The woes of a Snare
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 2290 posts since 18 Oct, 2010 from Japan
...day 10,
I'm 2 ADSR filters and a mountain of compression in and still there are no signs of this snare sounding right.
Day 11,
The voice in the back of my head tells me to just find a new snare sound to use altogether. I laugh at the face of this voice.
Day 12,
I made the avant garde idea of pitch shifting the snare...I added another layer of ADSR...removed a little reverb...backed up off the compression...pushed the compressor back again...food supplies running low. Need to make another Hot Pocket run.
Day 17,
bought a gun today.
I'm 2 ADSR filters and a mountain of compression in and still there are no signs of this snare sounding right.
Day 11,
The voice in the back of my head tells me to just find a new snare sound to use altogether. I laugh at the face of this voice.
Day 12,
I made the avant garde idea of pitch shifting the snare...I added another layer of ADSR...removed a little reverb...backed up off the compression...pushed the compressor back again...food supplies running low. Need to make another Hot Pocket run.
Day 17,
bought a gun today.
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- KVRian
- 1158 posts since 6 Jan, 2015 from London, England
At the risk of confining you to your room for another week or two, have you tried a transient shaper?
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 2290 posts since 18 Oct, 2010 from Japan
To make this post take a more serious turn than my rather light hearted OP;
The snare is layered. It's an acoustic snare with a MicroTonic snare. Honestly the MicroSnare mostly just adds a little fuzziness to the top end, and a little UMPH in the low end (just a little though, seriously.)
The problem, ironically, came from the acoustic snare, which had a rather snappy and short initial attack that very quickly decayed, but the length of the decay lasted far too long.
I've actually gotten it much closer to where I want it. I pitch shifted the entire snare sound down half a step - I guess that would be 50 cents? I took an ADSR filter pre compression and used it to reduce the amount of the tail on the snare, then applied some slightly heavy compression which gave the initial attack a little more body. Finally, I applied another coat of ADSR, this time making minor touch ups to the tail, but mostly fixing the attack. Here I intentionally blew-out the attack, because after that ADSR I applied a clipper with some a soft knee to the clip, while lowering the threshold quite a bit.
Somehow, the end result is still a touch too choppy, I think the attack needs have a slower decay, but the way-too-long tail is gone, and the overall tone is about where I want it. The result of all this, however, is now it doesn't exactly cut through the mix like I want it to. Maybe with some more playing around in the ADSR filter I can back off on the clipper some. I guess that's what is left; finding the balance between the ADSR and the clipper.
The snare is layered. It's an acoustic snare with a MicroTonic snare. Honestly the MicroSnare mostly just adds a little fuzziness to the top end, and a little UMPH in the low end (just a little though, seriously.)
The problem, ironically, came from the acoustic snare, which had a rather snappy and short initial attack that very quickly decayed, but the length of the decay lasted far too long.
I've actually gotten it much closer to where I want it. I pitch shifted the entire snare sound down half a step - I guess that would be 50 cents? I took an ADSR filter pre compression and used it to reduce the amount of the tail on the snare, then applied some slightly heavy compression which gave the initial attack a little more body. Finally, I applied another coat of ADSR, this time making minor touch ups to the tail, but mostly fixing the attack. Here I intentionally blew-out the attack, because after that ADSR I applied a clipper with some a soft knee to the clip, while lowering the threshold quite a bit.
Somehow, the end result is still a touch too choppy, I think the attack needs have a slower decay, but the way-too-long tail is gone, and the overall tone is about where I want it. The result of all this, however, is now it doesn't exactly cut through the mix like I want it to. Maybe with some more playing around in the ADSR filter I can back off on the clipper some. I guess that's what is left; finding the balance between the ADSR and the clipper.
- KVRAF
- 2022 posts since 15 Aug, 2012 from Australia
Snares are a trap....
I'm tired of being insane. I'm going outsane for some fresh air.
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 2290 posts since 18 Oct, 2010 from Japan
werp wrote:Snares are a trap....
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- Banned
- 12368 posts since 30 Apr, 2002 from i might peeramid
kicks, toms.. and high hats all so
THE SNOWS OF AWARE
hahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahah
THE SNOWS OF AWARE
hahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahah
you come and go, you come and go. amitabha neither a follower nor a leader be tagore "where roads are made i lose my way" where there is certainty, consideration is absent.
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- KVRist
- 116 posts since 13 Feb, 2006
Here's what I've found when I obsess over one sound like this. Usually it's a kick but it's happened with snares too.
You know that thing that happens when something's on in the background, like a clothes dryer or a fan or a buzzing fluorescent lamp, where once you've been in the room with it for an hour or two you can't hear it anymore? Your brain actually turns off part of your ears' frequency response to avoid the annoying sound. That's why after an 8-hour car trip (with or without music) I can't hear the bass in anything, my brain has tuned out bass to tolerate the car engine noise.
Okay, put your snare on loop and listen to it for an hour... THE SAME THING HAPPENS. You literally will never get it to sound perfect now because YOU CAN'T HEAR IT ANYMORE. At least you're not hearing it "correctly." You might have a snare everyone else will love but you've listened to it too much and now you hate it, or can't even hear it.
There's no easy solution to this, but a few tips:
- Trust someone else's opinion and play a few candidates for them.
- Take an hour off for every hour "on" designing a sound. Listen to something else.
- If you must keep working on it, constantly A/B it with a snare you like from a commercial track and compare the two in a spectrum analyzer. Your ears can't be trusted.
- This is even worse if you're using headphones. Switch to speakers for a while.
- Save the "old version" every time you tweak it. Wait a few hours and then listen to both versions. See which one is better.
Good luck...
P.S. The one piece of technical advice I have is to watch the phase when layering sounds. Try reversing the phase of a layer or adjusting the timing of one or the other a couple of milliseconds forward and back. Makes a big difference sometimes.
You know that thing that happens when something's on in the background, like a clothes dryer or a fan or a buzzing fluorescent lamp, where once you've been in the room with it for an hour or two you can't hear it anymore? Your brain actually turns off part of your ears' frequency response to avoid the annoying sound. That's why after an 8-hour car trip (with or without music) I can't hear the bass in anything, my brain has tuned out bass to tolerate the car engine noise.
Okay, put your snare on loop and listen to it for an hour... THE SAME THING HAPPENS. You literally will never get it to sound perfect now because YOU CAN'T HEAR IT ANYMORE. At least you're not hearing it "correctly." You might have a snare everyone else will love but you've listened to it too much and now you hate it, or can't even hear it.
There's no easy solution to this, but a few tips:
- Trust someone else's opinion and play a few candidates for them.
- Take an hour off for every hour "on" designing a sound. Listen to something else.
- If you must keep working on it, constantly A/B it with a snare you like from a commercial track and compare the two in a spectrum analyzer. Your ears can't be trusted.
- This is even worse if you're using headphones. Switch to speakers for a while.
- Save the "old version" every time you tweak it. Wait a few hours and then listen to both versions. See which one is better.
Good luck...
P.S. The one piece of technical advice I have is to watch the phase when layering sounds. Try reversing the phase of a layer or adjusting the timing of one or the other a couple of milliseconds forward and back. Makes a big difference sometimes.
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- KVRian
- 783 posts since 18 Apr, 2011
uh.. you should never spend that long on one element of a song.
Here's my suggestion.. f**k with it for a little while longer, render like 10 different versions of the snare. then finish your track.
Then go back and audition the different snares (via a sampler). pick the one you like most and move on. Nobody's probably going to care what the snare sounds like anyway
Here's my suggestion.. f**k with it for a little while longer, render like 10 different versions of the snare. then finish your track.
Then go back and audition the different snares (via a sampler). pick the one you like most and move on. Nobody's probably going to care what the snare sounds like anyway
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- KVRist
- 126 posts since 14 Jun, 2012 from South of Mars
i remember having this problem. my answer was to stop using samples & to learn how to synthesize my own drum sounds. I took a lot of practice over a long time now i'm at a point where you could point out any snare you want and i can put it together from scratch. my advice would be to buy a drum machine like the roland TR-8 or DSI Tempest & experiment with layering & such. if you cant afford a hardware drum machine D16 Group make some great emulations of classic drum machines which i use & greatly loventom wrote:...day 10,
I'm 2 ADSR filters and a mountain of compression in and still there are no signs of this snare sounding right.
Day 11,
The voice in the back of my head tells me to just find a new snare sound to use altogether. I laugh at the face of this voice.
Day 12,
I made the avant garde idea of pitch shifting the snare...I added another layer of ADSR...removed a little reverb...backed up off the compression...pushed the compressor back again...food supplies running low. Need to make another Hot Pocket run.
Day 17,
bought a gun today.
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- KVRer
- 9 posts since 5 Jul, 2015
You guys are crazy serious about your snares...
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- Banned
- 12368 posts since 30 Apr, 2002 from i might peeramid
we sell crap all day bro..
you come and go, you come and go. amitabha neither a follower nor a leader be tagore "where roads are made i lose my way" where there is certainty, consideration is absent.