Getting a tight snare sound

[53mph]

Happy New Year to everyone.I was wondering if anyone could offer me advice on getting a tight snare sound (like the snare on Beck's Sea Changes or Neil Young's Heart of Gold) using a virtual drum kit?I'm using BFD Accoustic Drum Module in a Sonar 4 Producers Edition enviroment.I've experimented with using short, tight compressions with minimal reverb or delay but I've got a feeling it's more to do with cutting frequencies...any ideas appreciated.

[zink]

Hey 53,The snare on Sea Change is REALLY compressed. Have you tried using 2 (or more?) compressors? Have you tried experimenting with the different mic positions in BFD? It sounds (and I might be wrong) like there's almost no overheads, and a lot of direct (on Sea Change). Some gate might help you get what your looking for too.Hope this helps.Z

[zink]

Also, sometimes people add some white noise to a snare sound. I don't think that's the sound your looking for, but you never know... 20ms or so of white noise at the beginning of a snare sound (mixed really low) can go a long way.Z

[staggerlee]

Actually it has more to do with boosting frequencies. Try boosting 200-400 Hz with as much db as you like. You can try boosting some mid-range freqs around 800-900, just try different ones and see what happens. Usually snares do not benefit from having high freqs boosted.

[zircon]

A combination of truncating the sample manually (with an envelope), layering multiple snare sounds, and compressing the sound should get you the desired effect. I work a lot with drum production and I'll often spend hours on a snare in a drumline alone

[mani]

Quote:A combination of truncating the sample manually (with an envelope)What do you mean by this Zircon??

[zircon]

Many samplers will allow you to change the amplitude envelope of a sound. The amplitude envelope is essentially what defines the volume of a sound over time. Percussive instruments have very fast attacks and only a little bit of time before the sound decays. You can reduce that time further to create a tighter sound.Compression can help too, of course. Simply set a high ratio, an attack of 5-15ms, and a low threshold (less than -15db) followed by a large gain. This will heavily emphasize the transient.