For fudge sake, how do I get this snare sound?!

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cluelessness

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Can't figure it out... Every once in a while I come across a rock song with this badass, beautiful snare sound, but I cannot figure out which snare or layered snares they use. I have Slate Digital Drums, which has a fair snare selection, and my engineering skills are good, but I don't know even where to start - nothing sounds like this beast. Please help me solve this mystery (brand, size, other bands that use it, something)! I need this sound...

Here's a song with the dreamy snare (drums come in at 2:44) --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W89hjI3du44

Many thanks!!
 
Mmmm...I don't hear anything unusual about that snare. I mean, it just sounds a like good snare should.
I think it's probably a wood snare, but on the brighter side, maybe a maple shell, and I would say it's tuned more on the tight side, though without any of that timetable ring/pop, and the snares also sound like they are tight/fast.
So all in all, it has a nice woodsy pop, with a fast decay.

I'm surprised you can't find something in the ballpark from your Slate collection that you can then tweak to get something close.
I don't use Slate (I'm primarily a Toontrack Superior Drummer user), but I've heard the Slate samples, and there are some pretty good snare sounds to pick from, IMO.


Here: Steven Slate Drums

Check out the SOLO DRUM DEMOS right there on the main page...I heard at least 5 drum kits that have snare sounds close to what you want...you just have to tweak them.
I'll give you a hint...most of them have the word "Rock" in their drum kit name. :)
 
mdainsd - Thanks for the reply! Are you referring to the Black Beauty from that series?

miroslav - Thanks for the advice and great insight!
SSDrums is full of good stuff, so full that it could be a little hard to sift through all the options (not that I'm complaining). I've worked my way through a few of the rock snare options, squeezing the best out of them, and found that in order to get in the ball park of my dream sound I need to diligently process the snare top and snare bottom tracks, as well as get the overheads and room tracks just right - fun, but time consuming considering the endless snare layering combinations. That SSD demos in the link are a good example of the problem I'm having with the SSD samples - they end up having too much pop. Don't get me wrong, they sound present and alive, but I'm just not hearing enough of the three-dimentional oomph! The few demos that are less poppy sound more like a blunt thud.

This is where abstract descriptions take over - What I'm hearing in the demos on the Slate website has a bright attack with not nearly as much body as what I am hearing with the YouTube link snare. It's like a great white wine - but I'm looking for a red. Just after the transient the snare in the song has some good low-mids that still propagate, which may indicate it being a larger, thicker snare, and you must be correct about it being wood. No amount of creative processing has been able to bring this out in the SSD snares I've tried until now. SSD snares usually sound like a pop! (cool), the snare in the song sounds more like something crashing onto the ground (epic!), or a bolder breaking off a cliff, in comparison. Very little sound of the stick, just this resonant hit that is spread out more evenly across the frequency spectrum, with really nice low-mids, compared to anything in the SSD.

I have heard, rarely, other bands use this sound (can't remember which), is it familiar to any of you guys?
I can get pretty obsessed with my snare sound, but in this case I think the difference in sound between the song and the SSD demos is pretty substantial.

Any thoughts?
Again, many thanks miroslav!
 
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