Snare Sound... i want it.

B

Bisson820

New member
Hello drum guru's.... or anyone that can help...

I would LOVE to achieve THIS snare sound.... Manchester Orchestra - Apprehension (Lyrics) - YouTube

I am happy with the snare sound i am getting to a degree... but i would love to get the same crack that this sound has.

Not sure if its stictly mic placement or if its the source (its a VERY nice drum set.. DW black ice kit... like 5 grand haha)... or if there are some plug in/eq tricks that i should know about.

Thanks,

Tyler
 
I'm no drummer...but I have a studio kit and have mucked about with drums enough to be dangerous... ;)

1.) You want to start with the right snare, tuned for what you are after.
2.) Have a drummer that can play well enough to pull that sound out of the snare in #1.)
3.) Use a "decent" mic...there are many that will capture the sound correctly if you have #1.) & #2.) working for you.
4.) Put the mic in the right spot...there is more than one spot.

For that sound on the YT video...I would think a 14" metal snare, not too deep (but not a piccolo) ...and then just set it up a bit on the tight side, you have to find the tuning that gets you there.

OK...now maybe some of the real drummers can chime in....Jimmy, RAMI, Greg.......
 
- The drum should be steel or some other metal for bright overtones. Standard depth of around 5-1/2" or so will work. Deeper shells tent to add more low-end tone.
- The head should be thin and I would start with single ply. Clear heads tend to be the brightest and poppy sounding but also ring the most. Coated heads are slightly more dull and ring less.
- As you tune the head tighter the pitch will get higher and have more attack, (pop or crack,) but it also takes on more overtone ring.
- Ring can be controlled by muffling near the rim. (Don't make it completely dead though. That video snare has some ring to it.)
- Make the bottom head tight as well.
- A Shure SM57 tends to work good for bringing out the drum's brightness because of its mid-range hump in frequency response. Furthermore, because it is a dynamic mic, it will soften the transient peaks a bit. (A very tight bright-sounding drum recorded with a condenser mic will probably offer too much head attack, which will end up needing compressed.)

EDIT: Also loosen the snare tensioner until the snare springs rattle. Then re-tighten them until the rattling stops. Tighten a bit further and you should discover a point at which the drum seems to pop more than before. Too tight and the drum will become more dead or choked. That tensioner should have a nice "lively" sweet spot that you can find by experimenting.
 
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From a purely acoustic standpoint, I get a similar sound out of my drum with a CS coated head on top and a diplomat resonant head on the bottom. Its a steel drum. A lot of this tone though comes from the tuning, and that takes practice to achieve.
 
Damn i was afraid of that... my drummer has a lot of pride in his kit... so hopefully he takes it in stride when i tell him we need to use a different snare :P

but i'll play around with placement and eq a bit to see what i can come up with.

I have been using a sm57... and have been experimenting with a neumann tlm 102.... which sounds GREAT on the snare but lets in a lot of off axis high hat which sounds like shit .... it also gets a bit too much body than i'd like.

can anyone show me a picture or a place wehre i can read about and see steel snares?
 
What kind of snare does he use....is it a wood shell?

You can get close to that sound with other snares, not just steel...it just takes a bit of more tweaking.
If it's tuned up tighter/higher with less "snares" underneath, and he hits it off-center, closer to the rim...you'll get there.
 
Bisson820 said:
Damn i was afraid of that... my drummer has a lot of pride in his kit... so hopefully he takes it in stride when i tell him we need to use a different snare :P

but i'll play around with placement and eq a bit to see what i can come up with.

I have been using a sm57... and have been experimenting with a neumann tlm 102.... which sounds GREAT on the snare but lets in a lot of off axis high hat which sounds like shit .... it also gets a bit too much body than i'd like.

can anyone show me a picture or a place wehre i can read about and see steel snares?
Click to expand...

www(dot)peabody.jhu.edu/data/46/link/3402/DTBv3.pdf Is an excellent start. As far as steel shell snares, a ludwig acrolite would be an excellent drum to use. You can usually find them on ebay and craigslist. You can get something similar from a wooden snare, but its gonna have more of a crack and less of a metallic ring.

As far as micing, try throwing one of your mics on the bottom to get more of the snap and snares in there. In my limited micing experience, I've always had a setup like this: www(dot)youtube.com/watch?v=N0kUX-aAReI
 
Your drummer should have more than one snare anyway! What if he breaks a head? Its faster to swap a drum out than change a head. This will give him an excuse to get MORE snares!
 
For specific snare types, a ludwig black beauty 6.5 depth or a supraphonic with a CS head could probably achieve this sound.

Experimenting never hurts.
 
Bisson820 said:
Hello drum guru's.... or anyone that can help...

I would LOVE to achieve THIS snare sound.... Manchester Orchestra - Apprehension (Lyrics) - YouTube

I am happy with the snare sound i am getting to a degree... but i would love to get the same crack that this sound has.

Not sure if its stictly mic placement or if its the source (its a VERY nice drum set.. DW black ice kit... like 5 grand haha)... or if there are some plug in/eq tricks that i should know about.

Thanks,

Tyler
Click to expand...

I'm a Man Orch fan as well, though I don't think the drums sound as good on SM as they did on METN. Plenty of opinions have already been posted, all I'd add is that the snares sound pretty loose and the snare sounds like it might be 6.5" deep.
 
Greg_L said:
Yup. Any quality metal shelled deep snare will sound like that.
Click to expand...

I concur. . . What I hear is a metal snare, 6.5 in. deep that's tuned well. . . but it's probably a 5 in. that's also recorded well. . . in person, a 6.5 deep just sounds bigger, but recorded, it's impossible to say. . . Tuning is everything with drums. . Cheap drums CAN sound great, they just don't last as long. . .
 
AtoDeficient said:
I concur. . . What I hear is a metal snare, 6.5 in. deep that's tuned well. . . but it's probably a 5 in. that's also recorded well. . . in person, a 6.5 deep just sounds bigger, but recorded, it's impossible to say. . . Tuning is everything with drums. . Cheap drums CAN sound great, they just don't last as long. . .
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree. I've got a 14x6.5 Supraphonic, and a 14x5.5 Black Panther Brass. Both snares will do that sound, and with quality metal snares, the tuning range is much wider and more forgiving. No telling what it actually is. I know one thing, my maple and birch snares don't sound like that at all.
 
Thanks guys, so he does have a very NICE sounding kit and its less than a year old so there's no excuses for us besides not knowing what to do...

ANYWAYS... with some suggestions here... this is the sound we got with his wooden snare (im not sure what type of wood it is).

*This is a recording we did this weekend for a new song... very much preprod quality and not a lot of mixing or EQ.... but as far as the drum kit goes, we are pretty happy ... i guess we're "getting there"

 
I'd say that's a pretty good snare sound. With smart compression you can probably coax more body out of it and get it even closer to your "dream" snare sound.

Work on the kick next. It's a little basketball-ish.
 
I'm surprised that a drummer with his talent, level of skill, etc, doesn't own several different snare drums. . . He sounds as though he's been playing for quite a while. . .

You can coax more timbale ring out of a wooden snare by using ambassador-type standard, thinner heads. . .
Also, the higher the quality of wooden snare, the less tone-killing glue, cheap plywood, (or flake-board, chip-wood, whatever you want to call it) is used. . But metal is, well, just metal, after all.

I, personally, would let that drummer play any kind of drums he wanted.
 
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