How to sounddesign claps/snares/hihats?

[steffeeH]

I'm well familiar with many design techniques, but I've never actually looked that much into designing claps, snares, and hihats. Of course you can create basic hihats with noise and some ADSR, but I mean more realistic hihats for electronic production that has more of a tone to them.
And I mean not all claps and snares in samplepacks are recorded, right, you obviously hear the difference, so there must be some techniques to learn on how to design those from scratch.

Oh and I mean real synth techniques, I want to learn those, I'm not interested in any percussion design-plugins as I already have a few (those plugins must be based on some sort of synthesis anyway...).

I've had a look on YouTube, and while I found a few tutorials, those showed pretty mediocre results, and even though I still learned a little bit from those, I feel they're just the start of the whole world of percussion synthesis.

[thecontrolcentre]

http://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/c ... ums_today/

http://www.musictech.net/2010/12/drum-synthesis/

http://www.loopmasters.com/articles/213 ... s-Tutorial

[FarleyCZ]

I have a feeling that in original 808, there were noise-generated hi-hats that were replaced by sample playback in 909. I do think that majority of todays hi-hat and clap sounds are recorded with so heavy processing and layering afterwards you wouldn't precieve it as real anymore. Might be wrong though.

Either way, advice from heart: Don't bother about it and go make some music instead. There is so much good samples to make music with and ability to synthetise your own hi-hat won't add too much to any impression people make of you. It's not worthy. It only takes a sh***oad of time for close to zero outcome. In other words: It's geeky, not admirable. Pretty much nobody will give a damn.

[thecontrolcentre]

In other words: It's geeky, not admirable. Pretty much nobody will give a damn.

But I like making my own sounds ...

[FarleyCZ]

Mee too. ...but this is overkill. Iď rather program a lead or bass which is stuf people like to notice anyway.
I ment to say that imho there is no way to create these sounds out of scratch and without samples or recordings in reasonable speed and rate to be actually usable ... but you might prove me wrong. It happens a lot.

[soul_junkie]

Step 1
Get a Hi-Hat, Snare Drum and a pair of a hands.

Step 2
Place a microphone very close to said items

Step 3
Place a microphone a little bit further away from said items

Step 4
Record

Step 5
Use

[thecontrolcentre]

I mean real synth techniques, I want to learn those

Step 1
Get a Hi-Hat, Snare Drum and a pair of a hands.

Step 2
Place a microphone very close to said items

Step 3
Place a microphone a little bit further away from said items

Step 4
Record

Step 5
Use

[fmr]

Like with everything else, first you have to analyse what is and what goes on with the real deal.

Hi-hats: These are basically metallic noise, and the envelopes result much as to where they are opened, closed or pedalled. So, you may want to start with a noise osc, and/or maybe a sawq with distortion, and employ a filter with high resonance values. The filter cutoff will give you very much the timbre characteristics. The envelope will help you simulate opened/closed. Some modulations may help in the pedalled hi-hat.

Snares: These are more difficult. There are so many snare sounds as there are snares in the world, eventually. You may want a stronger or less strong fundamental. For this I would employ a square wave, preferablu coming from a sub-osc. Then add noise and filter it with more or less resonance. The higher the cutoff, the brighter the snare will be. Noise has to be carefully mixed as to not mask too mucyh the toned partials of the square wave, but this is linked to which character you want from the snare. As I said, there are piles of snare sounds. Personally, I like best the deeper bass ones.

Claps: Much of what I said about the snares apply to claps, except that these much less noisier (almost no noise at all. You want a more os less "tonal" timbre with a clear and very short envelope, and a very stong middle. A square wave may be your best bet for start. Then you will have to mess with the filter to find the exact timbre. Little to no resonance here, just the exact amount to create the "clap" sonority. Claps and toms share much timbre characteristics, BTW.

If you have a synth that allows you to route some oscillators into the filter and others to go directly to the output, that will be better. A good matrix modulation may be helpful here too. Also, more than two envelopes may be desirable, since you may want to also modulate the pitch to create added effect (especially on the snare, this can produce some extra spicing).

These are just some hints drawn in a hurry, right from my dayjob desk. Much more can be said if/when in front of a synth. If you mention what synths you have that may also help in helping you.

[steffeeH]

If you mention what synths you have that may also help in helping you.

Massive, Sytrus, Harmor (though Harmor doesn't have noise since it's additive, then I'll have to resample it), also thinking of buying Serum.

Hihats seems to be well covered so far, so we'll leave those now and continue on claps/snares only - thank you all so far

[FarleyCZ]

I had luck with FM synthesis. While laboring over a good kick, I stumbled upon a few interesting snare-like noises. FM is cool for rich attacks of that initial phase. Then for the rest, plain sinewave, may be with one or two overtones was enough. ...it still took too much time. Especially when considering repeating the process for layering sake. ...but it's possible I guesss.

There is cool I believe Future Music video with Noisia. They make some good points about making snare from scratch. They essentially make layers corresponding with physical design of actual snare drum.

[aMUSEd]

If you mention what synths you have that may also help in helping you.

Massive, Sytrus, Harmor (though Harmor doesn't have noise since it's additive, then I'll have to resample it), also thinking of buying Serum.

Hihats seems to be well covered so far, so we'll leave those now and continue on claps/snares only - thank you all so far

It just seems such a waste of synths like Massive and Harmor to use them to make such basic and boring sounds, I really hate it if I buy a bank and there are patches like that.

[xoxos]

you may want to hold some sort of occult sex and/or murder ritual in the room while you're recording. your customers won't really hear the difference in the samples, but their pineal glands will know it, and the sheer oppressiveness of it will perpetuate their state of fear and desperation and lead them to make more purchases instead of seek autonomy in production method

plus it's what people are used to.

it worked for phil spector and nile rodgers, "Among Others"!

[FarleyCZ]

Also, talking about Massive. Noise generator has some cool metal-like textures ... although ... they are probably just a bunch of non-keytracked samples, so by logic of this discussion, it should be also avoided.

(If you think it literally, then in a lot of synths, OSC is just a repeating short sample playback, so that would even exclude a lot of synths. )

[FarleyCZ]

Sorry for going back to hihats, but also here:
https://youtu.be/r9q48UlfD1w?t=127
2:07 - Man with a biggest drum machine collection I've ever seen and what's there? Real cymbal and some mic.

[philnsicab]

RC-808 is pretty good for all that stuff. I made a tutorial here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnobTM_E4FY