ousting snare overtones

thesedaze

New member
everytime I record snare, it seems to have a 'hollow overtoney' sort of sound, rather than a nice textured or snappy sound. This is no matter what snare I'm recording. How can I avoid this? thanks.
 
this may not solve the problem but id give it a shot....

i used to lose alot of the attack from my snare when recording. its most likely the mic i am using but i solved my problem by doing two things. one, pulling my snare mic just one or two inches away from the head caught alot more sounds than it did when i had it close. two, i made my overheads a little higher and angled them towards the snare rather than the cymbals i was recording. doing this gave me alot more of what the drummer hears and added alot to the mix. i didnt have problems with reverbs or bleeding other sounds where they shouldnt be, but be careful and try different things with overheads.

this worked for me just fine so id recommend giving it a shot. if not, just keep experimenting.
 
thesedaze said:
everytime I record snare, it seems to have a 'hollow overtoney' sort of sound, rather than a nice textured or snappy sound. This is no matter what snare I'm recording. How can I avoid this? thanks.

You'll get more help if you provide more info, such as what kind of mic, mic-pre, processors, room size, etc...
 
Rickson Gracie is right. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONGEL is the answer to all your sorrows; and its sometimes called moongel. but i prefer MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONGEL. lol.


........i need to get out more.
 
thesedaze said:
everytime I record snare, it seems to have a 'hollow overtoney' sort of sound, rather than a nice textured or snappy sound. This is no matter what snare I'm recording. How can I avoid this? thanks.

i'm not trying to be an ass, but make sure it's tuned well. all the dampening in the world wont make up for a poorly tuned snare.......and if you're getting annoying overtones, then it's not tuned properly.

once it's in tune, if you still have too much ring, try cutting somewhere between 300 and 400 hz with a moderate Q.
 
Tighten Up!!!!

are the snare wires touching the bottom head? "hollow overtoney" sounds like how i would describe a snare that was poorly tuned with the snares turned off. Maybe you just don't have the heads as tight as they should be to get the soudn that you are looking?

Tune it up - pull those snares nice and tight and then really lay into it with an SM57 on it about an inch from the top head.
 
the snare itself sounds wonderful live....it's the recording that's my problem...as I said it happens on any snare I record with, not just my own. This is why I think it's an EQ/compression issue.
 
What happens when you don't EQ or compress the snare? Are you using 2 mics or 1 on the snare? If you are using a bottom mic, make sure you put it out of phase with the top one.
 
"hollow overtones" to me indicates a possible phase issue. Try switching the phase on the snare channel and see if you hear any improvement. I had a couple of cables that were wried backwards, and once I figured it out, everything improved.
 
thesedaze said:
the snare itself sounds wonderful live....it's the recording that's my problem...as I said it happens on any snare I record with, not just my own. This is why I think it's an EQ/compression issue.

like i said before. i'm not trying to sound like an ass, but if it doesn't sound good once it's recorded, then it didn't sound good to begin with. eq and compression aren't going to fix it. you can help it a bit with eq, but it will be at the cost of losing other things that you'll probably want to keep.

keep in mind that most rock drummers don't know how to tune their drums. In my experience, of the few drummers that do know how to tune drums, most still don't know how to tune them well. some can tune them well, but are too lazy to actually do it and a very, extremely small number of them can do it well and actually do do it.

in my band, we have to baby sit our drummer and make sure that he tunes both sides of each drum. I just realised that the few drummers that i've recorded that even brought a drum key to the session have all only worried about the top head of the drums.
 
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