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hi saso, the term 'gated' refers to an effect applied in a typical studio set up. a gate is an effects unit that 'traps' the sound produced by the drum, in laymans terms the microphone used on the snare is actually turned off by the means of a gate, when you hit the drum the microphone picks up the sound, the effect unit detects this & 'opens the gate' & lets the sound through. you can alter the threshold of the gate to effect the sound produced. lets say for example you wanted a really quick & sharp 'crack' sound from the snare, you would alter the gate to open & close very quickly so it only lets the maximum frequencies/decibels through, or you could have a longer setting which would pick up every nuance of the drum. the main reason for using a gate effect is to eliminate 'crosstalk' ie; when a drumkit is set up in a studio, you would have at least one microphone per drum & at least two overhead mics to pick up the cymbals. if you hit a tom tom, you do not want all the other microphones picking up that signal because it would be impossible for the engineer/producer to get a good kit sound, so hence the need for a 'gate', it is a time consuming process which, when complete, will hopefully get each microphone only picking up the sound from the drum it is pointing at! another example is a gate can cut out the 'buzz' from the snare wires which happens a lot when a loud guitar is playing near by, the last thing you want when recording is a loud of buzz coming through in the back ground. Gating can have a big effect on the overall sound of the recorded drum & with practice & experimentation you can produce many different tones from your snare & toms!
hope that was not too boring for you, but hey,......... you asked!!!
enjoy! bob
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