Need thicker sounding snare

[Tbonec3]

Hello, I need some advice on how to get my snare sounding thicker after it has already been recorded. What effects could I patch to it to give it that thick sound I hear on great drum recordings? I would really appreciate any advice you have.

Thanks,
Tom

 

[Yareek]

Did it sound thick when you played it? Easiest way to get a thick snare recording is to have a thick snare sound in the first place when you record. I like SM57's for really fat and dull snare sounds. But I hate those sounds, so I don't use them. And a million people are going to respond with generally what I said, just be forewarned.

Anyways, addressing your question, I've found a couple things thicken up the sound of the snare. First, do a high-Q (4+) peak boost and sweep slowly around the lows and low-mids. Most snares have a lot of body and depth around 100 - 200 Hz, depending on the tuning and size. When you find that frequency, turn off that peak boost and boost above it with a low-shelf and a medium-Q (.8) so that you are catching that frequency. I like PSP MasterQ because it's easy to see what you're doing as well as hearing. Keep in mind that when you boost at a frequency, peak boosts and low-shelves act differently. That's why I recommend an EQ with a display.

Next, trap that low-frequency boost with a high-pass. I use a 24 db/octave and mid-Q (.75) and sweep up until I've found a nice spot. This cuts the unnecessary bass out but keeps that low-body boost in.

Finally, sweep around with high-Q peak boosts until you find nasty frequencies in the mids. Oftentimes, they will be multiples of that first low frequency that you found. Cut these with higher Q notches. This will allow the body and attack to come through.

Finally, compression will help. Play around with the attack times because too long will not tame the attack but too short can kill the attack. This can make the snare sound a little bigger. Some parallel compression (do a search) will also thicken up the drum sound.

 

[diablodavo]

After setting up some nice compression on the snare (follow what your man aboce said) , send it to a a high quality room reverb. This will beef up your snare sound no end. Send about 75% to the FX channel and control it's level from there.

 

[AxeSlash]

I agree with most of what Yareek says, I usually use really tight Q cuts to destroy the nasty overtones of the snare (I've mixed some horrible piccolo snares before now that really NEEDED that doing to them). Something else that helps is to route the whole kit to a bus and whack a compressor over it all, then crank the kick and snare up a bit. Most engineers whack a gate over the snare as well (set the sense frequencies to whatever the fundamental note of the snare is - i.e. where the biggest cut in the EQ is, and make sure the snare comes BEFORE the EQ in the chain). Gated reverb always seems to be a favourite on the snare, but don't overdo it

If it's still horrible (and it shouldn't really be after all that), stick a compressor with a really high attack time on it, but beware that it'll disappear if there's lots of fast rolls and stuff.

Next time try miccing the bottom of the snare AS WELL and mixing that in with the top mic, but don't forget to phase reverse the bottom mic (coz it's pointing in t' other direction)!