Attack on Snare drum

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Flight 16

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what is the best way to get a nice attack on a snare drum...so it sounds fat and tight?....the last time I recorded a snare it sounded sluggish.
 
you can add attack to a snare by rasing somewhere around 2-4khz a couple decibles. you can add body by raising somewhere around 200hz.
 
A little compression at mixtime helps as well.
 
Good drummer, good snare. But aside from that try scooping out around 500Hz on the snare track. Try and get a lot of your snare sound from your overheads.
 
Tune the top head really fucking tight and play around with the snare-side to add body. Not to everyone's taste but it works for me, even with quite a shallow snare. Tight and fat. Nice.
 
Jus listening to "My Place" from your site, the snare's quite far back in the mix but sounds like a bit of a boost of the higher end of things will give you the attack you're after, you can tell there's plenty of body to the snare. As Ronan said, pick up snare with overheads as much as possible. Listen to Shellac for amazing sounding drums from just two overheads and a mic on the bass drum. Also, i'm sure you're familiar with Helmet, the snare sound on "Betty" is awesome - really tight and crisp and tuned pretty high, yet still sounds full enough to rock.
 
Davenhurst said:
Jus listening to "My Place" from your site, the snare's quite far back in the mix but sounds like a bit of a boost of the higher end of things will give you the attack you're after, you can tell there's plenty of body to the snare. As Ronan said, pick up snare with overheads as much as possible. Listen to Shellac for amazing sounding drums from just two overheads and a mic on the bass drum. Also, i'm sure you're familiar with Helmet, the snare sound on "Betty" is awesome - really tight and crisp and tuned pretty high, yet still sounds full enough to rock.
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ahh cool !

I told the guy that recorded that Song just that!!! good to know i was right :)...i thought the drums have alot of body but sound a little too cardboardy..to boxy.....but no no..i was the singer and he was the studio guy...:)

thanks for everyones feed back
 
Another thing i have been wondering....how important is it to put 2 mics on a snare...i gues like you say if you use the over heads well, it should not matter
 
2 mics aren't nesessary at all on a snare,but do at some "flavor' that many of us like. you get a little fuller sounding snare, but with more sound from the snares. you can add a little bit of that by raising around 10-12 khz. it wont sound the same as using 2 mics though.

if you do mid scoops on a snare, i would try it a little lower.....like 300-400hz. i used to scoop around 5 or 600 hz, but it sounds way better to scoop a little lower.
 
Davenhurst said:
Tune the top head really fucking tight and play around with the snare-side to add body. Not to everyone's taste but it works for me, even with quite a shallow snare. Tight and fat. Nice.
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that works well wit my piccolloooooooo snare
i get a super high POP
and i hate using the rings...dampening my snare...when i leave it notey....it leaves me thinking its so raw....its RAW :eek:
 
Davenhurst said:
Tune the top head really fucking tight and play around with the snare-side to add body. Not to everyone's taste but it works for me, even with quite a shallow snare. Tight and fat. Nice.
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it sounds interesting, but i have worked with a drummer who allways swears buy tuning his snare so slack!...he says it allways makes it sound so beefy and heavy
 
In my experiance, you will get a good attack if the drummer is hard-hitting and the snare is tuned somewhat properly. That's it.
I usually compress my snares quite alot too, but one must take care with the attack/release settings as you don't want to compress the attack away from the sound.
 
Flight 16 said:
it sounds interesting, but i have worked with a drummer who allways swears buy tuning his snare so slack!...he says it allways makes it sound so beefy and heavy
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That's fine, but by tuning my snare ultra-high as described it can sound unbelievably "beefy and heavy" when playing hard, and responsive and subtle when played very very very very very gently. I find a slack head eats up your ghost notes and shits them out in a horrible plap of a sound. But that's just the way i play, each to their own blah blah fucking cliches galore.
 
systmovadown said:
that works well wit my piccolloooooooo snare
i get a super high POP
and i hate using the rings...dampening my snare...when i leave it notey....it leaves me thinking its so raw....its RAW :eek:
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Yeah, fuck dampening rings. And fuck muffling. Apart from the bass drum.

I have quite a deep metal snare too, the same tuning technique works wonders on that aswell, generally speaking. Snares are good. Drumming is good. FUCKING ROCK!
 
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