Skrillex Snare Sound

[onemind777]

love his snares exp. in this..any ideas or tip or tricks on how to get this sound!!

[GeorgeZ]

Layer layer layer..... then process to death.

Link is to 5 snares I just made, already layered and processed. Should do the trick

http://k003.kiwi6.com/hotlink/o85xwkumv ... nd_com.zip

[rustyvst]

According to Kill the noise. The trick is layering but controlling transients for each layer. Use simple fades at the start of each sample so those transients don't build up and sound like Mush. My two cents

[onemind777]

Got a good method for this here is my tutorial on it

[blt33]

first is obviously starting with the right samples and layering it might take a while to find good ones the what i like to do is EQ each of the drums sepratly so each one stands out within a certain range of frequencies I want to be more specific but its hard whtout having the exact samples

[Regalo Vampire]

Vengeance Electro House, Dirty Electro, Essential House, Xfer Deadmau5 = this is what most house producers and Skrillex himself use right now. For sure, the question here is layering.

[TIMT]

At most it's likely to be 3 portions of audio

1.A high click sine based pitch enveloped transient

2.A low mid layer usually hitting around 200hz-ish(usually clipped so you can have it pretty loud in the mix)

3.A tail which is usually either the sustain off an acoustic snare sample or in skrillex's and a majority of the dnb pubstep producer case enveloped whitenoise,crossfaded with the attack and low mid portion of the snare

Eq'ing when layering in my opinion pointless unless you're using linear phase filters(although linear phase tends to dull sharp transients cause of it's pre-ringing effect so perhaps swerve the eq),as every notch or peak you add warps the phase and even the tiniest amount of phase shift has quite a dramatic impact on the entirety of the sound,unless you like chasing your tail notching then re-aligning,notching then re-aligning etc etc.

Though you can use eq to allign a sample but it can sound very odd and comb-filter'y in a majority of cases

You can get the apparent loudness and overall tonality of the snare by bussing them all to one channel and eqing them as a whole with a soft clipper after(basically using the eq to drive the clipper)

You could try compression but this is probably going to make your attack sound flammy? or possibly softer or this just maybe my dislike and biased opinion of compression showing through

[IELMusic]

While heavily processing and layering together several samples is most likely how he makes his snares himself, I've found it is completely possible to create an extremely similar sound without layering. All you need is a good, punchy snare sample tuned fairly low (having a fundamental tone between 170 Hz and 180 Hz). Start by boosting the fundamental by about 2-3 dbs with EQ (I know, normally you wouldn't do that, but you're going for an over-processed kind of sound, so just go with it), as well as attenuating a few dbs at around 400 Hz and then a bit around the 2KHz range, then boost the highs (5Khz and up) by a bit. Then, compress it fairly heavily, don't worry about the transients at this point in time, so go with a very fast attack, as well as a fairly quick release to fatten up the snare. Then, add a transient shaper and bring back the transients a little bit (not too much though, 'cause there's still more compressing to do). Then, here's the secret ingredients that I find give it a very "2011-dubstep-type" sound (a la Skrillex): multiband compression and a big, dark reverb. Send out some of your snare to a big, dark reverb with a lots of early reflections, lots of modulation, but a fairly short duration (like 1.7 seconds MAXIMUM). Then, buss the snare and it's reverb together, high pass it up the fundamental, low pass off some of the extreme highs, and then slap on a multiband compressor. Solo the low band, and set the cutoff at somewhere a little bit above the fundamental (i.e., if the snare fundamental is at 170, set the cutoff between 190 and 250 or so) and set the attack of that band to between 47ms and 52ms (but go with your ears on this one), and the release to whatever your tastes dictate. Now, set the threshold relatively low, and the ratio fairly high, and then bring up the gain. Then set your mid and high bands to taste (try lower attacks and releases, to fatten up the release, and to prevent the highs from getting too clicky and distracting from the low-end punch. Then, use a gate to shorten up the reverb tail if needed, and just play around with the volume of the reverb send and the volume of the dry snare until a desired ratio is reached (although I find it's safe to leave quite a bit of the reverb in there, as it becomes less noticeable once you have other elements going in the mix, and it helps to colour the low end of the snare a little better, which is definitely what you want in this case. As far as what samples to use, pretty much any synth snare or acoustic snare will work for this, I did it with a Blofeld sample (which is mostly sine waves and noise, very similar to Roland TR808 and TR909).

[JD Gaffe]

^ Lovely and informative post, but my god paragraphs are used to make things easier to read.

[IELMusic]

^ Lovely and informative post, but my god paragraphs are used to make things easier to read.

haha yeah, sorry about that, I didn't really notice I was going on for so long until afterwards.

[RadioSmash]

Actually. That low pitch "thunk" snare is actually just a sample from an old funk song. I got it in some skrillex remake project

[hatethatiloveyou]

TLDR

Literally every drum hit you hear on his records is from Vengeance, Xfer, or Prime Loops.

You think he actually makes his own and processes them all crazy? Lmao.

[TIMT]

Maybe Vengeance and Xfer but,am yet to hear anything credible to come from primeloops,horses for courses i suppose

[MatthewHarrison]

At most it's likely to be 3 portions of audio

1.A high click sine based pitch enveloped transient

2.A low mid layer usually hitting around 200hz-ish(usually clipped so you can have it pretty loud in the mix)

3.A tail which is usually either the sustain off an acoustic snare sample or in skrillex's and a majority of the dnb pubstep producer case enveloped whitenoise,crossfaded with the attack and low mid portion of the snare

Eq'ing when layering in my opinion pointless unless you're using linear phase filters(although linear phase tends to dull sharp transients cause of it's pre-ringing effect so perhaps swerve the eq),as every notch or peak you add warps the phase and even the tiniest amount of phase shift has quite a dramatic impact on the entirety of the sound,unless you like chasing your tail notching then re-aligning,notching then re-aligning etc etc.

Though you can use eq to allign a sample but it can sound very odd and comb-filter'y in a majority of cases

You can get the apparent loudness and overall tonality of the snare by bussing them all to one channel and eqing them as a whole with a soft clipper after(basically using the eq to drive the clipper)

You could try compression but this is probably going to make your attack sound flammy? or possibly softer or this just maybe my dislike and biased opinion of compression showing through

might have to test some of this out

[zircon]

Actually, I don't think his sounds come from Vengeance, Xfer, etc. They're way cleaner. People often say his kicks/snares are really easy to make, but then never back it up with MP3 examples. I'm after the sound myself and it's gotta be something quite complex. If you don't think so, prove it!