Snare with big cracking sound

  • Thread starter Thread starter CJWalker
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CJWalker

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Im looking for that nice tight Carter Beauford sound. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips to push me in the right direction? I know I won't get quite the sound Im looking for cuz Ive got a really big snare. Anyway, I used a condensor (CADE100) which added lots of hiugh end in but it still sounds weak through the EQ and Compressor. Thanks for your help!
 
Try

Try the top head REALLY tight and the bottom rather quite a bit more loose... Experiment with the bottom head to taste. Also, play with the tension on the snare.
 
If you're talking about recording the snare, I have never gotten a satisfactory snare sound without micing the bottom head as well (57's and 58's are all I have at my disposal). This might just be my problem, but it might be an option you wish to try. Also, i think piccolo snares cut through a mix really nicely. I want one.
 
Carter snare info...and hope I can help.

CJWalker, first of all Carter Beauford uses a Dangerous Olcheltree (sp?) snare drum. These snares are custom made on order, they feature extre thick composite metal shells. Therefore they are extremely reflective and loud. And if you use a shallow depth like Carter (5" I think) you get a real tight and punchy sound.

It is extremely hard to obtain such a sound with a wood shelled drum. Since wood drums are a lot less denser, less reflective and softer; they have totally different sonic characters. And with a big snare like yours this is even harder.

I'd try using a single ply coated batter head with a built in muffling ring (like remo powerstroke3). Crank the top head to it's maximum potential, depending on the snare sound and sustain you want; fool around with the resonant's tuning. The resonant should be quite tight too, but it works both ways, you could have it tighter or lower than the batter head. But in any case, it should be "tight".

And I'd really make the snare wires tight and I'd slip a small piece of paper tissue under the wires, right in the middle of the wire. This really cleans up the sound and makes it dry, you may not be able to play ghost notes that well on it but I think it sounds better that way.

Hope that was some use...
 
I've been after that snare sound since before DMB existed, and I'm getting pretty close these days. I've gotten pretty close to that sound with a shallow wood Ludwig snare and a cheap, deep, metal Yamaha snare that came with my last kit. For years now I've been swearing by the Falams II head. It's designed for high tension marching snare use, and it's a pretty dry head (split the kevlar layer on one and you can see why). I crank the hell out of it (your drum will break before that head breaks) and I keep the bottom head very tight too, and I'm getting the kind of sound you're talking about. I just bought a Shure Beta56 mic that does a pretty good job of capturing the tone I'm looking for too, so I'm ->this close<- to finally catching that sound.

If you want to hear it, check out the top three mp3 files on my music page: http://aisle4.pair.com/personal/music . The first song (WhatYouThought) is the deep metal snare that sounds a little pingy sometimes. The next two (N8, HV code names) the snare sounds more crisp but the mix kind of sucks overall because of the speakers I used. The mix isn't great on any of that stuff really, because I need some decent monitors.
 
I mixed that stuff on a set of speakers with huge low end and not much upper-midrange, thus the thin sound on any other set of speakers. I just listened to it here at work and cringed. Oh well, it's just a scratch recording to get my ideas down and experiment anyway.
 
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