Tips to enhance low end punch and girth of snare drum?

[Brad McGowan]

I'm in the mixing stages of a project and find myself in a predicament where the band has decided somewhere along the way that they want their snare drum to sound like a completely different beast than what was actually recorded. The snare chosen during tracking was given a thumbs up by everyone at the time. It was a 5" Tama maple snare. It had a lighter sound with good crack and snare response. It was on the "snare-y" side of things, and did not have a lot of low end punch. Overall we went for a very roomy drum sound. The snare was miked from the side (at the shell) and there was a mic placed at the drummer's right knee facing the snare. So the composite snare sound is a combination of close mic, overheads, room mic, and knee mic. Mics are all in phase.

Now that we are almost complete with mixing everyone hates the snare sound. They describe it as "too papery" and "lacking resonance". If I had a time machine I would have used a deeper brass snare. But that is no longer an option. Does anyone have any good tips for enhancing low end punch on papery, thin sounding snare drum? Simple effective suggestions would be best. I do have Drumagog at my disposal, but was wondering if there were other options....bass enhancers? multiband compression techniques? etc.

thanks,
Brad

[RKrizman]

Why not try duplicating the shell mic track. Gate it and do some extreme eq. Sweep around until you find where it rings and bring that out, roll off the top, radically boost the low mids with a tight Q. Compress past the point of good taste with something punchy like a Fairchild plug, and mix it in with your other drums. Don't forget delay compensation.

-R

[Glenn Kuras]

Brad,
If you do figure this out please let us all know. I can not count the number of times people want to change the snare to be totally differnet when we get to mix.
I do have to ask why would Drumagog not work? I do not have it but everyone claims it is the answer to ever drum problem out there.

Glenn

[Jonboy79]

Originally Posted by myfipie

Brad,
If you do figure this out please let us all know. I can not count the number of times people want to change the snare to be totally differnet when we get to mix.
I do have to ask why would Drumagog not work? I do not have it but everyone claims it is the answer to ever drum problem out there.

Glenn

Yeah this situation sucks, I had a band insist on recording with a piccollo(sp?). After recording the whole thing they said they wanted a deeper sound like on their previous recordings, we used to use a brass Tama, maybe 7"? Anyway it took a fair amount of surgery, very similar to whats described above, but still never got exactly what they wanted.

[thethrillfactor]

Originally Posted by RKrizman

Why not try duplicating the shell mic track. Gate it and do some extreme eq. Sweep around until you find where it rings and bring that out, roll off the top, radically boost the low mids with a tight Q. Compress past the point of good taste with something punchy like a Fairchild plug, and mix it in with your other drums. Don't forget delay compensation.

-R

Extreme EQing a snare will make it worse.

It will throw the phasing against the over heads out of whack.

You need a 3 stage mult to go along with the original snare sound.

If you use a Drumagog you can probably get away with 2 but then you will have to edit the leakage on some of the other tracks.

And you'll need some kind of artificial ambience.

I only know how to do this with outboard unfortunately so i have no idea what plugs to use.

[Benjy King]

Get that brass snare you wanted. Put it on a stand. Take an Auratone speaker or something similar and place it on top of the snare---speaker facing down. Now mic the snare however you wish. Buss the original snare to the Auratone. Crank it up until you like the way it's smacking the snare. Record onto another track. Like re-amping except with a drum.

[SMC Productions]

Originally Posted by Brad McGowan

I'm in the mixing stages of a project and find myself in a predicament where the band has decided somewhere along the way that they want their snare drum to sound like a completely different beast than what was actually recorded. The snare chosen during tracking was given a thumbs up by everyone at the time. It was a 5" Tama maple snare. It had a lighter sound with good crack and snare response.
Now that we are almost complete with mixing everyone hates the snare sound. They describe it as "too papery" and "lacking resonance". Simple effective suggestions would be best.
thanks,
Brad

Brad,
How about 're-amping' it?
Put a speaker on top, run the original snare track through it...with alot deeper sounding snare, then mic it, add, replace, or eq to taste...

[SMC Productions]

Originally Posted by SMC Productions

Brad,
How about 're-amping' it?
Put a speaker on top, run the original snare track through it...with alot deeper sounding snare, then mic it, add, replace, or eq to taste...

Woops....looks like someone 'beat me to it'!

[Brad McGowan]

Originally Posted by thethrillfactor

Extreme EQing a snare will make it worse.

It will throw the phasing against the over heads out of whack.

You need a 3 stage mult to go along with the original snare sound.

If you use a Drumagog you can probably get away with 2 but then you will have to edit the leakage on some of the other tracks.

And you'll need some kind of artificial ambience.

I only know how to do this with outboard unfortunately so i have no idea what plugs to use.

Hey Thrill,

Can you elaborate on this process more? I can connect the dots and figure out what the proper plugins would be.

thanks,
Brad

[Brad McGowan]

Originally Posted by RKrizman

Why not try duplicating the shell mic track. Gate it and do some extreme eq. Sweep around until you find where it rings and bring that out, roll off the top, radically boost the low mids with a tight Q. Compress past the point of good taste with something punchy like a Fairchild plug, and mix it in with your other drums. Don't forget delay compensation.

-R

This is probably the first thing I will try. But like Thrill said, the phasing will probably get weird with extreme boosts. My other thought was to find a decent sample with Drumagog and do some degree of this to accentuate the qualities I am missing from my shell mic track.

To answer your question Glenn...Drumagog does work very well, but sometimes it can be tricky to get it to trigger correctly especially if there are fast 16th notes that the drummer plays at lower volumes (which is usually the case with faster playing). I'm going to try Drumagog for sure, but I want to keep things sounding as natural as possible.

I'm also have Waves TransX and Waves MaxxBass. Anyone think those might be worth trying? What if I try the Waves LinEQ to boost the crap out of the low end?

Brad

[Brad McGowan]

Originally Posted by Benjy King

Get that brass snare you wanted. Put it on a stand. Take an Auratone speaker or something similar and place it on top of the snare---speaker facing down. Now mic the snare however you wish. Buss the original snare to the Auratone. Crank it up until you like the way it's smacking the snare. Record onto another track. Like re-amping except with a drum.

This is a great tip Benjy, and one I've had good success with in the past. However, I think this is more appropriate for when you are lacking "snareyness" and crack. I'm lacking body and depth. Anyone disagree? It takes some time to setup and go through the exercise so I don't want to waste too much time if the predicted success rate will be low here.

Brad

[Jim vanBergen]

When a client says that, I cringe. If they are completely serious, it's time to re-do the entire drum track. The first thing that comes to mind is, "is whats on the track what THEY wanted, or what I wanted?" and then how much its gonna cost.

[bjornson]

Simple! get the snare sounding how you want, do the whole auratone trick but
TURN THE SNARES OFF
or just do it with a tom...

[justbrian]

Hate it when that happens...

Of course every application/everyone's prefered tools are different.

Sometimes EQ will do the trick - I often boost acouple db on snare somewhere around 200-300 to get a little girth - when I crank up the mains I want the snare to hit me in the chest, the same way the kick does. Of course this doesn't always work as there may just not be enough energy there to add. Proper placement of bottom mic can add alot of punch and depth as well, but that's obviously not a choice for you at the moment.

Just two nights ago I was mixing a fairly "ballady" track and the snare that was used durring tracking was a pretty tight/bright drum that I didn't really feel got the sound. A simple change in compression to a silver face 1176 did the trick, adding just the right amount of "squish", and allowed me to drop all EQ entirely.

If things like that don't work, that's when I tend to turn to Sound Replacer or the like (I've never used Drumagog - but have heard mixed opinions on the triggering/slop in Drumagog - YMMV). The key to this is ensuring that the plug follows dynamics, and you select a sample that COMPLIMENTS the original. This way you can mix it WITH the original to get what you want. With any of these you may need to spend some time editing either the trigger or sample track to get things not to flam.

[justbrian]

Originally Posted by Brad McGowan

I'm also have Waves TransX and Waves MaxxBass. Anyone think those might be worth trying? What if I try the Waves LinEQ to boost the crap out of the low end?

Brad

MaxxBass isn't going to do much for content that's not there - AFAIK it's basic purpose is to add upper harmonics to existing low frequency content - tricking you ears into hearing more bass without actually adding more bass (like "feathering" an eq).

TransX is probably not going to do much in the frequency domain either - if a subtle boost of EQ can't bring it up, the content is just not there to work with.

You can try the LinEQ but be carefull - "phase linear" EQs can have some ugly effects on transient material - the total phase shift might be less but because Linear EQs generally achieve this by spreading the shift in phase equally before and after the sound (rather than just delay, as in most eq circuits) you can get some considerable pre-echo on transients sounds.

[Bang]

If a simple 100Hz shelf boosting 5-10db can't make the snare boom on the bottom, something is wrong. So I'd try that, and if isn't working, send me the snare track.

[Brad McGowan]

Originally Posted by bjornson

Simple! get the snare sounding how you want, do the whole auratone trick but
TURN THE SNARES OFF
or just do it with a tom...

Ahhh...brilliant. Good thought! Turning the snares off is so damn obvious--why didn't I think of that? Does it really work though? Won't I just get mostly the sound coming out of the speaker?

Brad

[Brad McGowan]

Originally Posted by Bang

If a simple 100Hz shelf boosting 5-10db can't make the snare boom on the bottom, something is wrong. So I'd try that, and if isn't working, send me the snare track.

The first thing I'm going to do tonight is crank 100Hz on the UAD Pultec plugin.

What would you do with the snare track?

Brad

[planet red]

When I have that problem I usually mult the snare and add a ton of bottom to it with a shelf somewhere from 150 to 200, then use a bell and find where the perfect bottom of the drum is and boost that a little more, then put that into a transient designer and add some attack and cut some sustain. That way you can mix in low end punch to the snare without it getting super muddy, which it will if you're adding insane amounts of low end to it..

For me its usually not just a problem of lack of low end, but lack of a tight focused low end.

[84K]

There is a drumogog update that I think cxame out yesterday ( at least that's when I found it ). That should work fine...

[jbuntz]

The UAD pultec does something odd to the extreme top end because of the up-sampling. It seems to reduce it, which is fine for bass guitar but not a lot of things, so watch out for that. I like to mult snare into a 160, distressor or sometimes 1176 hit hard and then boost 100 hz on a Neve 1066 usually does the trick for me. Big low end boosts work better for me after compression. I usually gate the mult. Maybe try the trans-x multiband or mult the wideband and boost the low end on the pokey version so the low end boost doesnt have a lot of sustain to make things muddy.

Worst case scenario, go sample the brass snare you wanted to use with a fat sounding snare mic like a 201 or 421, drumagog with several different settings (one regular, one for fills, one for quiet sections, whatever works) and bounce the gogged tracks and comp together a version that makes sense. Rely on that for the low end. Speaking of phasing, certain tuning intervals can do weird things to the low end when blending real and triggered snares. Occasionally (usually on kicks) what looks most in phase is actually a half wavelength off and inverted so when you aligning samples with the real drums so align it, flip it, re-align it and see what sounds best. That is also key for low end.

[Led]

Mult it out to a pitch shifter down about 3 or 4 semitones, apply high and low passes to the pitched down snare and mix it back in with the orignal?

[Nutmeg II.]

Before reamping the mess how about this:
You need a reverb unit/plug that could simulate realy small rooms (like the size of a drum).
Make it resonant and add it to the snare.
You could use EQ and a pitchshifter on the way in to enhance the thing futher.
A dbx/spl/waves/peavy subharmonic synth could help too...

Lot of options, but I usualy would go for a added FX rahter then swapping the snare out view sample replacement.
It will sound nicer than haveing a fat snare replacement with the original snare still in the OH/room mics.

[bjornson]

Originally Posted by Brad McGowan

Ahhh...brilliant. Good thought! Turning the snares off is so damn obvious--why didn't I think of that? Does it really work though? Won't I just get mostly the sound coming out of the speaker?

Brad

Can't say i've ever tried it! I bet with some rad gate and eq on the Aurotone send
you could get something cooler than with drumagog/SR.
Then again you could try a pitch manipulated tom in gog' too!
This assumes that you all are trying to simply augment the sound of the original "awesome sounding snare" and not replace it.
These little experiments are the teachable moments of our world!

[Infernal Device]

Just a thought....

Put a de-esser on top, around 5khz, give a boost with a narrow Q around 240hz.

If you are using a compressor, slooooow attack.

Hope something works out for you!

[Brad McGowan]

Okay I met with the band last night for about an hour and I was able to get a sound that everyone was happy with. Luckily it was a pretty simple solution. Here's what I did:

I duplicated the snare track. Both the original and duplicate tracks were gated and EQ'd slightly. The duplicate snare got Drumagog set to 100% wet using a brass snare sample with a decent bottom end. I mixed those two tracks about 60/40 (dry/Gog) and bussed them to a group track on which I placed Vintage Warmer followed by a UAD Pultec EQ. I tweaked a snare drum preset on Vintage Warmer to give it some fat, yet natural sounding compression. It was nothing over the top but just a few dB's of gain reduction to fatten it up and allow my dry and Gog snare sounds to gel together. With the Pultec EQ I simply boosted about +5 at 100Hz and all fell into place. Voila. It was mostly the snare sample I think that was being fattened, but it seemed to do the trick and the band was much happier.

Thanks all for the great suggestions!

Planet Red--your suggestion sounds like something I totally would have tried if I owned a Transient Designer. I need to get one of those!

A friend of mine had a good suggestion for avoiding this scenario in the future. He said at the beginning of the session when we are getting drum sounds I should play a pre-recorded snare drum track that is simply used as a Drumagog trigger. Then with the band present I should scroll through the different samples and have the band pick out snare sounds they like. When they hear something that they think fits the sound they have in their head, I then tell them to go into the live room and hit the snare they brought in: "Does it sound like the snare drum we just listened to? No? Well you had better get in the car and head over to Guitar Center and find one that does if you want your snare to sound like that!"

Brad

[Bang]

Brad I'd try the Sonalksis for low end punch, or the Waves SSL, they'll do better then the Pultec.

[Brad McGowan]

I unfortunately have neither of those. I do have the Tritone Digital stuff though...VT and HT.

Brad

[g_real]

A nice trick I use with my Publison is to pitch shift a snare down (back in the day people like BC would shift up to an octave down but I usually find down a 4th or 5th works nicely), EQ and compress, and mix in with the original snare. BEEF. You could use Waves Soundshifter for this I think, it can be pretty clean... or try whatever pitch shifter you've got.