snare. 3: bring up aux track to a desired level.You now have a gated reverb on the snare.
This is a stub please help wikirecording by expanding it, and providing more detailed explanation and use of a gate.
