natural but clear and punchy snare drum

[dandmkirkwood]

Hi all. I'm currently working on a home project and would love some mixing tips.

I'm going for a very natural sounding mix, almost retro, but I want it to be clear enough to still sound good along side commercial mixes.

I'm getting good results but I'm stuck on the snare drum. My kit is a vintage 70's ludwig with a very vintage wooden Reno snare. I want the snare to jump out without loosing the warmth and woodiness of it. But every time I push frequencies up it looses its natural tone and starts to sound over processed.

here is the raw kit:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50905640/drum%20raw.mp3

here is the kit with the current mix:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50905640/drum%20mix.mp3

here is the raw snare track:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50905640/snare%20raw.mp3

here is the snare with the current mix:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50905640/snare%20mix.mp3

As you can tell iv got a fair bit of fx but hopefully not too much. Like I said I'm trying to really bring out the natural punch and crack without over doing it and end up loosing the natural warmth.

Any help would be so appreciated. Thank you, Damien.

[mandolarian]

How was the snare mic'd? Not hearing much attack in the raw tracks, lotsa wood tone tho which is nice. If you want to preserve the 'naturalness', I'd suggest a re-track with some different mics and placements to achieve a 'natural' tone with a snappy attack. Or consider double-tracking the snare.

Alternately, you could spend even more time carving and sculpting with some transient-shaping compressors to either exaggerate the attack or shorten the decay portion of the sound. Also you might consider cutting the low mids rather boosting the high frequencies.

Happy experimenting!

[IIRs]

A few points:

Don't spend too much time with just the drums solo'ed: you ultimately need them to work in the context of your full mix, not on their own.

Natural sounding snare drums usually come from the overheads / room mics more than from the close mics. The close mics are often important to add body and punch, but the character of the recording is determined by the overheads. It would actually be more useful for me to hear your overheads solo'ed than the snare close mic!

If your snare sounds good on the overheads try turning those up, and / or compressing them to bring out the low level detail. If the snare sounds too quiet in the OH mics, try a gate or expander and drive the sidechain from the snare close mic: with some careful setting up you should be able to automatically boost the OH mics by a few dB on every snare hit, which can sound much more natural than just turning up the close mic.

I almost always use two mics for snare drums. Every so often I encounter a snare that sounds great with just the top head mic'ed, but most of the time the top mic sounds dull and lacks snap, sometimes sounding more like a timbale than a snare drum. I find I need to add in a bottom mic to capture the crack and snap of the snares. (The top and bottom mics generally need to be switched out-of-phase to each other: I usually check the top mic's phase against the overheads, then set the bottom mic the other way.) While the bottom mic usually sounds a bit trashy and thin on its own, the combination of top plus bottom mic sounds way more natural than just the top mic on its own (though still very flat and 2-dimensional compared to the overheads, if they're set up well).

I'm guessing you only had a top mic as you refer to your snare track in the singular. However all is not lost: you can "re-amp" your snare track to add in a bottom mic after the fact. The technique is as follows: place a speaker cabinet on its back with the drivers firing vertically up. I find a small PA cab most convenient, but anything should work. Then place your snare drum upside down on top of the cab, and mic the bottom head, which is now facing upwards of course. Route your snare top mic out to the speaker cab, and turn up the level until the snare starts to magically "play along" to the track... it can seem quite spooky actually, as it really sounds like someone is playing the drum! Once its set up you can bounce the bottom snare mic back into your project, then time-align if neccesary before mixing to taste.

[mandolarian]

However all is not lost: you can "re-amp" your snare track to add in a bottom mic after the fact. The technique is as follows: place a speaker cabinet on its back with the drivers firing vertically up. I find a small PA cab most convenient, but anything should work. Then place your snare drum upside down on top of the cab, and mic the bottom head, which is now facing upwards of course. Route your snare top mic out to the speaker cab, and turn up the level until the snare starts to magically "play along" to the track... it can seem quite spooky actually, as it really sounds like someone is playing the drum! Once its set up you can bounce the bottom snare mic back into your project, then time-align if neccesary before mixing to taste.

Hey! That's cheating!!! (Clever one, IIRS.)

[Andywanders]

A few excellent points:

Great post..!

[dandmkirkwood]

Thank you so much for your advise. I eventually went toward transient shaping and some cleaner eq. Also I made sure the overhead mics were more in the mix. This left me with the mix I was after. I have never known about transients and always got sparkle on drums and acoustic guitar etc with eq, so thanks so much for the advise, it means alot. All the best, Damien.

[lfm]

In Superior Drummer you have one snare mike through a 1176 compressor(NY Avatar) and adding that does exactly what you describe.

So 1176 compressor/clone help you in the right direction I gather. Waves CLA-76 etc.

[chj]

A little overdrive/saturation will instantly add more punch or crack to a snare. The free GuitarRig player comes with the Jump Amp. I use it (amp only, no cabinet) all the time for this.

[stomachache]

IIRs, that was a great post and helpful. I've used Danelectro miniamps for the drum amping before and it works great because the tone control can pop it good. But i've only done that for "special effect" applications. I've been working on recording my kit without much previous experience multi-miking a kit. That balance between room and close mics is only just starting to sink in. But it leaves open so much potential for creative possibilities once I get a handle on the utilitarian aspects.

[Shy]

Thank you so much for your advise. I eventually went toward transient shaping and some cleaner eq. Also I made sure the overhead mics were more in the mix. This left me with the mix I was after. I have never known about transients and always got sparkle on drums and acoustic guitar etc with eq, so thanks so much for the advise, it means alot. All the best, Damien.

To really get the mix you were after (natural/accurate sound), you have to use different mics, since the ones used for these clips have a very limited frequency response. No kind of equalization would even come close to the result you could get with better mics.

[@midnight]

You can't really use vintage snare drums anymore, not in modern mixes. They just don't have enough 'crack' to the sound. These days you really need to use modern drums even if you are attempting a "retro" sound... you get the retro sound mostly from the cymbals and the room sound.

I would try a brass shell snare or this pork pie, which my old drummer had and which sounds amazing. Kind of sits in the middle between brass and maple (it's a maple shell but very explosive sounding)

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/drums-pe ... snare-drum