KVR Audio

chillifunk · Post by **chillifunk** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 1:06 am

Hey guys .... so I have my track/song nearly finished, laid out in cubase 5.5 but my snare track which is mixed down to audio has the exact same hit all the way through, I love the sound itself but im looking for some tips on adding variation to each hit, give it a bit more feel ..... tnx

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 1:12 am

Velocity triggered low pass filter could work. Tweaking reverb and delays subtly ... kinda depends a lot on the style of music.

chillifunk · Post by **chillifunk** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 1:20 am

hey man, yes i could do that. its an electonic track, 123 bpm ... not edm, im looking to create that deep organic feel, what would u do with the delays and verb .. random sends?

thomni · Post by **thomni** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 3:38 am

Not sure what Cubase has in terms of built-in effects, but Ableton has a Frequency shifter that can be automated to act like a vibrato or S&H shifter.

Could also bus it to a chorus with a shorter delay trying to subtly change the crack of the high mids.

Might also consider what TCC said and modulate a LPfilter in a sensible way.

Of course just going in and manipulating the velocity and timing of each hit would be one way to do it depending on if it's done or not yet.

Kang · Post by **Kang** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 1:28 am

How about creating a few duplicates of the track, processing them differently and then splitting them up so that only one plays at a time.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 1:33 am

Try copying the sample a few different times and applying different and subtle chorus or other FX to each one. Or try mixing in other sounds. Adding a sound "under" a drum hit, any kind of sound, like foley FX or white noise blasts, can really change it's feeling subtly.

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 1:41 am

Besides filter cutoff and other effects, don't forget the importance of simple (slight) volume changes - no real drummer plays all hits at the same volume!

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 4:31 am

And changing the pitch helps too.

FormAndFilter · Post by **FormAndFilter** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:07 pm

Subtlety is really important with these kind of edits, its if you take the effect away it should be noticed that it is missing, but barely noticeable otherwise. You should feel it more than directly hear it. I think using a variety of the methods above plus try automating both sends & return channels as well as offline audio editing (subtle distortion or reverb etc...)

chillifunk · Post by **chillifunk** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:22 am

I got what i needed, tnx very much guys

What I did was:

1) set-up a 4 bar loop in cubase, which is 8 snare hits looping.

2) duplicate the snare track (audio) 7 times, giving me 8 snare tracks total.

3) then I deleted 7 of the 8 hits in each track, leaving each snare hit on separate track.

This made it very easy for me to treat each hit differently, I played around with the track delay (-3 or +3 milliseconds),
volume (a few db up or down), eq (adding or subtracting a little crack or body), also changed the pitch a little.

I could have gone much further and as mentioned used sends & return channels, delay, distortion but im pleased enough.

When i got what I wanted I mixed down to a single audio channel.

I totally agree with the last post from FormAndFilter, the changes are hardly noticable but it makes all the difference, when
every hit was same it lacked character and I felt like a lazy bastard

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:28 am

Careful use of a phaser can add subtle variation to the sound.

Tips for slight changes to snare in audio track