Drum problems

[jamesduysen]

Hey guys,

I recorded these drums and didn't get the source sound I wanted on the snare because these guys were in such a rush.

I had to cut huge amounts in eq (18dB in some places) to get rid of an awful ring in the snare.

Take a listen and let me know if you think the snare can be salvaged or if this needs to be retracked.

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_3483913

Thanks,

-jD

 

[nickg]

It's not horrible...

Dang, that sucks.. Even in a rush, a simple dampening ring on the snare, or a gel would have fixed that right up. You could try and work it more with EQ or maybe do some drum replacement with drumagog or something similar?

Good luck!

 

[jamesduysen]

Thanks for listening man,

The next session I am going to try to get him to work on the snare a lot more. Hopefully I can get a better sound with more EQ work. But who knows it could sound fine in the ix.

I will also try drumagog, but I don't have any gogs that really wow me. Is there a free way to get new samples at all?

Thanks again,

-jD

 

[Greg_L]

Snare sound is a subjective matter, but that sounds terrible. It sounds like all top head and it's dead. Nothing's gonna fix that but sample replacement.

 

[Murdersgalore]

mhm

That sounds like ass. Dude needs to learn how to tune his snare. Could have fixed it in 15 minutes.

 

[PoeticIntensity]

A year ago, I would have fought to the death that there isn't a "right" sound for any job, because the sounds of drums vary so wildly, and are so subjective. But!

The more I get acquainted with the proper techniques for recording, and proper tuning used on drums and such, the more I realize that as subjective as sounds can be, there's almost always a "right" sound, or a sound which works best for a particular style or genre.

This snare just sounds wrong all around. It has a snap to it, but right after the snap is a terrible "woof" sound. Undoubtedly, you can get a better sound which will work just as well.

If it were me, I'd re-record it, or find another sample to use.

 

[Washburn100]

I read in a forum (can't remember where so you'd have to do some googling) about ducking with a compressor and gate and then adding white noise to get a nice snare sizzle.

If rerecording is not possible, you might be able to salvage with that.

This is not that helpful is it, sorry.

 

[nickg]

I read in a forum (can't remember where so you'd have to do some googling) about ducking with a compressor and gate and then adding white noise to get a nice snare sizzle.

If rerecording is not possible, you might be able to salvage with that.

This is not that helpful is it, sorry.

Setting up a sidechain to open a gate with whitenoise behind it is not hard. Simple setup a bus from the snare to a track with white noise, or tone (I do this a lot with kick's). Insert whatever plugins you need to make the second track blend well with your original snare track, and then setup a gate as the last plugin on the insert strip, with sidechain input enabled, and assigned to the bus that you chose to send the snare out of. Set a fast attack, hold and release can be adjusted to your taste. The second track should now be "triggered" by the original snare source.

That being said.. I don't think this is the best fix for this case. Retracking, Sample replacement, or even duplicating the snare, pitch shifting it to a higher pitch, and blending the two would probably have a better outcome.

And in repsonse to using samples with drumagog.. You can record your own samples, and use them You can actually record several takes of snare hits at different velocities and set drumagog to use the different samples randomly so that you don't lose that "human" feel, and the snare doesn't lose all of its dynamics. Any subtle ghost notes or "flare" will be non-existant though.