Ableton Forum

Hey Guys

I'm really struggling to get my snares sounding sharp and tight like in the track Jim Rivers-Empathy for example. They either mud the sound of the kick drum or sound too wimpy and I know good eqing will fix this but I have tried everything and usually get a result that sounds too distant or near. I've then tried to BUS the kick and snare together in same compressor but I think it's more of an eq issue than compression, the compression just kinda gels what is already there.

Please lend me your expertise guys lol

Haha confusion on posting . . .

I've got a couple tricks I've been using for snares a bit lately - use a second copy of the snare sound detuned and dropping in amplitude -12db or -20db. Splitting the stereo L/R maybe 5-10 (on 0-50 scale), putting one through a light reverb. Layering kicks and snares with a common sample (clap or hat or tom or something, very lightly and heavily EQ'd).

Snares I think are just really demanding, they take a lot of precision and they can't be done before the rest of the track is more or less there. Layering a snare sound or layering snare effects is like building a house of cards, should be done with a lot less force than other sounds.

You might be able to escape some snare hell with 2 or 4 or 8 snare variations early on and just kind of keeping those around, I do this sometimes and while they aren't ever the snare I want in the end it does give me something to tweak if I'm stuck on the snare sound when I don't want to be.

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-maybe try some filtering, low cut and boost some of the mid. also you could look into sidechaining, have the snare push down the kick or certain freq

I have a 2 part snare-creation tutorial on Youtube, if it helps:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvImLI_KHGw&fmt=18
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQP3XAfdBtI&fmt=18

As far as keeping your snares (or any drum, for that matter) snappy, make sure to experiment a LOT with the various envelopes (especially filter and pitch). Specifically, a bit of playing with the attack and decay parameters will be just the ticket I think.

Good luck,

- Nick

Tight snare = kill the low frequency on it

start with the right sample(s) ?
The snare in that Jim Rivers track has a 909-ish sound to it with some compression to accentuate the attack and maybe some eq to give it a bit more bite.
Hard to say what specific settings or fx to use since it depends on the sample and mix.

Use more than one snare..sometimes i layer up to 3 snares,bounce them and then apply eq and comp. Ive gotten some really great results.,depends a lot on the track, some tracks ive done i use single snare and sounds great.

Keep your transients in check.

I use this (and free to try) great plug by stillwell called Transient Monster that does it great, i actually prefer it over the one in the Sonnox bundle. Their Bad Buss Mojo is badass too, it's sort of an emulation of using mixing desk paralell saturation.

This is different to using compression to add the snap because it doesn't squash any dynamics, it just saturates which sounds a bit more analouge.

you can also drag your snares forward or back slightly so they don't exactly overlap your kick drum thumps, this can help without sounding like "its off the grid".

Great advice guys thanks alot