Snare's

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daviddavid123

New member
Hello everyone. I have trouble getting my snares to hit as crisply and with as much smack as the producers i look to for influence. What can i do to my snares to make them more crisp and to make them hit harder. Compresion? Certain EQ? is it just picking the right sample? layering?

Also sometimes i notice that theirs sit in the mix differently than mine do. Is there a special way to pan them or shape them? Thanks in advance.
 
You mostly answered your own question: compression, EQ, layering, and sound selection! You can add tuning, and I would say as far as panning, bump the snare a few ticks to the right or left. Get it out of the middle and make room for your vocal or lead instrument.

GJ
 
The classic 'EDM' snare often has a sine wave pluck at 150Hz-300Hzish layered underneath

Hip-hop/trap snares are different through.

Mostly it's just a question of being spot on with the EQ and compression, which is really tough because EQ and compression are really subtle and difficult to hear
 
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as for being "spot on" for the eq, you can use the technique where you extremely boost or cut a small band then just scan across the entire frequency range. From there you can tell where problem areas might be where you want to add subtle cuts. It can also indicate where you might want to boost.

But it's really all that you mentioned, as stated above. theres tutorials if you look around.
 
well I think you are almost there
when you understand what are: pulse, smack, head
that's a good one
you just may be unsure for no good reason like sometimes I look too hard on things like should I bring it 2 db more, 2 db less like it really matters, but those things don't really matter too much because it is not like someone can tell the difference because there is no difference ,

I don't layer sounds like 2x snares however as it is already been said I like the idea of adding something like a sine wave pluck at 100 hz
 
Another thing is when you're picking your snare samples, A/B with the kind of track you're trying to sound like. It's easy to think a sound is knocking on its own, but listening to a good reference can help show if it's actually as knocking as it should be.
 
What do you mean A/B? You mean like picking a snare and muting it then picking another and comparing? Or is that something different?
 
That can be helpful too, but I meant like with a track from one of the producers you look to for influence. That way you can hear it fresh on your monitors/headphones and then when you're looking for your own snare that 'correct' "knock" is fresh in your mind. Sometimes I get caught up in a track but then when I come back to it the drums that I thought were banging weren't what they needed to be, so A/Bing with a target track can help.
 
This is a low-tech trick, but often i find that if you compress your whole drum track, you can lose the dynamic range you might want on certain instruments like a snare. There might be a better way of doing it, but I often create a separate track for my snare hits and then add a separate compression/EQ/effects to them until I get them to sound exactly how I want them to.
 
I bet there is a much easier and better way of doing it, but I'm self taught when it comes to Ableton, so it might be like someone telling you to hammer in a nail with a wrench.
 
>>>>This is a low-tech trick, but often i find that if you compress your whole drum track, you can lose the dynamic range you might want on certain instruments like a snare. There might be a better way of doing it, but I often create a separate track for my snare hits and then add a separate compression/EQ/effects to them until I get them to sound exactly how I want them to.<<<<

If you are talking about blending-in your compressed snare track with your original snare track, that is not a "low-tech" technique at all. It is called "parallel compression" or "New York compression," and it is a pretty standard industry practice. Pretty cool that you discovered it on your own...

GJ
 
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