Snare Tracking

R

Recording Engineer

Moderator
Looking to improve my snare sounds... I seem to have this "trademark" snare sound (regardless of using different snares and tunings) that does sound decent, but something I'm trying to get away from and with not all that great of success.

I'm mostly looking for tips on mic positions and mic choices excellent rejection and can take a good stick-whack, but favorite compressor choices also desirable to a much lesser extent.

The snare mics I use most often are the SM57 and M201. I tend to prefer them a little away from the snare and pointing at the shell a bit. However, that usually leads to A LOT of bleed. But even at close range, I usually seem to get way too much high-hat or kick into the snare mic; sometimes even crash or splash cymbals. Plus at close ranges, I find the snare small and thin sometimes. Yes, I know to be aware of the polar pattern and to use it to my advantage. Still, I have problems with too much bleed a good portion of the time.

So what do you do and use to get the best snare sound to tape without too much bleed?
 
not sure about other mics, but for bleed, have you tried just physically moving the symbols further away from the snare than you would normally have them?

i know thats probably pretty obvious, and you probably know way more about recording than me...but sometimes people overlook stuff like that. not sure how much it would help anyways though...

i'm just a newbie and i don't know what i'm talking about. responding made me feel special though ;]
 
Hey RE,
What kind of room do you record in? Live,Dead? Small?

Mine is kinda small (11x 18) sorta dead, so occasionally I'll change it up by putting plywood on the floor and behind the kit. Brightens it up a bunch. Sometimes I'll use a B3 in fig 8 mode on the snare with the null facing the hat. I'll point the mic mainly at the shell from about 4 inches away barely peaking over the top head but pointing more downward to pick up the reflections of the snares off the plywood.
Great for Funk and Jazz,and some Ballad snare.

Some Ideas anyway....
 
Try using a gate with some Low & high freq roll-off in the side chain. This helps with "false" triggering of the gate from the kick & toms, also should help with hi-hat bleed. You may not get rid of all the hi-hat bleed but that maybe ok. Bring up the over heads and see if you can't hide some of the spill.

Good luck!
 
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Everyone usually snears at this mic but on snare, I dig it. I like a C-1000 with the hypercardiod attachment around 3 to 6 inches out pointed at the rim/top head. I try to get the mic positioned so that the hi hat is in the null point, otherwise it can take the top of your head off. I've been running this through a Mindprint Envoice to the HD24.
 
If you're looking for a mic with better rejection, then the two that come to mind are the MD-441 and the Audix D1 or D2.

Do you mic the botom of the snare?

I've found that placing a LDC almost to floor level, pointing up at the snare's underside has added a different dimension lately to my snare sounds. I didn't realize it before, but the key is to bring it way down, almost to the floor. As an added bonus, you get some nice kick beater slap . . . which you can either use or just gate out.
 
Thanks for the tips thus far guys... Keep 'em coming!

I record in:

About a 16ft. X 11ft. X 8ft. room with a solid white oak parquet floor and 4" 703 all-around the walls and ceiling exept for the solid pine door, 4ft. X 3ft. window to the control room, an 8ft. X 8ft. section of a wall that will eventually be covered with diffusion, and about an 8ft X 3ft. section of the ceiling that will eventually be covered with diffussion.

OR

About a 21ft. X 13ft. carpeted living room with a vaulted ceiling going from 8ft. to 14ft. with a large couch, a big chair, and TV and 2 large cabinets; all of which go halfway up the wall and get covered with heavy blankets.

The living room then opens into about a 10ft. X 9ft. room with only a tile-topped dinner/kitchen table in it, which is open into about an 16ft. X 14ft. room with a bunch of stuff in it (all of which share the same carpet and vaulted ceiling aspect) and open to about an 11ft. X 8ft. kitchen with a 7ft. ceiling, linoleum flooring, quite a few oak cabinets and lots of tiled counter and open-bar space.
 
The damndest thing is I've got a 541 Black Fire sitting right here... I'm sure the thing is broken though due to it literally having no high-end to speak of. It sounds like you griped the grill with your entire hand and spoke into the back of your hand!

Know where I can get it fixed? I've heard Sennheiser is stupidly expensive... What a surprise...

Or, maybe it's about time I give these Audix D Series mics a try that everyone seems to always talk so highly about!

I've tried snare bottom miking before with nasty results, but I'll give your "LDC floor miking" a try within the next week and report back.
 
I had a pair of C-1000s years back... They were my first condensers ever... Back when they were the only entry-level condensers at $300 a piece! Of course, your next step up was Crown CM-700s and Shure SM-81s, for about a quarter under $400.

I used them on so many things, but never tried them on snare.
 
R.E., about the only dynamic I use on a kit anymore is a D-112 or now an MD-441 inside the kick. All others are condensors. If your hi hats aren't too brutal, an AT-4033 can be cool too.
 
Have you tried damping techniques on the snare? You can vary the tone and attack through stylistic dampening. Near the rim you'll get more more tone and longer resonance. More towards the center you'll get a decrease in tone and less attack.

Sticks....light sticks sound a world apart from heavier ones. Nylon tipped versus wood tipped all make a difference.

I hope your heads (both top and bottom) and in good shape...I hope the snare strands are in even tension....

Keep the mic at a 60 degree angle that should help to eliminate some of the bleeding. Placing the mic near the rim will give you more tone and moving towards the center will give you more attack. Of course were the drummer hits the snare will make a difference as well. center hit - more attack rim hit - more tone.

EQ the snare. If you feel it's to thin and needs some more body go for it. 200-300Hz.

I know you know how to use a gate...why is the bleeding to much of a problem for you?
 
I know this is one of the toughest subjects, but has anyone tried the Bill Metoyer/Aaron Carey guitar miking technique applied to the snare and buss it to a single track? Ive been experimenting with a triple mic setup on the snare..sm57 on the shell, and sdc O/H pointed at the snare and a either a md421 or SP-B1 on the top..3 different pre's all blended together.... I erased my samples on the computer and was going to try to track it to tape sometime in the next week to see how it plays back. Anyone feels sporty enough to try and verifiy?

SoMm
 
I just haven't been happy with my 57 snare tones. I had a project I recorded mixed by a Jedi mixer and one thing he did was use my snare track to trigger a gated copy of the OH track that was EQ'd for the snare. Pretty slick idea.

I need to get some gates. One thing I would like to play with is using different gated room mics that are triggered by the close mics. They used to do that alot for the big 80's metal drum sound. Doing something like with a mic position like Chessrock mentioned would probably work well.
 
Recording Engineer said:


The snare mics I use most often are the SM57 and M201. I tend to prefer them a little away from the snare and pointing at the shell a bit. However, that usually leads to A LOT of bleed.
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Try pointing the mic at the point of impact. You will have less bleed because the signal going into the mic will be hotter. A hard hitting drummer on the cymbals but not the snare also makes for a mess. Tell the drummers to hit the snare HARD god dammit. I can't stress this enough with the drummers I record. They wanna kill the cymbals and baby the snare. I don't get it. The harder they hit, the more I can do with the snare.

You might want to also try a different mic with a hyper or super cardoid pickup pattern. The 57 is a popular choice on snare, although if you are getting excessive bleed, I would look into getting a snare mic with a tigher pickup pattern. I would recommend the Audix D1. It has a very tight pattern and is designed for snare. You'll also find with the D1 you won't be cranking the highs as much on snare as you would with the sm57.

Another option is to alter the pickup patter of the snare mic with foam. I've done this before and have had success. If you tape foam or some kind of material to the top of the mic you will get less bleed from the topside of the mic. I would advise to be careful though. If you go overboard on this, you will drastically affect the response of the mic on the snare.

If you are using a super/hyper cardoid or regular cardoid, take advantage of its pickup pattern. Put the mic at 10 or 11 oclock on the snare and have the drummer position the hats at 10 oclock as well as far as he/she can away from the snare. Ask the drummers to play with the cymbals a little higher than they normally would. For the drummers that like to crash on their rides, have them place the rides way up high. Even a few inches could mean a few decibals less in the snare mic.

Another option is to use an expander (a gate that does this, not a compressor with a negative ratio) on the snare. Set the gate so that it only closes off 2-4 decibals of bleed.
 
i use an audix d1 and i get good snare sounds(i record mainly metal). i never use a bottom mic cause to my ear they sound like crap(unless im doing jazz). i dont know many drummers who actually know how to tune their drums let alone get the bottom of a snare happening. most of em just put on a bottom head and tigthen it up and that is the end and the result is a bad sound from the bottom. anyhow, i have had people tell me that the audix d1 is "crap" and i should "shit can" it. i dont agree with them. you can get one on ebay for as low as $60. although i would love to get my hands on a md-441. i hear they are totally killer and have a great rejection.
good luck
 
I suppose it should have be noted that I've been playing drums myself for 13 years now... And I've been offering recording services in my home studio for 7 years now.

So, I know and use most of all these techniques mentioned. It's just I still end-up getting this "trademark" snare sound that while it sounds pretty decent, I just can't seem to get away from that "sound" all that much for some reason, without it sounding like garbage! I'm feeling it's because I get too much bleed from the high-hat most of the time, and occasionally too much bleed from the kick or cymbals.

Yes, I can and do use gating and frequency-dependent gating (I even have one of the fastest gates out there, an Aphex 622 modded by Audio Upgrades.), but the point is that I'm initally getting too much bleed on the snare mic.
 
RE,

Have you tried differnet HH's? Maybe you are kinda locked into your sound due to mic technics you are forced to use with your current hat choice. Maybe you have this issue with different kits and changing HH's won't help? What drums and cymbals are you recording?

NWSM
 
TexRoadkill said:
Doing something like with a mic position like Chessrock mentioned would probably work well.
Click to expand...

You know where I got that one from, don't ya? :D After reading that interview, I had to give it a try, and it worked great where it's never really done much for me in the past. I think there's just something to putting it almost to the floor and giving it the added distance.

RE, I think we're all kind of in the same boat. I don't think there's an engineer in existance who doesn't have issues with hi-hat bleed in the snare mic. I've often thought how nice it would be if I could just let the snare ring out a little longer without having to gate it . . . or how nice it would be to just compress the living crap out of it without fear of bringing all the bleed right out.

I've contemplated this quite a bit (the geek that I am), and I think it's not so much the amount of bleed as it is the type of bleed. When you think about it, if I want to mic a hi-hat, a Shure 57 pointed in the opposite direction isn't necessarily at the top of my list of considerations. :D But in essesnce, that's what you're doing when you mic a snare, because it's going to pick it up that way.

I still have yet to fully experiment with this myself, but I've considered trying different options that have a more natural off-axis response. Like trying something that actually might sound decent on the hi-hat facing away from it. If such a mic exists, that is. :D
 
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