Snares.. How hard can it be?

JimpaDirt

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So I've been sitting in logic all day trying to come up with a hard, heavy, punchy, splashing snare and its just not working out for me. And this is not the first time, snares are the most frustrating thing for me productionwise.

Heres my believes what a good snare sounds like:


What I tend to do when I'm making a snare is that I find a sample for the low end thump and punch, something that slams hard around 200-250 hz and boost that end. And then another sample for the high and splashy kind of sound, often some white noise added as well for some extra brightness. Bus them together and compress.

Obviously the sample in the example is extremely distorted but when I try to add distortion it just gets messy and sounds like shit. Been trying to add several plugins with only minimal distortion on each of them but thats not really doing the trick either. The sample packs I've been trying out is Danny Byrd's vol.2, a boyinaband dnb pack and then I've got all of the vengeance packs. And I'm really picky in my sample selection.

Its the grit that I'm looking for, I know how to make them punch. Im just so bugged out... How do you go about?
 
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3 things

I got the fabfilter gate plugin.... using the attack on zero and low release really keeps it sharp. then some reverb with a built in eq to just get the highs, then eq'd to sharpen the reverb.

Using a China symbol or a crash cymbal as well as the usual amen or whatever ride breaks and having the china/crash on the snare hits really helps

basically the vintage warmer can warm up the snare... boost the 200hz before you route it into it

I'm with you, its hard to get right... just beginning.

check this snare out, after the drop


Edit: I know your point about getting the grit. But for me its like, basically this is the foundation i use to keep the snare tone full and dirty. Sometimes I use a rob papen distortion plugin with low distortion to give it more power and dirty it up a little. Maybe light compression...

Looking for more responses in this thread.

This snare is one of my favorites.

 
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Thanks for the comment man, I guess I'm lacking a bit of body as well in my snares so a vintage warmer maybe could make some difference to how my snare sounds. I don't think logic has got any build in vintage warmer but I'll see if google perhaps could find me a free, decent one :)

And the snare in that koan sound track was badass!
 
Thanks for the comment man, I guess I'm lacking a bit of body as well in my snares so a vintage warmer maybe could make some difference to how my snare sounds. I don't think logic has got any build in vintage warmer but I'll see if google perhaps could find me a free, decent one :)

And the snare in that koan sound track was badass!

To get the warming/saturation effect, you can try one of the following:

Add Logic's Overdrive plugin to your snare channel strip, set the cutoff to the highest setting and dial back the overdrive to your taste–I find anywhere between 0 and 3 does the trick. Also, place an EQ after the overdrive to cutout any unwanted low end that may have appeared.

OR

Add Logic's Bitcrusher, use the 24bit setting and set the drive to 0. It's very subtle, but it adds a bit of warmth to the tone. This trick also works well with vocals.

If you find that either of the plugs are causing more harm than good to the sound, setup either of the plugs to a Bus and adjust the snare channel strip's Send to your taste.

Cheers.
 
if you can find a quality tube saturator they are great also, compression can make or break a snare once u get that under your belt you can really play around with you snares
 
compression is shit. snares are shit. layer a pitched up kick. kicks are shit too, come to think of it.

fuck you and your samples. real DJs beatbox all their beats in reverse, then reverse them. you damn novice.
 
nuh uh. no samples. i strickly reverse in realtime. the same time it comes out it comes out in reverse. inverted. warm sound, also. analog and that. fat. therefore i think youll find its you my dear sir who is the novice here. five squid on the door.
 
always liked some of metrik's snares (think engine room)

metriks snares are fucking unbelieavable imo. just like koan sounds (although they use only 1 snare in every tune.. must be pretty bad ass to mix down the one single snare all day, lol!).

watch resos production masterclass and go from there, he explains everything you need pretty nicely! summed up : transient shaper, compression, transient shaper, limiting, transient shaper, compression and so on ;)
 
lostnthesound, thanks for the tips. Really helpful :)

And logikz.. Im just using cowbell as an all around sample. Works for kick, snare, hats whatever. Made some sweet bass patches of it as well, my next track is going to be dope!
 
I find standing on a cats tail, pitching it down a little then adding a wet fart with gated reverb makes the best snare, noisia do this ive heard.
 
metriks snares are fucking unbelieavable imo. just like koan sounds (although they use only 1 snare in every tune.. must be pretty bad ass to mix down the one single snare all day, lol!).

watch resos production masterclass and go from there, he explains everything you need pretty nicely! summed up : transient shaper, compression, transient shaper, limiting, transient shaper, compression and so on ;)

So what good transient shapers are out there?
I actually also have no idea how to use one ha, does he explain that in the videos?
 
nuh uh. no samples. i strickly reverse in realtime. the same time it comes out it comes out in reverse. inverted. warm sound, also. analog and that. fat. therefore i think youll find its you my dear sir who is the novice here. five squid on the door.

fuck that...real men plug a 20" frying pan and a voice recorder up there arse, then get arrested for raping a wild horse, then whilst in the cell remove said items and smash them against the wall.......should get a nice sound and echo from the empty cell....dont forget to load the batteries into the recorder tho
 
So what good transient shapers are out there?
I actually also have no idea how to use one ha, does he explain that in the videos?

its kinda self-explanatory.

i use the shaack transient shaper. theres bittersweet and those spl thing that i know of aswell.
 
Jimpa, sorry to hear you can't get the right snares you're looking for. I always find it nice to have as many snare samples as possible, especially when the BIAB pack doesn't give you what you need. I do have some snare sample packs on my mediafire page (check my account page for the link, it's blocked where I am at the moment so I can't directly link to it) that you can grab for quick download.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5bpirmdyahici

in particular, I have a pack that I found somewhere called the "Ralph Price Hardcore Snare Pack" that has about 40-50 nice snare sounds that work nicely for drum and bass. I can't seem to find it from a quick google (maybe it was on freesound?), so I might not have the right name for it, but I will get home and upload it somewhere for you. They are a good place to start before adding distortion, compression etc.
 
i read of these transient shapers u speak of can you breakdown wtf they actually r and wat they do??

just little vst doing what it says on the tin. you can shape your transients. haha. you can take some attack and release out of your drums or add some basically..
 
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