Favorite snare mixing techniques

Frankly, I try to get the sound I need by asking the drummer to fix it. But it depends on the song, what kit, the player, so I don't see how you can have a favorite technique. I'm not sure I've ever had to fix anything the same way twice lol.

Truth there! None has ever been the same. That also why presets don't ever work. There is no one perfect anything. It not vehicle mechanics. It's audio...
 
Depend on the song though, what snare makes a difference in the song you are producing? Ex. Dubstep or trance or house?
 
My goto approch is to use either the snare top or the snare bottom mic, whatever suits the song best, to trigger additional samples with a gate. Causes me some trouble with ghost notes and fast runs that I haven`t fully figured out how to deal with. So typically I will blend in more of the overhead and room mics in these parts where the samples don`t trigger well.
 
We used to have a drummer on HR some years ago called Rimshot and he once said of me that simple things pleased simple minds. He meant it as a cuss {we were in a debate about using a suitcase as a bass drum which I was all for} but I couldn't help agreeing with him !
I come from the perspective that there is no such thing as the snare sound, any more than there is the guitar tone or the bass sound or the kick sound. They are all versatile in their sonic scope so for me it comes down to sounds I like and in that regard, I do all kinds of muckin' abaaaahhht on my snare. And sometimes absolutely none at all. Of course, I'm not recording for clients so I can afford to indulge my own tastes. And on that wise, if I am going to muck about with the snare I'll experiment until I have something that sits in well with the rest of the kit, in particular, the overheads {or in my case, underheads}. I've even used a flanger before or a touch of reverse reverb, but so little that you don't hear its effect yet if you remove it, it feels like having one's socks removed on a slightly warm day.
I also like to have the snare panned ever so slightly, a smidgen, to my right and my kick ever so slightly, a pinch, to my left so they miss each other yet are both central.
I used to be very snare oriented, to the detriment of the kick, in the days when I only had one track for drums. Then when I went digital, I became very kick oriented to the detriment of the snare !
Now I'm just, ah, balanced.
I hope.
 
I just checked my last full band mix. All I did to the snare was eq. No compression, no replacement, nothing else. When tracking, I probably had a little eq on the mixer channel and barely hit it with a dbx 166 compressor.

View attachment 107913

Here's the input chain on the snare. I took these last night, but I bet they haven't changed much since I tracked the snare in question. The compressor pic is from a video I shot, with the maximum amount of compression it showed over several minutes. On the Tascam M2600 MkII the inserts are post eq. The solo snare was a bit thin sounding, but it combines well with the snare in the XY overheads.

Snare Mixer EQ.jpg

Snare Compression.jpg
 
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My Favorite way of mixing the snare is to make sure it sounds good when you record it. That way its easy to mix and you don't need to use the same samples as everyone else uses.

I record with a top and bottom mic, I slightly compress the top mic during tracking, my snare mic pre has a compressor, and yes its analog.

Cheers
Alan
 
Frankly, I try to get the sound I need by asking the drummer to fix it. But it depends on the song, what kit, the player, so I don't see how you can have a favorite technique. I'm not sure I've ever had to fix anything the same way twice lol.

I find it hard to record exactly the sound that is required in the mix, and see lots of engineers that have 'go to' techniques for dealing with snare drums in the mix. Many 'famous' producers and mixers even have their signature sound and you can hear it on multiple records of totally different artists .... quite funny ;).
 
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