In Summary

Many engineers will have been faced with snare drum recordings that are far from ideal. Whether it’s a self-recorded session from the artist, or a time-poor studio recording, here Luke shows some fast go-to methods to revive snare drums’ sounds, using what’s already there.

Going Deeper

How To Record A Bad Sounding Snare Drum

Everyone’s idea of what a great snare sound is can be wildly different, as can be what the music needs, but sounds that fail to inspire are easy enough to agree on because we’ve all heard them.

Great playing is the bedrock of a good sound, so a badly played drum featuring wavering hits and poor balance cannot help. Badly tuned and maintained instruments will seriously compromise the sound. Marry those to inappropriate mic choices and poor positioning, and all the ingredients are there for a snare that sounds like someone hitting an oil can with a baseball bat.

Factors such as artist-recorded audio, or studio recordings that simply couldn’t afford the amount of time needed to sort problems at source are the reasons for bad sounds happening in the first place. Luckily when faced with these, all is not lost.

How To Fix A Bad Sounding Snare Drum

Later on we take a snare that’s suffering from the ‘oil can effect’. This is mid-heavy and lacking in dynamic punch and definition. Sample replacement can be a way out in this situation, but it can also generate a lot of work trying to get velocity layers to correspond with playing intricacies. Also, using canned sounds aren’t always appropriate to the artist; some recordings do better using the essence of the original sound and performance.

In The Video:

• We submix the top and bottom mics to process as one. This allows both mics to be processed together for more natural results that are quicker to dial in.

• We use Auto Align 2 to tighten up any time or phase anomalies. This is done across all drum mics with a particular eye on the snare as heard in the close mics and overheads together.

• We see if hi-hat bleed can be alleviated using a specific preset in Soothe 2. This avoids the time it would take to manually set up a dynamic EQ.

• Triggering noise as a stand-in for a bottom mic is an old trick, but this time we use the incredible (and free) SnareBuzz from Wavesfactory to do the same job. In our case we use it to fizz-up our existing snare submix.

• Moving onto more traditional ground, we then go into Native Channel Strip 2 to burn some extra weight and sizzle into what we already have. We also use the available dynamics from the comfort of the same window to further improve spill and squeeze the drum’s envelope slightly for a little more punch.

• Checking the snare in context, we then show how the snare image in the overheads can be steered if necessary to hit down the middle, or anywhere of the engineer’s choosing. In this case, the snare’s overhead image is actually quite well-behaved off the back of the mics.

Using just some of these methods can rescue many sounds, although others will need to have everything thrown at them! Some of the processing above only makes a small difference to the sound on its own, but strung together, the cumulative effect is striking. That’s great news for anyone who thought their snare sounded worse than the bin it was destined for…