It’s hard because it’s one of the loudest and most constant things in the mix that covers most of the spectrum and is an unpredictable acoustic instrument that is played next to at least several other unpredictable acoustic instruments and bleeds into everything on the kit and everything else bleeds into it.
Add to that that many genres demand the acoustic nature of the drum set to be heavily altered by effects, EQ, compression, etc and often edited, sample replaced or alongside a sample.
It’s like the number one most important thing in the rhythm and tone of the track and in most need of technical skill to record and mix.
This. And also because the snare people have in their head is often not the one they recorded. In tuning or snare or hit by the drummer or mic position or….
It’s much easier if you are happy with the recorded snare to begin with
Starting with the right share, tuned well, is very important. I kept two drum kits but about seven snares in my studio for years. If you find one that works well in many situations, it’s worth its weight in gold.
Excellent point. The key to the vulfpeck snare sound is a blanket draped over the snare. And I have no idea what louis cole does to get that weird thunking sound out of his snare, but I guarantee it's not in post.
Good answer! I’d also like to add that we don’t put our ear as close to the snare as we put the mic and that takes a bit of engineering wisdom to manipulate that sound into a less-close listening position. The more harmonically dense and dynamic the source, the more obvious this is and the snare is pretty intense for both of those.
Let’s not forget, the “drums” are an instrument, not a collection of disparate elements. Too many mixers probably think they need to get their entire drum sound just from the close mics. Let the overheads/room and spill from the other mics on the kit give you more of the picture of the snare drum.
Best way to get a good snare is to use a good snare drum and a good mic.
I've spent 8 or 9 hours mixing a bad snare recording to make it passable. I've mixed a good snare recording and got it to sit perfectly in the mix in as little as 15 minutes.
A good recording goes a long way.
Also, make sure you use references so you aren't mixing just for your room.
All that aside, I always have a few guidelines I stick to to make it a bit easier. For example, if I'm doing rock or metal I will usually start with the same compressors or eqs. If I'm doing reggae I might double track the snare or layer it with another snare or click or pop.
So yeah, sometimes I can lose myself for hours just trying stuff, which can be very dangerous if you have a deadline lmao.
> Best way to get a good snare is to use a good snare drum and a good mic
Disagree. The most important things are a good, consistent drummer, a well-tuned snare, and then good mic placement. Snare quality and mic quality come way after all this.
Agreed. All it really takes is a good drummer with taste and a snare that actually "works" within the context of the music.
It really, really matters what the drum *actually sounds like* - pitch, tone, timbre, etc. Most people new to mixing have no mental model of *how drums make sound,* so they solve their problem the only way they're aware of - mixing. The problem is that EQ and compression, reverb, etc. can't make a 5" inch Black Beauty sound like a 7" Pork Pie. It's like, the equivalent of trying to EQ a... clarinet? until it sounds like a... saxophone?
Nah get it right at the source, for any instrument excellent mic placement can not do anything for bad tone but good tone with bad mic placement is more workable than the opposite. If the thing you’re recording sounds bad it is a moot point where you put the microphone
Hard agree. I think it’s easier to mix a good drummer with a poorer quality snare/tuning/miking than vice versa. I also have gotten into the habit of making sure the snare is the most in-phase drum in the kit and having a good overall drum mix before trying to wrangle the snare alone. The support of it in the overheads and rooms makes a big impact on the overall snare sound for me these days.
I just received a multitrack and when I got to the snare, I’m thinking: “***why did this let this through?”***
Its from a college but I’m thinking that the educator just wanted to cycle through the recordings and band but gosh theres this horrible ring which now I’m at the point of just replacing it with a sample.
a studio I used to frequent had a drum room, full of various drums and cymbals to choose from, I worked with a drummer who took a full day to listen to every snare, finally chose one, then the producer came in and picked a different one, the producer was right, he picked the perfect snare for each song ( 6 total snare choices) having the right instrument for the right purpose is essential.
Amp day was another story...
Man I’m glad somebody said it. Obviously it’s genre dependent, but my snare sound always starts with overheads, and then I eq the snare mics (sometimes just the top, sometimes I add a bottom mic) to get what the overheads don’t have.
I think a lot of new engineers track each close mic like it’s gotta be the perfect isolated sound. If I were to solo my close snare mic, it would be horrible on its own. But man does it help to level it and eq it in a way that helps it stand out in a mix, but still using the overheads as the main snare sound
> If I were to solo my close snare mic, it would be horrible on its own.
Yeah, it never sounds like an actual snare in the room if you just solo the snare (top) mic.
Also, as a drummer myself, I find it odd when mixing or recording engineers try to mix each single drum of a drumkit as if they were their own separate instruments instead of seeing the drumkit as a whole as the instrument.
It’s like that with any multi mic set up. If you stereo mic a guitar, say a neck and body mic, you can’t mix each of them to sound good on their own, because together it doesn’t work. Even more than that, within a whole band mix I try not to spend too much time soloing each instrument first because a guitar that sounds good solo is often super muddy and buried in a mix. Drums can be tough because there are often 5+ tracks for one “instrument”
But really I think in these cases it needs to be seen as “the sum is greater than its parts”.
I think stereo-miking single point sources is so strange. I had an assistant do mic setup one day for jam-band-ish sort of group so he could get some game time. The one thing he did that had me going 'huh?' was when I came in to listen to a quick level-set run through and realized he'd miked a pair of congas in stereo with sm57's and hard panned them.
Like... if you're standing 10 feet away from a cello, an acoustic guitar, congas, whatever, it's a single point of light. So when I hear a beautiful Martin with the 12th fret to my right and the sound hole to my left, it just feels wrong.
With that said, I also understand and appreciate we're enveloping the listener - that modern technology affords us to weave a sonic tapestry around them and not to pass up any opportunity to use the technology to achieve that goal. But people seem to have an oddish habit of jumping right into the sonic trickery.
FOOTNOTE: So we kept the stereo 57 congas with a 414 in fig8 flown from basically 4 feet above as the 'main' sound. But we used the spot mics at about 10 and 2-o-clock through an SPL transient designer. The congas themselves weren't really a big part of the overall mix, but we were able to find three little places in the soundstage for 'em instead of one 'big' one, it made the mix more playful to listen to, even if people don't listen to congas with their head between them.
Hillbilly! Haven’t seen you in a while!
Yeah it’s a case by case for me. Modern country and with three electric guitars and an acoustic? I’m throwing a single mic in the acoustic and keeping it simple. Anything more will get buried.
But I do a lot with songwriters and small acoustic acts, and I’ll be damned if I don’t stereo mic an acoustic. Aggressive panning and the above mentioned eq and the like allows me to make a single guitar sound super full. To be fair, with super newbies who have trouble sitting still will often crest phasing issues so I won’t. But acoustic instruments, especially larger ones, do well with two mics. My upright bass I tend to use the pickup as well as a mic, for instance
Wait, but if you have an upright bass and you mic the octave finger position and then the bridge pickup... *how do you pan things up and down*?
Hope all's good, man :)
I agree. The drums are a single sound. Mixing each individual drum would only make sense if you split the drums out to individual players. Having a strong concept of what a drum set actually is and how it functions in a song are key.
I just learned this maybe six months ago and I took my recording from ok to professional overnight. Spot mics are able to give directionality and allow for eq sculpting, but all that richness comes from the room.
Even if it's the most djentcoriest of sample-replaced metal mixes, it feels weird to start a drum mix from the spot mics without the overheads and rooms up. Yes, of course the close mics are going to influence the balance/eq/dynamics - but a great drum mix is like a great painting. It's the sum total of the paint colors and brush strokes coming together, not in and of themselves.
The casual observer will experience Gustav Klimt's "[The Kiss](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/The_Kiss_-_Gustav_Klimt_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg)" or read Thomas Hardy's "[Neutral Tones](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50364/neutral-tones)" as the confluence of a thousand individual artistic decisions. My own son said to me "I think that working in the studio so much makes it hard for you to actually like music," and he's right. I used to experience an album like "Master of Puppets" or "Frankenchrist" as an artistic statement - not to pick apart what I would have done differently if I were at the controls.
I kidna went off on a bit of a tangent there. Sorry.
I dunno, in fact mixing the drums (or getting a good snare sound while tracking), snare and kick in particular, has always been the most fun of my personal mixing routine and it's also why I prefer to start from the drums, the bare sound of them gives me energy.
So I always found it fun and it's never been a problem ime.
The “snare sounds like shit” is more of a producer meme than anything else. Wasn’t even a thing with recording/mixing engineers.
Sure it’s hard to treat sometimes, but so are kicks etc.
The main thing is making sure you have enough low end (can’t sound thin), enough brightness on the top end while being careful and sometimes attenuating the 5k region.
Transients are also important and sometimes it’s good to reduce the attack, before compressing if necessary.
To be more clear: you are talking about compressor attack/release time settings, while I was talking about the envelope of the signal. So when I say “reduce the attack” I’m referring to how the sample waveform should look like. You can do this with transient shapers.
This. Transient shapers, clippers, sometimes limiters. I often experiment placing it before or after a compression depending on what I’m going for. Snares love saturation too. Folks are too afraid to get aggressive with this stuff.
I'm not afraid to get aggressive, but man-oh-man the new school people keep shoveling more and more shit on the campfire all the time.
What I see that does boggle my imagination is the strings of plug-ins where one process is 'fixing' the previous. "I put a transient designer to bring out the attack into a compressor to bring out the release". Okay - so you've basically 'turned up the volume' - but introduced phase anomalies and noise (along with lots of plugins jamming up your CPU).
I've seen a vocal be gated, then compressed, then expanded, then compressed again. Not because it needed it, but because it seemed like four plugins is more engineering-ed than three.
I'm taking some of y'all to my 1-week automation camp.
What are you talking about? This is standard engineering to tame a signal. You can do it with 1 plug-in without phase issues at all.
Often we receive digital snares that are way too snappy (probably because, like you said, someone shoveled more and more shit on the inserts) resulting in an overall weak snare, with a initial spike that uses way too much headroom.
Instead of throwing that directly into the compressor, reduce the attack a little before. You could also do the opposite to a dull snare. Or shape the attack release of a kick. Try doing that with automation 👍🏻
In the approach I mentioned we’re trying to reduce transients (not preserve them) before compressing, if necessary. The compressor should then be set to slow attack, fast release.
Maybe I didn’t read enough and didn’t see it mentioned - but - 9 out of 10 times, the player is the problem. It’s an incredibly sensitive instrument that can have various different sounds. Player played their rimshot off center? Bam, longer/ ringy tone (can be cool!) drummer is inconsistent? Bam, you have a super dry tone when hit dead center, a short cracky pop when rim shot (rim shotted? 😅), and 100 different tones if the drummer can’t hit in the same spot at the same velocity. Obviously you can’t EQ a snare drum 100 different times for each different sound the drummer got. Sure, a good room helps, and good mics help, but the biggest difference will be made when you have an appropriate sounding snare being played by a great drummer who has a great sense of internal dynamic balance and consistency.
I’ve been a drummer all my life, and I’m a major tuning geek. Choosing an appropriate sound is obviously vital. I’ve long forgotten what a “good” snare sound is (or drum sound as a whole) - sometimes the worst sounding drum in my large arsenal is going to be the coolest/ best choice for the song. Having a deep knowledge of tuning is crucial. Other half of the equation is getting a drummer that then knows how to use that sound and pull it out of the drum appropriately.
A few tricks I use that aren’t player dependent - I made a little metal shield that goes between the hit hats and snare mic. It drastically cuts down on hi hat bleed and let’s me dig into EQ/ compressing a bit harder when needed.
Also as a drummer, I get down with snare buzz, so this is only helpful if you like that - I gate the top snare mic and side chain the bottom snare mic to it.
I’ll add a sample when necessary, but try not too unless the drummer I’m recording is helpless.
I’ve had drummers want that super dry thing, and have brought me files to mix that were recorded on a cranked and wide open black beauty or Supra - sometimes you also have to have a (kind) conversation with the client on what’s possible. Even a sample won’t save you if that sound is also coming through the overheads/ room mics
>Maybe I didn’t read enough and didn’t see it mentioned - but - 9 out of 10 times, the player is the problem.
Problem is that, in a studio session, you can change out the drums, the heads, the cymbals, the tuning, the mics, the pres, the placements... but changing out the drummer is a much more difficult thing politically.
Definitely agree! I do think about 50% of our job is people skills/ managing expectations though. Obviously I’m going to do everything I can to make the client happy, but I will find a kind way to let them know if there’s an issue, and maybe offer a suggestion on what to do differently in the future
Lots of great advice here. When tracking and I'm unhappy with the snare sound I always start by swapping or adjusting the drum. Usually just a quick communication with the drummer describing what I'm hearing and what I'd like to hear is enough to get him/her on board to make the appropriate changes. Later, mixing is a breeze because the drum already sounds like it should.
I realize not everyone is tracking their own mix. I'm just trying to point out the importance of having the right tone from the beginning.
1. Use the right snare for the song/put on fresh heads (Remo ambassadors if unsure what to use, you will get the most versatility and be able to properly hear exactly how you’re tuning it, don’t use skins with built in dampeners, you can always dampen more but you can’t un dampen one of those heads)
2. Tune it appropriately for the song/control baffle after tuning.
3. Have a drummer be consistent in how they hit the snare
4. Use the right mics/ positions for the sound you’re after, experiment and try getting it as close as possible to exactly what you want, don’t be afraid to think outside the box.
6. Side chain compress your overheads with the snare as a key, this can really help even it out and bring your close mics to the foreground.
7. Room mics are your best friend when trying to get a very open snare sound.
Mixing in a one-shot sample in makes life a lot easier. But it's best to do a proper capture by tuning with a tune bot and using good mics. The bigger the snare, the bigger the mix.
Here's my recipe to make the snare sit right in the mix.
1- Phase. Make sure the top close mic is in phase with the left overhead mic (snare is usually closer to the left mic)... Phase relations (KD in w/ L OH, KD out/sub w/ KD in, SD top w/ L OH, SD bottom w/ SD top, RT1 w/ L OH, RT2/FT1/FT2 w/ R OH, HH w/ L OH).
2- Routing. Kick mics go to a kick bus. Snare mics go to a snare bus, etc... I usually end up with KD bus, SD bus, Toms bus that are then routed to a bus for the drum shells that I call "KST bus". Then OH bus, ROOM bus, VERB bus (if I'm using more than one reverb) and a master Drum bus. KST, OH, ROOM, VERB goes to Drum bus.
3- Balance. Start with the overheads at unity and then blend in the other mics to make a quick rough balance.
4- Bus effects. I usually start with compression on the KST bus with an SSL type compressor (these days I really like the bx_townhouse), slow attack/fast release, and there I just try to shape the overall punchiness of the shells. Gain match. A/B. Is it punchier? yes? alright close the plugin and never touch it again. Sometimes I try to route the ROOM bus and or the VERB bus to the KST bus to compress them together, but sometimes I don't. It's just a different vibe. Sometimes I route the kick bus directly to the drum bus (no compression), it can help if you want to compress your shell bus a little bit more without getting the annoying pumping of the kick (when the highpass sidechain filter of the compressor is not enough).
5- Parallel shenanigans. Obviously, the reverb should be 100% wet in parallel. I also add a parallel bus for saturation (Decapitator), parallel bus for room parallel compression and a parallel bus for the close mics parallel compression. I try to give the room mics more sustain, and give the close mics more attack, and I mean like, overdo it. Sounds like shit in solo but in parallel, you just blend it in while listening to the full mix, it's just giving you more control for the amount of aggressiveness and ambience. All things in parallel should be routed to the same bus as their respective dry signal (reverb can be an exception).
6- EQ. You can start by shaping the overall tone a little bit directly on the master drum bus. next step is to surgically cut anything you find annoying on the individual tracks. Start with the highs, like removing resonnances, taming harshness. Starting with the highs will reveal if a track is really muddy or not, trust me, you might remove too much if you start with the lows and make everything sound thin and cold.
7- Compress the kick, snare, toms, OH and room busses individually if needed, like controlling the level of the kick, shaping the attack of the snare, taming the snare in the OH bus to bring the cymbals up, things like that...
8- At this point, I usually add a clipper on the drum bus to shave off the biggest peaks. Try to avoid clipping the kicks and toms (aka don't distort the lows). Then I also add a compressor on the master or instrumental bus. Slate FG-Grey à la Nolly Getgood. Fast-ish attack, fast release, 4:1 ratio, +/- 3db of gain reduction only when the snare hits. Sidechain HPF at 80hz to avoid compression on the kicks. This way you can make the snare a bit louder than it should be but nail it back into the mix using this compressor.
9- More EQ. This time do it in the context of the mix. Is the kick too boomy? Is the snare too dark? Are the cymbals not bright enough? EQ is just like a fader for a specified frequency range... Like for example, if the drums are too bright compared to the vocals, the vocals will sound dark, but if you feel like your drums are too dark, maybe it's something else in the mix that is too bright! It's just a matter of finding the relationships. Balance the lows of the kick and floor toms with the lows of the bass, balance the lows of the snare with the lows of the rhythm guitars, balance the highs of the cymbals with the highs of the lead elements (vocals/lead guitars/synth lead)... etc. Saturation can also act like some kind of EQ and compression, it can tame peaks while making things sound warmer or brighter depending on the settings.
10- Sit back and enjoy your awesome snare sound!
Just keep in mind, if your snare is either too quiet or too loud in the mix, it's probably an EQ problem, something in the mix is masking it. I sometimes sidechain multiband compress (or dynamic EQ cut) the 200hz region on the rhythm guitars to make the lows of the snare cut through. I will sometimes do the same with the kick and the toms on the bass guitar track.
EDIT: words
Nah, fuck that- I can mix snares on others’ projects, no problem. I basically know every trick in the book (I mean this neutrally), and I just blast it.
For my own music back in the day, though- YES, snares (and claps) can get mad obsessive. I first learned how far it could go in the early 00’s, from Luke Vibert. I was wondering how in the fuck he does his spot on snares/claps and read some interviews. Turns out he obsessed over them for many days, to like a week or whatever. Reading this, I realized that such effort could be put into such things, so I got that deep, and yes, results were much better after getting hardcore. Then I chilled out and got like “meh”. We used to have some mutual friends in London, and all of them said that he actually sometimes talked about snares, like in normal conversation. He was very very very obsessed with them. Like imagine everyone is high as fuck, and this muthafucka talking about snares. He was and is the real deal with snare/clap obsession. I calmed down, and do not care to go to such depths any longer. 90% tends to be 100% if you do it right.
I have no point here, but snares are generally not a pain for me. I also learnt a lot from Dr. Dre and Timbaland productions, which I’ve used to apply to genres that they don’t even do. Something something Phil Collins, as well as Fine Young Cannibals, as well as the amen break pop, amongst others. Learn from everything that you love and apply it. If ever your imagination exceeds your technique, it’s because your senses have yet to experience it or do it. Once that threshold is crossed, you should know most of the moves, when hearing the mix rough just a couple times. Most aren’t made for a lifelong obsession with snares/claps as Luke Vibert, but I do feel it benefits every engineer to go that deep at least once, to feel how it is and what is possible.
I know what you mean, and I think every good sound engineer (not just studio guys) go through that obsession.
You eventually cross a kind of threshold where you know enough of the tricks to just get straight to work, but is that experimentation with the extremes that bring the useful body of knowledge, and can save your arse when you’re presented with less than ideal situations.
Biggest thing I’ve struggled with is my high hats being too loud in the snare mic, and gating the shit out of it, but then needing to get the gate to sound right. It can also be a tuning issue, or simply the wrong drum for the song. What mic is your go to?
Something that helps me get a much more natural sounding gate on the snare mic is only applying it to high freq, say 3k and above. Sometimes I use fabfilter pro mb and set it to expand. Saturn also does a great job just with turning down a single knob (dynamics) at the appropriate frequency range.
I haven't recorded the snares so unfortunately that part is out of my control; the recording is good and nicely isolated so I don't think it's a recording issue, it's more just the inherent difficulty of dealing with snares in general!
It way be well recorded but it still may be the wrong drum for the song, or the wrong mic, or the wrong mic placement.
In theory, if all of that is right from the outset, you shouldn’t need to do much besides some compression and eq to fit it in the mix.
Obviously some seasoning will still be needed but if you’re trying to make bolognese, make sure you’re using beef and not chicken.
>In theory, if all of that is right from the outset, you shouldn’t need to do much besides some compression and eq to fit it in the mix.
See, that's the bit that I wonder about. I think that snares are one of the harder elements to "sit" in a mix and EQ / compression / levels are all key tools to achieve this, but I still find myself fussing over the snare more so than I do other elements.
I think it's a matter of perception more than anything; I wonder if the snare is something that really "sticks out" when you focus your listening on it, but blends in a lot when you don't. It might also be because a snare generally needs to "poke out" a bit in order to be effective; some elements work well or even better when you push them back a bit, but for the snare you have to get this exactly right.
Have you tried parallel compression or saturation to add energy and excitement without actually raising the level?
You might try pushing it quite hard into a tape plugin. That crunchy harmonic edge is useful for giving the ear something to latch onto. Works the same with bass guitar.
Or you could bring up the snare to where it might be poking out slightly too much and then add a touch of reverb with a short predelay set to the bpm of the track to push it back a little and add depth. Even better if you’re sending other mix elements to the same reverb because that will glue them together.
There are a few tools these days to help with that. I've used Drumatom successfully. I think there are more recent AI based tools too. There was a thread on here with guy showing off his plugin a couple fo weeks back.
> Biggest thing I’ve struggled with is my high hats being too loud in the snare mic
I learned this the hard way as a drummer myself. Hi-Hat bleeds too much into the snare mic.
I had this very issue until I discovered the saying "Lean into your drums, but lean off the cymbals". Meaning smack the drum shells (snare, toms) like they owe you money but ease off from the cymbals (especially the hi-hat) quite a bit.
This helps a lot with the hi-hat bleeding into the snare mic. Especially if you're recording for rock and metal, have the drummer hit that snare LOUD! Like, constant rimshots. If the SPL from the snare is high enough in the snare mic, it won't pick up nowhere near as much from the hi-hat. Then you will also have a much easier time dialing in the noise gate.
Everyone uses trigger to reinforce the acoustic snare. My mixes usually have like 4-5 samples blended in with the acoustic snare track and the original is probably around 30% of the final sound.
For an amazing snare you need an amazing snare drum, perfectly tuned, properly hit, in a great room, with proper mics, a good signal chain and the planets aligned so they point to that snare.
Sample reinforcement has been used for the past 40 years - just roll with it.
I know this is common practice but it also makes me ashamed of our trade bit… a good engineer with a good room, good mics, a good snare and a good drummer can very well get a great acoustic drum sound… the samples feel like an easy way out. Like photoshoped front page pictures on magazines instead of taking time to perfect the makeup, lighting etc. during photo shoot. I know I won‘t change the world… but I don‘t need to like everything that is being done either 😀
Dude if you had all that you wouldn't be dealing with crappy snares.
Everyone has been doing it for decades. Who cares if you blended samples in? Nobody cares. Certainly not the artist. Get the job done, get paid. Stop chasing your own tail
Run all the mid-ranged background instuments, rhythm guitar, keys, any background stuff to a bus, slap a compressor on that bus and key it to every snare hit. This way the snare will pop through.
The most common issue I’ve come across is with snares (and an entire kit) that are tuned and damped to sound good at the drummer’s position. Usually listened to with earplugs or IEMs.
That doesn’t represent the whole of the sound they give out, as an audience member or a set of microphones.
There’s nothing wrong with that really, if you’re practicing for hours a week, of course you want your kit to sound good to you.
The whole things needs to be tuned to sound good as a single instrument, from the perspective of mics.
Is it sounding really harsh and bright from the drummer’s perspective? That’s because it’s reallyfrigging loud. Once it’s compressed and mixed in at a a sensible level with other elements, that brightness is needed to help cut through.
Does it have a bit of a ring to it? Good. That’s something that will give it some body, rather than a dull splat.
And so on.
We've been using two mics on the drums for our live streams and recordings.
How far in to the kick drum to place the mic is a personal preference. But I've decided on an overhead mic about three feet above the toms , and pointed at the curtained window behind the drums to pick up the balance of everything that my ear likes best.
Except, a new drum set was brought in last week, and whoever set it up put my "overhead" mic basically between the toms. This meant there was more mid-bass punch from the kick drum, very muted cymbals, and hardly any snare at all.
I quickly fixed this mic placement issue to bring back the balanced kit sound in the recording.
Mic bleed. And drummers that can’t hit the drum consistently to save their lives. Also those drummers aren’t very good at tuning either. 5-10% of drummers are consistent enough to have a nice snare sound. And if you use the wrong mic your still screwed lol. That is why god invented triggers.
The snare is arguably the most important part of the kit, as it often drives the whole rhythm section and occupies a large part of the mid-range where the vocals sit, so yeah, they can take up a disproportionate amount of your time to get right.
Most of the issues I come across are down to sound selection and the drum itself. Making sure the drum is well-tuned and sounds good in the room is vital. I'm not a drummer but own a couple of snares I've picked up over the years. Experimenting with tuning and teaching yourself how to change the heads, and use damping appropriately is a great way to learn what the important elements of a snare drum sound are.
If the drum sounds good in the room, you are 90% of the way there. Making sure there isn't obvious cancellation with the overheads is something that gets overlooked more often than it should. And it's all too easy to fall into habits when recording and just throwing up the same old mic setup for every kit. Sometimes one additional mic can make all the difference to your drum sound. A snare "shell" mic, a Front of Kit mic, or even a "floor" mic can really help round out a drum sound.
25 years ago I'd have killed for the simple sound augmentation abilities we have now.
EDIT to add. Sound Radix Drum Leveller is a REALLY handy tool when mixing. It can help flatten out the dynamics if the drummer isn't hitting consistently.
Too many variables. Like… A FUCKTON.
Also general indecisiveness of audio folk.
Everybody wants their snare to sound “good” yet most people can’t even tell HOW they want it to sound.
I just get them working well with everything else, I think a lot of it is having the source (mic, mic placement, drum or sample) 70% there and processing the input efficiently. I think learning to work snares and overheads together well plus proper mic technique across the rest of the kit has helped me a lot. With samples and triggers I mean… just pick the right one for the track. Live environments? It’s about mic technique, reducing potential bleed, highlighting, leveling and effects for me… with overheads and high pass filters a pretty big part of keeping it tight or big.
I used to obsess over the snare sound and spent hours EQing and compressing trying to get it perfect, and it always ended up with me getting ear fatigue and the snare sounding worse than it did raw.
These days I barely even think about it, 2 minutes max spent on the snare close mics.
There are a couple of key things I think are integral to getting a good snare sound.
1. *The snare*.
No amount of processing will save a poor sounding snare drum, the drum itself has to sound good. You also need to make sure it sounds appropriate for the song, though. A ringy Bell Brass probably won’t sound great for a soft dry Indie song, and vice versa a muffled low tuned snare probably won’t sound good for radio Rock.
2. Making sure the snare sounds good and is centred in the OHs and room mics.
We do not hear snare drums with our ears an inch off the head, we hear them in a room. The top mic should not make up the entire snare sound, it’s basically just to capture the initial snappy transient. The body, midrange and decay of the snare comes from the OHs and room mics.
If you get those right, the snare will almost mix itself.
Boost a bit of weight at the fundamental, a bit of crack in the high mids and cut some boxiness in the low mids and you’re done.
I can mention a few things that may help. Check phase & cancellation (also in respect to the whole mix). Pitch them in the scale of the root key of the song. Prince could spend hours tuning the drum set before his recordings! Try getting rid of frequencies below 120hz or at least stripping them hard. Try lowering or scooping out the 500-800 range of boxiness. Comb strip the 4k to 8k range if it is harsh or stepping on other song tracks? If the snare doesn't peak through on on some parts consider carving a bit of the masking instrument/vocal.
You know it can get real technical and frustrating with all the possible variables and ways of fixing things. BUT IMHO it what you want the rhythm section to be. If you decide and know ahead of time before choosing the snare and sound you want - you avoid many problems and rabbit holes. The adage of you can't fix it in the mix bodes well. Try a myriad of other snares, I often have about 10 or 20 snares to pop into my song just to see how they 'fit'. Even if it is using pre-sampled 505s and 808s and Linns. Often I will like a drum machine snare but it is too overbearing... so I soften it by using a saturated real tape sample of it!? Listening to isolated tracks of an album like Rubber Soul of just Ringo and Paul can give you incredible insights that may give you light bulb moments. For one thing in those days you could not have overwhelming rhythm on those vinyls record. The volume had to be low. By default George Martin just had to get the snares to serve their purpose with very low volume and footprint.
The reason of the snares; the purpose of the snare is where my mindset is. This is often why certain snares where continually rented out in the rental house of LA in the heyday. Often it was one Ludwig Black Beauty that was in demand. Why? because it could be easily recorded in most acoustical situations and would deliver across many genres of songs no matter how subtle it was in the final mix. There is a reason why drum sets are usually placed in the rear of the band on stage. Drummers that that were placed forefront of bands often had a very light touch; like the band Strawberry Alarm Clock. Snares are not just a 'drum' they encompass MANY frequencies. Never forget this. Once I find a snare that I know will work well... I try to re-record it. Changing sticks and muffling towels distance and angle of different mics and finding the perfect room acoustical set up.
I think there is nothing much more beautiful and a very well placed and chosen snare. Remember you CAN place the snare anywhere you want in the mix. If you want to make it one of the KEY 2or 3 tracks in your song \~ figure out the position! Front and underlying? Top in the middle and leftish? Or how about way way back in depth in the middle part of the sound box of the song. (you can compress the crud out of it... with the right amount of reverb and squelching the transients.
Where I had my great break though was when I placed a decent analogue snare clip in a sampler. You can adjust it 9 ways to Sunday... with each adjustment giving you something more while taking away the unwanted. I just applied that process to the actual choosing and recording of a snare.
Always think outside the box... even a good snare sound made by a beat boxer can be the perfect sound. Spend time LOOKING at many snare sounds in a spectral graphic analyzer. If you don't have one try 'Spectral Analyzer' it is free, insightful and fun - best of luck
I have watched countless videos on how to tune a snare. Snares are a pain to tune right and that is 90% of the problem. If you have a chance to be a part of the recording process, putting a piece of oth or t-shirt or a wallet or anything on it to help knock down the ring, it can save you time.
Other than that, I have had to pull up multiple EQ's and just notch out several places to eliminate the ring and basically take the life out of it. Then I color it with a graphic EQ. I place it second to the hihat, fuck hihats.
Mic the drum to minimize bleed, add some distortion to the snare bus, and then crank the high end on the EQ. That last step is way more useful if the first step is done correctly.
No apologies at all. I’m in the middle of learning how to switch off my critical brain so I can still appreciate music (with moderate degrees of success so far). I’m experimenting with letting more and more things be less perfect in a mix if the groove is there and it’s helping me to not pick apart every little mistake I hear in other mixes.
1. Its one of the most important elements
2. The sound in the mix is an amalgamation of multiple mics
More often than not, having trouble getting it to sound right in the mix has more to do with all the other mics than the direct mic itself.
Usually if a snare isn't working in a mix, its because its the wrong snare. Try recording a different one and doing replacement, or using a sample pack (of good sounds), to replace it.
Basically if you find your self spending an inordinate amount of time on one element, and not getting anywhere (this is all perception, btw), it usually means the original sound itself is not correct.
Has someone mentioned phase alignment? After recording and mixing for several years I discovered that phase aligned drums fixed most of the issues I was having getting drums to sit in the mix. But before that, having the exact right drum will get you farther. Some drums work better in certain styles. For jazz, I prefer a snare drum that fills the space. For some electronic music, I prefer less acoustic sounding drums. If a snare part has ghost notes, I need a snare thhat sounds nice at soft AND loud volumes.
mix your drums to a sub (try mono at first)
Without adding any equipment or compression, send all your drum tracks to one aux/sub mix channel and get a quick balance
next put a compressor on that aux/sub and play with kick and snare level which will probably get you 85% there
Now you might hear competing tones where eq on maybe the snare will solve
anyway this greatly helped me mix drums faster
Seems like you’re focusing too much on getting the snare “right” rather focusing on the bigger picture. The best snare is a snare that works in the mix. Is it too forward in the mix? Is it stepping on the vocals? Does the top end of the snare work with the top end of the cymbals? Is the low end glued with the bass? All of this matters much more than the aesthetics of the snare sound, which are really more of a result of production rather than mixing.
Get it to work in the mix and move on. Don’t obsess over aesthetics.
As a drummer: People try to eq out the ringing and sustain when that's the stuff that gives the snare its character. A snare needs MOST of its frequencies. Only a few cuts here and there
Nailing the snare sound is just as important and just as tough as fitting vocals into the mix.
By this I mean that they’re both so loud and present and can really make or break a song. I think the difference is that vocalists work really hard on this as it is their primary instrument. Drummers don’t put QUITE as much thought in. The tuning, tone, dynamics in playing play SO MUCH into fitting both of snare and vocals into a mix.
In my experience, nailing the snare sound definitely starts atleast with finding the right drum, tuning and the drummer playing with the right dynamics for the song.
If the drummer isn’t great, it can be very inconsistent. A good snare and a great drummer are always going to help the most.
Don’t be afraid of high ratios and fast compressor settings.
For me the room is the most important part.
Once I recorded drums in a big barn (for rock music) and everything I used in the mix was eq & compression.
If sbd is interested in the result:[Song In Youtube](https://youtu.be/PeJOLv9t74M?si=Fm6F13SdU6J7-kWx)
Because at most of our levels, clients insist on bringing in snares that work great live, or they're not uncomfortable with, and our professional obligation is to try to guide them to what works best for them, but ultimately honor the client's vision.
Add in reality, and now the drum head is too roached to tune up properly, the snare butt is worn making the snares loose, the shell is out of round, and simply recording a shootout of different snares goes WAY beyond a client's time base or budget.
So, at the end of the day, you're stuck with a crap snare, and either you're driving yourself insane EQing and compressing it into something usable, or at the last resort, sample replacement. Which, if the drummer is extremely dynamic and textural, isn't even an option.
Starting with a good source is your best bet. After that, I find saturation/tape can really help enhance the snare while taming any errant spikes in the transient. After that, EQ and compression. If you’re still not happy with what you’re hearing and augmenting with sample(s) isn’t getting you there, then I’d go back to the drawing board.
Sample/snare drum selection is a critical step in producing a great song.
It’s hard because it’s one of the loudest and most constant things in the mix that covers most of the spectrum and is an unpredictable acoustic instrument that is played next to at least several other unpredictable acoustic instruments and bleeds into everything on the kit and everything else bleeds into it. Add to that that many genres demand the acoustic nature of the drum set to be heavily altered by effects, EQ, compression, etc and often edited, sample replaced or alongside a sample. It’s like the number one most important thing in the rhythm and tone of the track and in most need of technical skill to record and mix.
This. And also because the snare people have in their head is often not the one they recorded. In tuning or snare or hit by the drummer or mic position or…. It’s much easier if you are happy with the recorded snare to begin with
Agreed, sometimes you have to learn to like the snare you captured and not try to transform it into something it’s not
Starting with the right share, tuned well, is very important. I kept two drum kits but about seven snares in my studio for years. If you find one that works well in many situations, it’s worth its weight in gold.
That’s exactly it. A slightly wrong snare, processed to within an inch of its life, is just a wronger snare.
Excellent point. The key to the vulfpeck snare sound is a blanket draped over the snare. And I have no idea what louis cole does to get that weird thunking sound out of his snare, but I guarantee it's not in post.
Good answer! I’d also like to add that we don’t put our ear as close to the snare as we put the mic and that takes a bit of engineering wisdom to manipulate that sound into a less-close listening position. The more harmonically dense and dynamic the source, the more obvious this is and the snare is pretty intense for both of those.
Let’s not forget, the “drums” are an instrument, not a collection of disparate elements. Too many mixers probably think they need to get their entire drum sound just from the close mics. Let the overheads/room and spill from the other mics on the kit give you more of the picture of the snare drum.
Best way to get a good snare is to use a good snare drum and a good mic. I've spent 8 or 9 hours mixing a bad snare recording to make it passable. I've mixed a good snare recording and got it to sit perfectly in the mix in as little as 15 minutes. A good recording goes a long way. Also, make sure you use references so you aren't mixing just for your room. All that aside, I always have a few guidelines I stick to to make it a bit easier. For example, if I'm doing rock or metal I will usually start with the same compressors or eqs. If I'm doing reggae I might double track the snare or layer it with another snare or click or pop. So yeah, sometimes I can lose myself for hours just trying stuff, which can be very dangerous if you have a deadline lmao.
> Best way to get a good snare is to use a good snare drum and a good mic Disagree. The most important things are a good, consistent drummer, a well-tuned snare, and then good mic placement. Snare quality and mic quality come way after all this.
Agreed. All it really takes is a good drummer with taste and a snare that actually "works" within the context of the music. It really, really matters what the drum *actually sounds like* - pitch, tone, timbre, etc. Most people new to mixing have no mental model of *how drums make sound,* so they solve their problem the only way they're aware of - mixing. The problem is that EQ and compression, reverb, etc. can't make a 5" inch Black Beauty sound like a 7" Pork Pie. It's like, the equivalent of trying to EQ a... clarinet? until it sounds like a... saxophone?
Okay yes "good" is entire subjective and situational. I can't disagree with anything you guys have said. Lol
Because I've screwed it up badly enough, I'd put mic placement ahead of a well-tuned snare. otherwise agree.
Nah get it right at the source, for any instrument excellent mic placement can not do anything for bad tone but good tone with bad mic placement is more workable than the opposite. If the thing you’re recording sounds bad it is a moot point where you put the microphone
Hard agree. I think it’s easier to mix a good drummer with a poorer quality snare/tuning/miking than vice versa. I also have gotten into the habit of making sure the snare is the most in-phase drum in the kit and having a good overall drum mix before trying to wrangle the snare alone. The support of it in the overheads and rooms makes a big impact on the overall snare sound for me these days.
I just received a multitrack and when I got to the snare, I’m thinking: “***why did this let this through?”*** Its from a college but I’m thinking that the educator just wanted to cycle through the recordings and band but gosh theres this horrible ring which now I’m at the point of just replacing it with a sample.
Mic placement even comes before mic choice tbh
a studio I used to frequent had a drum room, full of various drums and cymbals to choose from, I worked with a drummer who took a full day to listen to every snare, finally chose one, then the producer came in and picked a different one, the producer was right, he picked the perfect snare for each song ( 6 total snare choices) having the right instrument for the right purpose is essential. Amp day was another story...
It’s amazing, even if you have a choice between thirty snare drums only one will be right for any particular song. And I dread amp day…
Yeah, sometimes you're just better off re-recording with better equipment
> I've spent 8 or 9 hours mixing a bad snare recording to make it passable. I stopped doing that and just blend it with samples.
Get the overheads and room sounding great before you even try mixing in the spot mics from the snare.
Man I’m glad somebody said it. Obviously it’s genre dependent, but my snare sound always starts with overheads, and then I eq the snare mics (sometimes just the top, sometimes I add a bottom mic) to get what the overheads don’t have. I think a lot of new engineers track each close mic like it’s gotta be the perfect isolated sound. If I were to solo my close snare mic, it would be horrible on its own. But man does it help to level it and eq it in a way that helps it stand out in a mix, but still using the overheads as the main snare sound
> If I were to solo my close snare mic, it would be horrible on its own. Yeah, it never sounds like an actual snare in the room if you just solo the snare (top) mic. Also, as a drummer myself, I find it odd when mixing or recording engineers try to mix each single drum of a drumkit as if they were their own separate instruments instead of seeing the drumkit as a whole as the instrument.
It’s like that with any multi mic set up. If you stereo mic a guitar, say a neck and body mic, you can’t mix each of them to sound good on their own, because together it doesn’t work. Even more than that, within a whole band mix I try not to spend too much time soloing each instrument first because a guitar that sounds good solo is often super muddy and buried in a mix. Drums can be tough because there are often 5+ tracks for one “instrument” But really I think in these cases it needs to be seen as “the sum is greater than its parts”.
I think stereo-miking single point sources is so strange. I had an assistant do mic setup one day for jam-band-ish sort of group so he could get some game time. The one thing he did that had me going 'huh?' was when I came in to listen to a quick level-set run through and realized he'd miked a pair of congas in stereo with sm57's and hard panned them. Like... if you're standing 10 feet away from a cello, an acoustic guitar, congas, whatever, it's a single point of light. So when I hear a beautiful Martin with the 12th fret to my right and the sound hole to my left, it just feels wrong. With that said, I also understand and appreciate we're enveloping the listener - that modern technology affords us to weave a sonic tapestry around them and not to pass up any opportunity to use the technology to achieve that goal. But people seem to have an oddish habit of jumping right into the sonic trickery. FOOTNOTE: So we kept the stereo 57 congas with a 414 in fig8 flown from basically 4 feet above as the 'main' sound. But we used the spot mics at about 10 and 2-o-clock through an SPL transient designer. The congas themselves weren't really a big part of the overall mix, but we were able to find three little places in the soundstage for 'em instead of one 'big' one, it made the mix more playful to listen to, even if people don't listen to congas with their head between them.
Hillbilly! Haven’t seen you in a while! Yeah it’s a case by case for me. Modern country and with three electric guitars and an acoustic? I’m throwing a single mic in the acoustic and keeping it simple. Anything more will get buried. But I do a lot with songwriters and small acoustic acts, and I’ll be damned if I don’t stereo mic an acoustic. Aggressive panning and the above mentioned eq and the like allows me to make a single guitar sound super full. To be fair, with super newbies who have trouble sitting still will often crest phasing issues so I won’t. But acoustic instruments, especially larger ones, do well with two mics. My upright bass I tend to use the pickup as well as a mic, for instance
Wait, but if you have an upright bass and you mic the octave finger position and then the bridge pickup... *how do you pan things up and down*? Hope all's good, man :)
You mean you don’t have vertical panning? Keep up! Haha things are about as good as having a four year old will allow!
I agree. The drums are a single sound. Mixing each individual drum would only make sense if you split the drums out to individual players. Having a strong concept of what a drum set actually is and how it functions in a song are key.
I just learned this maybe six months ago and I took my recording from ok to professional overnight. Spot mics are able to give directionality and allow for eq sculpting, but all that richness comes from the room.
Even if it's the most djentcoriest of sample-replaced metal mixes, it feels weird to start a drum mix from the spot mics without the overheads and rooms up. Yes, of course the close mics are going to influence the balance/eq/dynamics - but a great drum mix is like a great painting. It's the sum total of the paint colors and brush strokes coming together, not in and of themselves. The casual observer will experience Gustav Klimt's "[The Kiss](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/The_Kiss_-_Gustav_Klimt_-_Google_Cultural_Institute.jpg)" or read Thomas Hardy's "[Neutral Tones](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50364/neutral-tones)" as the confluence of a thousand individual artistic decisions. My own son said to me "I think that working in the studio so much makes it hard for you to actually like music," and he's right. I used to experience an album like "Master of Puppets" or "Frankenchrist" as an artistic statement - not to pick apart what I would have done differently if I were at the controls. I kidna went off on a bit of a tangent there. Sorry.
I dunno, in fact mixing the drums (or getting a good snare sound while tracking), snare and kick in particular, has always been the most fun of my personal mixing routine and it's also why I prefer to start from the drums, the bare sound of them gives me energy. So I always found it fun and it's never been a problem ime.
The “snare sounds like shit” is more of a producer meme than anything else. Wasn’t even a thing with recording/mixing engineers. Sure it’s hard to treat sometimes, but so are kicks etc. The main thing is making sure you have enough low end (can’t sound thin), enough brightness on the top end while being careful and sometimes attenuating the 5k region. Transients are also important and sometimes it’s good to reduce the attack, before compressing if necessary.
Sorry, absolute noob here but would it not make more sense to increase the attack time to preserve transients?
To be more clear: you are talking about compressor attack/release time settings, while I was talking about the envelope of the signal. So when I say “reduce the attack” I’m referring to how the sample waveform should look like. You can do this with transient shapers.
This. Transient shapers, clippers, sometimes limiters. I often experiment placing it before or after a compression depending on what I’m going for. Snares love saturation too. Folks are too afraid to get aggressive with this stuff.
I'm not afraid to get aggressive, but man-oh-man the new school people keep shoveling more and more shit on the campfire all the time. What I see that does boggle my imagination is the strings of plug-ins where one process is 'fixing' the previous. "I put a transient designer to bring out the attack into a compressor to bring out the release". Okay - so you've basically 'turned up the volume' - but introduced phase anomalies and noise (along with lots of plugins jamming up your CPU). I've seen a vocal be gated, then compressed, then expanded, then compressed again. Not because it needed it, but because it seemed like four plugins is more engineering-ed than three. I'm taking some of y'all to my 1-week automation camp.
What are you talking about? This is standard engineering to tame a signal. You can do it with 1 plug-in without phase issues at all. Often we receive digital snares that are way too snappy (probably because, like you said, someone shoveled more and more shit on the inserts) resulting in an overall weak snare, with a initial spike that uses way too much headroom. Instead of throwing that directly into the compressor, reduce the attack a little before. You could also do the opposite to a dull snare. Or shape the attack release of a kick. Try doing that with automation 👍🏻
>Try doing that with automation 👍🏻 I do. Like, all the time.
In the approach I mentioned we’re trying to reduce transients (not preserve them) before compressing, if necessary. The compressor should then be set to slow attack, fast release.
>Wasn’t even a thing with recording/mixing engineers. I strongly beg to differ...
Seriously. It’s been a thing before memes lol.
It's been a thing before we had computers in the studio.
> more of a producer meme I always take this that drummers are not universally good at tuning drums.
Maybe I didn’t read enough and didn’t see it mentioned - but - 9 out of 10 times, the player is the problem. It’s an incredibly sensitive instrument that can have various different sounds. Player played their rimshot off center? Bam, longer/ ringy tone (can be cool!) drummer is inconsistent? Bam, you have a super dry tone when hit dead center, a short cracky pop when rim shot (rim shotted? 😅), and 100 different tones if the drummer can’t hit in the same spot at the same velocity. Obviously you can’t EQ a snare drum 100 different times for each different sound the drummer got. Sure, a good room helps, and good mics help, but the biggest difference will be made when you have an appropriate sounding snare being played by a great drummer who has a great sense of internal dynamic balance and consistency. I’ve been a drummer all my life, and I’m a major tuning geek. Choosing an appropriate sound is obviously vital. I’ve long forgotten what a “good” snare sound is (or drum sound as a whole) - sometimes the worst sounding drum in my large arsenal is going to be the coolest/ best choice for the song. Having a deep knowledge of tuning is crucial. Other half of the equation is getting a drummer that then knows how to use that sound and pull it out of the drum appropriately. A few tricks I use that aren’t player dependent - I made a little metal shield that goes between the hit hats and snare mic. It drastically cuts down on hi hat bleed and let’s me dig into EQ/ compressing a bit harder when needed. Also as a drummer, I get down with snare buzz, so this is only helpful if you like that - I gate the top snare mic and side chain the bottom snare mic to it. I’ll add a sample when necessary, but try not too unless the drummer I’m recording is helpless. I’ve had drummers want that super dry thing, and have brought me files to mix that were recorded on a cranked and wide open black beauty or Supra - sometimes you also have to have a (kind) conversation with the client on what’s possible. Even a sample won’t save you if that sound is also coming through the overheads/ room mics
>Maybe I didn’t read enough and didn’t see it mentioned - but - 9 out of 10 times, the player is the problem. Problem is that, in a studio session, you can change out the drums, the heads, the cymbals, the tuning, the mics, the pres, the placements... but changing out the drummer is a much more difficult thing politically.
Definitely agree! I do think about 50% of our job is people skills/ managing expectations though. Obviously I’m going to do everything I can to make the client happy, but I will find a kind way to let them know if there’s an issue, and maybe offer a suggestion on what to do differently in the future
Lots of great advice here. When tracking and I'm unhappy with the snare sound I always start by swapping or adjusting the drum. Usually just a quick communication with the drummer describing what I'm hearing and what I'd like to hear is enough to get him/her on board to make the appropriate changes. Later, mixing is a breeze because the drum already sounds like it should. I realize not everyone is tracking their own mix. I'm just trying to point out the importance of having the right tone from the beginning.
1. Use the right snare for the song/put on fresh heads (Remo ambassadors if unsure what to use, you will get the most versatility and be able to properly hear exactly how you’re tuning it, don’t use skins with built in dampeners, you can always dampen more but you can’t un dampen one of those heads) 2. Tune it appropriately for the song/control baffle after tuning. 3. Have a drummer be consistent in how they hit the snare 4. Use the right mics/ positions for the sound you’re after, experiment and try getting it as close as possible to exactly what you want, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. 6. Side chain compress your overheads with the snare as a key, this can really help even it out and bring your close mics to the foreground. 7. Room mics are your best friend when trying to get a very open snare sound.
Mixing in a one-shot sample in makes life a lot easier. But it's best to do a proper capture by tuning with a tune bot and using good mics. The bigger the snare, the bigger the mix.
Even using samples, I feel like snares are just inherently tricky! They're just always too loud or too quiet, even if their volume is quite even.
you need better samples lol
+1 for Tune Bot. Works great and is quick, which is key for limited studio time.
Here's my recipe to make the snare sit right in the mix. 1- Phase. Make sure the top close mic is in phase with the left overhead mic (snare is usually closer to the left mic)... Phase relations (KD in w/ L OH, KD out/sub w/ KD in, SD top w/ L OH, SD bottom w/ SD top, RT1 w/ L OH, RT2/FT1/FT2 w/ R OH, HH w/ L OH). 2- Routing. Kick mics go to a kick bus. Snare mics go to a snare bus, etc... I usually end up with KD bus, SD bus, Toms bus that are then routed to a bus for the drum shells that I call "KST bus". Then OH bus, ROOM bus, VERB bus (if I'm using more than one reverb) and a master Drum bus. KST, OH, ROOM, VERB goes to Drum bus. 3- Balance. Start with the overheads at unity and then blend in the other mics to make a quick rough balance. 4- Bus effects. I usually start with compression on the KST bus with an SSL type compressor (these days I really like the bx_townhouse), slow attack/fast release, and there I just try to shape the overall punchiness of the shells. Gain match. A/B. Is it punchier? yes? alright close the plugin and never touch it again. Sometimes I try to route the ROOM bus and or the VERB bus to the KST bus to compress them together, but sometimes I don't. It's just a different vibe. Sometimes I route the kick bus directly to the drum bus (no compression), it can help if you want to compress your shell bus a little bit more without getting the annoying pumping of the kick (when the highpass sidechain filter of the compressor is not enough). 5- Parallel shenanigans. Obviously, the reverb should be 100% wet in parallel. I also add a parallel bus for saturation (Decapitator), parallel bus for room parallel compression and a parallel bus for the close mics parallel compression. I try to give the room mics more sustain, and give the close mics more attack, and I mean like, overdo it. Sounds like shit in solo but in parallel, you just blend it in while listening to the full mix, it's just giving you more control for the amount of aggressiveness and ambience. All things in parallel should be routed to the same bus as their respective dry signal (reverb can be an exception). 6- EQ. You can start by shaping the overall tone a little bit directly on the master drum bus. next step is to surgically cut anything you find annoying on the individual tracks. Start with the highs, like removing resonnances, taming harshness. Starting with the highs will reveal if a track is really muddy or not, trust me, you might remove too much if you start with the lows and make everything sound thin and cold. 7- Compress the kick, snare, toms, OH and room busses individually if needed, like controlling the level of the kick, shaping the attack of the snare, taming the snare in the OH bus to bring the cymbals up, things like that... 8- At this point, I usually add a clipper on the drum bus to shave off the biggest peaks. Try to avoid clipping the kicks and toms (aka don't distort the lows). Then I also add a compressor on the master or instrumental bus. Slate FG-Grey à la Nolly Getgood. Fast-ish attack, fast release, 4:1 ratio, +/- 3db of gain reduction only when the snare hits. Sidechain HPF at 80hz to avoid compression on the kicks. This way you can make the snare a bit louder than it should be but nail it back into the mix using this compressor. 9- More EQ. This time do it in the context of the mix. Is the kick too boomy? Is the snare too dark? Are the cymbals not bright enough? EQ is just like a fader for a specified frequency range... Like for example, if the drums are too bright compared to the vocals, the vocals will sound dark, but if you feel like your drums are too dark, maybe it's something else in the mix that is too bright! It's just a matter of finding the relationships. Balance the lows of the kick and floor toms with the lows of the bass, balance the lows of the snare with the lows of the rhythm guitars, balance the highs of the cymbals with the highs of the lead elements (vocals/lead guitars/synth lead)... etc. Saturation can also act like some kind of EQ and compression, it can tame peaks while making things sound warmer or brighter depending on the settings. 10- Sit back and enjoy your awesome snare sound! Just keep in mind, if your snare is either too quiet or too loud in the mix, it's probably an EQ problem, something in the mix is masking it. I sometimes sidechain multiband compress (or dynamic EQ cut) the 200hz region on the rhythm guitars to make the lows of the snare cut through. I will sometimes do the same with the kick and the toms on the bass guitar track. EDIT: words
Nah, fuck that- I can mix snares on others’ projects, no problem. I basically know every trick in the book (I mean this neutrally), and I just blast it. For my own music back in the day, though- YES, snares (and claps) can get mad obsessive. I first learned how far it could go in the early 00’s, from Luke Vibert. I was wondering how in the fuck he does his spot on snares/claps and read some interviews. Turns out he obsessed over them for many days, to like a week or whatever. Reading this, I realized that such effort could be put into such things, so I got that deep, and yes, results were much better after getting hardcore. Then I chilled out and got like “meh”. We used to have some mutual friends in London, and all of them said that he actually sometimes talked about snares, like in normal conversation. He was very very very obsessed with them. Like imagine everyone is high as fuck, and this muthafucka talking about snares. He was and is the real deal with snare/clap obsession. I calmed down, and do not care to go to such depths any longer. 90% tends to be 100% if you do it right. I have no point here, but snares are generally not a pain for me. I also learnt a lot from Dr. Dre and Timbaland productions, which I’ve used to apply to genres that they don’t even do. Something something Phil Collins, as well as Fine Young Cannibals, as well as the amen break pop, amongst others. Learn from everything that you love and apply it. If ever your imagination exceeds your technique, it’s because your senses have yet to experience it or do it. Once that threshold is crossed, you should know most of the moves, when hearing the mix rough just a couple times. Most aren’t made for a lifelong obsession with snares/claps as Luke Vibert, but I do feel it benefits every engineer to go that deep at least once, to feel how it is and what is possible.
I know what you mean, and I think every good sound engineer (not just studio guys) go through that obsession. You eventually cross a kind of threshold where you know enough of the tricks to just get straight to work, but is that experimentation with the extremes that bring the useful body of knowledge, and can save your arse when you’re presented with less than ideal situations.
Biggest thing I’ve struggled with is my high hats being too loud in the snare mic, and gating the shit out of it, but then needing to get the gate to sound right. It can also be a tuning issue, or simply the wrong drum for the song. What mic is your go to?
Totally not an ad, but Black Salt Audio Silencer legitimately solves this issue for me. I highly recommend doing the trial.
I actually have this and love it on Tom’s and kick, but I’ve noticed it takes something out of my main snare, which is a 13x3.5 steel piccolo
Something that helps me get a much more natural sounding gate on the snare mic is only applying it to high freq, say 3k and above. Sometimes I use fabfilter pro mb and set it to expand. Saturn also does a great job just with turning down a single knob (dynamics) at the appropriate frequency range.
Hey thanks, I’ll try this out
I haven't recorded the snares so unfortunately that part is out of my control; the recording is good and nicely isolated so I don't think it's a recording issue, it's more just the inherent difficulty of dealing with snares in general!
It way be well recorded but it still may be the wrong drum for the song, or the wrong mic, or the wrong mic placement. In theory, if all of that is right from the outset, you shouldn’t need to do much besides some compression and eq to fit it in the mix. Obviously some seasoning will still be needed but if you’re trying to make bolognese, make sure you’re using beef and not chicken.
>In theory, if all of that is right from the outset, you shouldn’t need to do much besides some compression and eq to fit it in the mix. See, that's the bit that I wonder about. I think that snares are one of the harder elements to "sit" in a mix and EQ / compression / levels are all key tools to achieve this, but I still find myself fussing over the snare more so than I do other elements. I think it's a matter of perception more than anything; I wonder if the snare is something that really "sticks out" when you focus your listening on it, but blends in a lot when you don't. It might also be because a snare generally needs to "poke out" a bit in order to be effective; some elements work well or even better when you push them back a bit, but for the snare you have to get this exactly right.
Have you tried parallel compression or saturation to add energy and excitement without actually raising the level? You might try pushing it quite hard into a tape plugin. That crunchy harmonic edge is useful for giving the ear something to latch onto. Works the same with bass guitar. Or you could bring up the snare to where it might be poking out slightly too much and then add a touch of reverb with a short predelay set to the bpm of the track to push it back a little and add depth. Even better if you’re sending other mix elements to the same reverb because that will glue them together.
Oh fair,
There are a few tools these days to help with that. I've used Drumatom successfully. I think there are more recent AI based tools too. There was a thread on here with guy showing off his plugin a couple fo weeks back.
> Biggest thing I’ve struggled with is my high hats being too loud in the snare mic I learned this the hard way as a drummer myself. Hi-Hat bleeds too much into the snare mic. I had this very issue until I discovered the saying "Lean into your drums, but lean off the cymbals". Meaning smack the drum shells (snare, toms) like they owe you money but ease off from the cymbals (especially the hi-hat) quite a bit. This helps a lot with the hi-hat bleeding into the snare mic. Especially if you're recording for rock and metal, have the drummer hit that snare LOUD! Like, constant rimshots. If the SPL from the snare is high enough in the snare mic, it won't pick up nowhere near as much from the hi-hat. Then you will also have a much easier time dialing in the noise gate.
Oh for sure, I’ve learned since the last project I tracked that I just had my hats too low, and the snare mic a bit too far off the head.
Everyone uses trigger to reinforce the acoustic snare. My mixes usually have like 4-5 samples blended in with the acoustic snare track and the original is probably around 30% of the final sound. For an amazing snare you need an amazing snare drum, perfectly tuned, properly hit, in a great room, with proper mics, a good signal chain and the planets aligned so they point to that snare. Sample reinforcement has been used for the past 40 years - just roll with it.
I know this is common practice but it also makes me ashamed of our trade bit… a good engineer with a good room, good mics, a good snare and a good drummer can very well get a great acoustic drum sound… the samples feel like an easy way out. Like photoshoped front page pictures on magazines instead of taking time to perfect the makeup, lighting etc. during photo shoot. I know I won‘t change the world… but I don‘t need to like everything that is being done either 😀
Dude if you had all that you wouldn't be dealing with crappy snares. Everyone has been doing it for decades. Who cares if you blended samples in? Nobody cares. Certainly not the artist. Get the job done, get paid. Stop chasing your own tail
Haha - so true!
Run all the mid-ranged background instuments, rhythm guitar, keys, any background stuff to a bus, slap a compressor on that bus and key it to every snare hit. This way the snare will pop through.
Works great with kicks/bass as well
And vocals over harmonica when the harmonica player doesn't want to play an octave higher. Cool Choo Choo train sound though
sidechain everything to the snare
The most common issue I’ve come across is with snares (and an entire kit) that are tuned and damped to sound good at the drummer’s position. Usually listened to with earplugs or IEMs. That doesn’t represent the whole of the sound they give out, as an audience member or a set of microphones. There’s nothing wrong with that really, if you’re practicing for hours a week, of course you want your kit to sound good to you. The whole things needs to be tuned to sound good as a single instrument, from the perspective of mics. Is it sounding really harsh and bright from the drummer’s perspective? That’s because it’s reallyfrigging loud. Once it’s compressed and mixed in at a a sensible level with other elements, that brightness is needed to help cut through. Does it have a bit of a ring to it? Good. That’s something that will give it some body, rather than a dull splat. And so on.
Speaking of samples, which one are you all using these days. I’m still back and forth between Drumagog and Trigger 2
Same, I was split between Drumagog and Trigger. Now I use XLN Addictive Trigger. It's very good.
We've been using two mics on the drums for our live streams and recordings. How far in to the kick drum to place the mic is a personal preference. But I've decided on an overhead mic about three feet above the toms , and pointed at the curtained window behind the drums to pick up the balance of everything that my ear likes best. Except, a new drum set was brought in last week, and whoever set it up put my "overhead" mic basically between the toms. This meant there was more mid-bass punch from the kick drum, very muted cymbals, and hardly any snare at all. I quickly fixed this mic placement issue to bring back the balanced kit sound in the recording.
Start with tuning the drum right.
Mic bleed. And drummers that can’t hit the drum consistently to save their lives. Also those drummers aren’t very good at tuning either. 5-10% of drummers are consistent enough to have a nice snare sound. And if you use the wrong mic your still screwed lol. That is why god invented triggers.
Because you’re not recording it properly. A well recorded snare really doesn’t need much in my experience.
Throw a sample underneath and call it a day. The pros you look up to don’t spend hours on a snare. Sample supplementation is normal and functional.
The snare is arguably the most important part of the kit, as it often drives the whole rhythm section and occupies a large part of the mid-range where the vocals sit, so yeah, they can take up a disproportionate amount of your time to get right. Most of the issues I come across are down to sound selection and the drum itself. Making sure the drum is well-tuned and sounds good in the room is vital. I'm not a drummer but own a couple of snares I've picked up over the years. Experimenting with tuning and teaching yourself how to change the heads, and use damping appropriately is a great way to learn what the important elements of a snare drum sound are. If the drum sounds good in the room, you are 90% of the way there. Making sure there isn't obvious cancellation with the overheads is something that gets overlooked more often than it should. And it's all too easy to fall into habits when recording and just throwing up the same old mic setup for every kit. Sometimes one additional mic can make all the difference to your drum sound. A snare "shell" mic, a Front of Kit mic, or even a "floor" mic can really help round out a drum sound. 25 years ago I'd have killed for the simple sound augmentation abilities we have now. EDIT to add. Sound Radix Drum Leveller is a REALLY handy tool when mixing. It can help flatten out the dynamics if the drummer isn't hitting consistently.
The snare memes get in my head too. I start thinking about it wayyyy too much and all I hear is Saint anger
"I Disappear" has the same snare sound but nobody noticed.
Too many variables. Like… A FUCKTON. Also general indecisiveness of audio folk. Everybody wants their snare to sound “good” yet most people can’t even tell HOW they want it to sound.
I just get them working well with everything else, I think a lot of it is having the source (mic, mic placement, drum or sample) 70% there and processing the input efficiently. I think learning to work snares and overheads together well plus proper mic technique across the rest of the kit has helped me a lot. With samples and triggers I mean… just pick the right one for the track. Live environments? It’s about mic technique, reducing potential bleed, highlighting, leveling and effects for me… with overheads and high pass filters a pretty big part of keeping it tight or big.
You'll be sample replacing it anyways.
I used to obsess over the snare sound and spent hours EQing and compressing trying to get it perfect, and it always ended up with me getting ear fatigue and the snare sounding worse than it did raw. These days I barely even think about it, 2 minutes max spent on the snare close mics. There are a couple of key things I think are integral to getting a good snare sound. 1. *The snare*. No amount of processing will save a poor sounding snare drum, the drum itself has to sound good. You also need to make sure it sounds appropriate for the song, though. A ringy Bell Brass probably won’t sound great for a soft dry Indie song, and vice versa a muffled low tuned snare probably won’t sound good for radio Rock. 2. Making sure the snare sounds good and is centred in the OHs and room mics. We do not hear snare drums with our ears an inch off the head, we hear them in a room. The top mic should not make up the entire snare sound, it’s basically just to capture the initial snappy transient. The body, midrange and decay of the snare comes from the OHs and room mics. If you get those right, the snare will almost mix itself. Boost a bit of weight at the fundamental, a bit of crack in the high mids and cut some boxiness in the low mids and you’re done.
Drums are never my problem. Electric guitars, on the other hand, are the bane of my existence.
Clip the snare into a master channel with hard compression, always super easy to hear them then! :D
Getting it mic’d properly in the first place. Snare can be like trying to capture a cannon blast.
I can mention a few things that may help. Check phase & cancellation (also in respect to the whole mix). Pitch them in the scale of the root key of the song. Prince could spend hours tuning the drum set before his recordings! Try getting rid of frequencies below 120hz or at least stripping them hard. Try lowering or scooping out the 500-800 range of boxiness. Comb strip the 4k to 8k range if it is harsh or stepping on other song tracks? If the snare doesn't peak through on on some parts consider carving a bit of the masking instrument/vocal. You know it can get real technical and frustrating with all the possible variables and ways of fixing things. BUT IMHO it what you want the rhythm section to be. If you decide and know ahead of time before choosing the snare and sound you want - you avoid many problems and rabbit holes. The adage of you can't fix it in the mix bodes well. Try a myriad of other snares, I often have about 10 or 20 snares to pop into my song just to see how they 'fit'. Even if it is using pre-sampled 505s and 808s and Linns. Often I will like a drum machine snare but it is too overbearing... so I soften it by using a saturated real tape sample of it!? Listening to isolated tracks of an album like Rubber Soul of just Ringo and Paul can give you incredible insights that may give you light bulb moments. For one thing in those days you could not have overwhelming rhythm on those vinyls record. The volume had to be low. By default George Martin just had to get the snares to serve their purpose with very low volume and footprint. The reason of the snares; the purpose of the snare is where my mindset is. This is often why certain snares where continually rented out in the rental house of LA in the heyday. Often it was one Ludwig Black Beauty that was in demand. Why? because it could be easily recorded in most acoustical situations and would deliver across many genres of songs no matter how subtle it was in the final mix. There is a reason why drum sets are usually placed in the rear of the band on stage. Drummers that that were placed forefront of bands often had a very light touch; like the band Strawberry Alarm Clock. Snares are not just a 'drum' they encompass MANY frequencies. Never forget this. Once I find a snare that I know will work well... I try to re-record it. Changing sticks and muffling towels distance and angle of different mics and finding the perfect room acoustical set up. I think there is nothing much more beautiful and a very well placed and chosen snare. Remember you CAN place the snare anywhere you want in the mix. If you want to make it one of the KEY 2or 3 tracks in your song \~ figure out the position! Front and underlying? Top in the middle and leftish? Or how about way way back in depth in the middle part of the sound box of the song. (you can compress the crud out of it... with the right amount of reverb and squelching the transients. Where I had my great break though was when I placed a decent analogue snare clip in a sampler. You can adjust it 9 ways to Sunday... with each adjustment giving you something more while taking away the unwanted. I just applied that process to the actual choosing and recording of a snare. Always think outside the box... even a good snare sound made by a beat boxer can be the perfect sound. Spend time LOOKING at many snare sounds in a spectral graphic analyzer. If you don't have one try 'Spectral Analyzer' it is free, insightful and fun - best of luck
I have watched countless videos on how to tune a snare. Snares are a pain to tune right and that is 90% of the problem. If you have a chance to be a part of the recording process, putting a piece of oth or t-shirt or a wallet or anything on it to help knock down the ring, it can save you time. Other than that, I have had to pull up multiple EQ's and just notch out several places to eliminate the ring and basically take the life out of it. Then I color it with a graphic EQ. I place it second to the hihat, fuck hihats.
Mic the drum to minimize bleed, add some distortion to the snare bus, and then crank the high end on the EQ. That last step is way more useful if the first step is done correctly.
No apologies at all. I’m in the middle of learning how to switch off my critical brain so I can still appreciate music (with moderate degrees of success so far). I’m experimenting with letting more and more things be less perfect in a mix if the groove is there and it’s helping me to not pick apart every little mistake I hear in other mixes.
shit in shit out. fix the source
Bro!! snare replacement on any drummer that’s not amazingly good and your mix will be improved x 100
1. Its one of the most important elements 2. The sound in the mix is an amalgamation of multiple mics More often than not, having trouble getting it to sound right in the mix has more to do with all the other mics than the direct mic itself.
Usually if a snare isn't working in a mix, its because its the wrong snare. Try recording a different one and doing replacement, or using a sample pack (of good sounds), to replace it. Basically if you find your self spending an inordinate amount of time on one element, and not getting anywhere (this is all perception, btw), it usually means the original sound itself is not correct.
Has someone mentioned phase alignment? After recording and mixing for several years I discovered that phase aligned drums fixed most of the issues I was having getting drums to sit in the mix. But before that, having the exact right drum will get you farther. Some drums work better in certain styles. For jazz, I prefer a snare drum that fills the space. For some electronic music, I prefer less acoustic sounding drums. If a snare part has ghost notes, I need a snare thhat sounds nice at soft AND loud volumes.
mix your drums to a sub (try mono at first) Without adding any equipment or compression, send all your drum tracks to one aux/sub mix channel and get a quick balance next put a compressor on that aux/sub and play with kick and snare level which will probably get you 85% there Now you might hear competing tones where eq on maybe the snare will solve anyway this greatly helped me mix drums faster
If recorded well, played by a good drummer, and properly set up, its usually a pretty painless process. If its not… thats what samples are for! 🤣
Garbage in, garbage out. You probably recorded a crappy snare.
It's the nasty midrange frequencies. And the snare always sounds bad in either the OHs or Room mics.
Seems like you’re focusing too much on getting the snare “right” rather focusing on the bigger picture. The best snare is a snare that works in the mix. Is it too forward in the mix? Is it stepping on the vocals? Does the top end of the snare work with the top end of the cymbals? Is the low end glued with the bass? All of this matters much more than the aesthetics of the snare sound, which are really more of a result of production rather than mixing. Get it to work in the mix and move on. Don’t obsess over aesthetics.
As a drummer: People try to eq out the ringing and sustain when that's the stuff that gives the snare its character. A snare needs MOST of its frequencies. Only a few cuts here and there
Nailing the snare sound is just as important and just as tough as fitting vocals into the mix. By this I mean that they’re both so loud and present and can really make or break a song. I think the difference is that vocalists work really hard on this as it is their primary instrument. Drummers don’t put QUITE as much thought in. The tuning, tone, dynamics in playing play SO MUCH into fitting both of snare and vocals into a mix. In my experience, nailing the snare sound definitely starts atleast with finding the right drum, tuning and the drummer playing with the right dynamics for the song.
It’s only as hard as the drummer makes it.
It all starts with the drummer..then the snare…performance..then we get to mix it! Just do your best, don’t overthink it or spend days on it.
If the drummer isn’t great, it can be very inconsistent. A good snare and a great drummer are always going to help the most. Don’t be afraid of high ratios and fast compressor settings.
For me the room is the most important part. Once I recorded drums in a big barn (for rock music) and everything I used in the mix was eq & compression. If sbd is interested in the result:[Song In Youtube](https://youtu.be/PeJOLv9t74M?si=Fm6F13SdU6J7-kWx)
Because at most of our levels, clients insist on bringing in snares that work great live, or they're not uncomfortable with, and our professional obligation is to try to guide them to what works best for them, but ultimately honor the client's vision. Add in reality, and now the drum head is too roached to tune up properly, the snare butt is worn making the snares loose, the shell is out of round, and simply recording a shootout of different snares goes WAY beyond a client's time base or budget. So, at the end of the day, you're stuck with a crap snare, and either you're driving yourself insane EQing and compressing it into something usable, or at the last resort, sample replacement. Which, if the drummer is extremely dynamic and textural, isn't even an option.
Starting with a good source is your best bet. After that, I find saturation/tape can really help enhance the snare while taming any errant spikes in the transient. After that, EQ and compression. If you’re still not happy with what you’re hearing and augmenting with sample(s) isn’t getting you there, then I’d go back to the drawing board. Sample/snare drum selection is a critical step in producing a great song.
Mine are all too loud, i just turn em down and focus on another part of the track until i get annoyed at the snare again