Tips for making a good hard hitting snare

[mromgwtf]

So yeah:
- For source sound layer acoustic snare sample from a metal drum kit with an electronic snare from vengeance sample pack.
- Look at spectrum analyzer.
- Tune them together.
- Adjust ADSR in your sampler on those two samples so they don't contain any useless noise after the snare.
- Invert phase of one snare and look if the 200hz peak increased or decreased, leave where it is bigger.
- So now you have your source sound.
- Boost the body a bit.
- Don't boost highs.
- Use iZotope Alloy 2 for processing your snares. One instance of it is enough to process a snare to the full.
- When looking at the spectrum, only the body should be accented, the rest (highs and mids) should be flat.
- Put a 48db highpass in before the body so the snare doesn't contain any useless muddy content.
- 2-4 db boost on the body is enough.
- Use multiband transient shaper.
- Boost attack on highs, 1-3db.
- Decrease sustain on mids, 3-7db. Use anything that works.
- Go to harmonic exciter.
- Drive the highs to add sparkle. (This is how you make it sparkle, and that's why you don't boost highs)
- Use tape/retro mode, tube and warm doesn't work.
- Use drive between 2-7.
- Adjust dry wet so it sounds good.
- Now multiband compression.
- Compress highs a lot, but don't compress the transient.
- Use ratio from 2 to 5, attack from 10ms to 30ms, release from 40ms to 70ms.
- Use soft knee.
- Enable auto gain.
- Barely compress the mids, but still compress.
- Use small ratio like 1.5. (I used 1.2)
- Use bigger release value.
- Compress lows to bring up the body hit.
- Ratio around 2, attack around 20ms, release around 60ms, find the threshold yourself.

Good job you made a great snare.

[killakam98]

That sounds like a whole lot of work just for a snare
A SNARE
If I am even compressing it a simple camelcrusher does the trick

[mromgwtf]

That sounds like a whole lot of work just for a snare
A SNARE
If I am even compressing it a simple camelcrusher does the trick

That's not really much work. Anyway you must spend some time to get a good sound.

[rockonin]

I use two different transient shaper's using sends and blend them accordingly to the snare buss. Add reverb. Also sometimes a little tiny bit of the camel crusher/phat 3 send. Eq.

[didi]

i use my condenser mic and i record myself blowing into it making sure to clip for analogue warmth. then i compress to create a transient and a tail

[Hex047]

If you have to go through so much work just to get the snare hitting hard then there's something wrong with the sound selection.

[mromgwtf]

If you have to go through so much work just to get the snare hitting hard then there's something wrong with the sound selection.

As I said before it is not much work.
Also this thread is about MAKING a good snare, not enhancing a already selected snare.

[Add9]

Lol it's funny how people will spend like a week on a single bass sound but aren't willing to spend any time on their drums. I think in EDM drums are even more important than bass so why not spend the time to get it right?

And I'm sure that people will disagree about the "drums are more important than bass" comment but the point is that if your snare sucks then it ruins the whole track, so you need to spend time on it to make sure it's absolutely as good as possible.

[Hex047]

maybe a better snare used for layering could be used to get the sound you looking for?
cool technique by the way.

[mromgwtf]

maybe a better snare used for layering could be used to get the sound you looking for?
cool technique by the way.

Who said I'm not getting the sound I'm looking for?

Lol it's funny how people will spend like a week on a single bass sound but aren't willing to spend any time on their drums. I think in EDM drums are even more important than bass so why not spend the time to get it right?

And I'm sure that people will disagree about the "drums are more important than bass" comment but the point is that if your snare sucks then it ruins the whole track, so you need to spend time on it to make sure it's absolutely as good as possible.

It might sound obvious, but if you have a sick bass sound, you can easily make it sound pretty worthless by adding a crappy drum loop. Work on a loop as a whole, and make all the elements sound right together.

[Hex047]

whatever works for you dude.

[nowaysj]

Thanks for posting that up. I will read when I have eyeballs.

I've got a powerful snare tip:

Create space in the time and frequency domains around the snare. It will bang!

[cent4ur]

-empty your desk
-get 2mics
-place one mic on the desk; one mic in the room
-press record
-slam your forehead on desk as hard as you can
-import the recorded sample in your DAW of choice
-boost 200hz with wide Q
-compress
-now for the high end part record facepalming yourself hard. that will give you a nice crisp sound
-hipass at around 2000
-layer with first sample
-compress again to taste

yeah! fuck vengeance packs!

[nameless133]

Or what about finding a nice sounding sample and you can avoid all shit?

[didi]

-empty your desk
-get 2mics
-place one mic on the desk; one mic in the room
-press record
-slam your forehead on desk as hard as you can
-import the recorded sample in your DAW of choice
-boost 200hz with wide Q
-compress
-now for the high end part record facepalming yourself hard. that will give you a nice crisp sound
-hipass at around 2000
-layer with first sample
-compress again to taste

yeah! fuck vengeance packs!

that's not funny m80

[mromgwtf]

Or what about finding a nice sounding sample and you can avoid all shit?

I always spend some time building my own drum sample library so then when I am making a song I can just select a snare that is perfect for me.
I don't know what sample packs do you guys use, but snares from sample packs are usually too raw or too processed and they are just building blocks for a real snare.
And it all depends on what kind of music you make.

[Genevieve]

I'm surprised by all the shit he's getting for this thread. I'm sure that if he's doing so much to a sound, he's internalized most of the process.

[mthrfnk]

I'm surprised by all the shit he's getting for this thread. I'm sure that if he's doing so much to a sound, he's internalized most of the process.

Agreed, it might look like a lot of work but I do something pretty similar with both kicks and snares, because as has been said drums can make or break a track... using a stock drum won't cut it most of the time imo so it's worth processing it to get it just right. Once you get into the habit of doing it it really doesn't take that long to process drums effectively.