there's blood all over the snare

so I'm going over these files I was sent and in solo-ing the snare , the hi-hat , cymbals are distinctly heard. My futile attempt at using an EQ to try to tame those higher frequencies just ended up taking any edge (that whack) from the snare.

So what does one do when the bleeding is so profuse ?

My next step is to try a multi band compressor but I'm guessing that won't just magic. The snare still needs EQ + Comp but anything that I do will affect the higher frequency instruments that have bled onto the track.

How would you all try to approach this problem ?

thanks

"There's blood all over..."

I thought you were playing drums until your fingers bled.

Have had a couple of gigs where the drummer actually bled on the snare... I could actually hear that it was happening because the blood made the stick, stick to drum head and he was no longer able to use ghost notes.

Here's a trick a friend used to get the vocals louder in a mix where the vocals and acoustic guitar were recorded on the same track. I asked him how he did it because it really made a difference, and this was his reply....

"I duplicated the track including plugs and sends and then ducked the guitar completely between vocal lines sometimes even cutting off end of word or fading in beginning of word. Then I added that to mix finding the threshold where it worked smoothly without being too noticeable. Couple spots you could hear the guitar jump so I had to massage them a bit more than others ... bit of work but it turned out pretty good."

He's always been a great out of the box thinker.

Now if I could only get him to kick the Pro Tools habit

Try to work out a proper trigger signal for a gate. Copy the audio file to a new channel. On this (trigger) channel you can work very aggressive and extreme. Maybe even chop it up with a plugin like Sinevibes Switch. Or you can use a drum replacer plugin. If such one works well, replace the snare with a sound that really stands out in sound and volume. This special sound can then be used easier to trigger the gate on the original. Or, worst case, manually cut out the snares on the trigger channel

This trigger channel you do not send anywhere = NO OUTPUT

On the snare channel choose a gate as first plugin (after the gain), set it to external and choose your trigger channel as the sidechain.

Another way would be to use a noise gate plugin that can accept MIDI-notes to trigger the gate. You "just" would have to record all the snare hits as MIDI though BTW: Drum replacer can export MIDI notes ;)