Sort of a quick, but potentially complicated question - could have a lot of answers and approaches.
I've been working on a track off and on for the last two months or so called invasion, where I wanted to make an intermitent gritty snare. In order to do so I overlaid my regular snare from the rest of the song with a short splash that I distorted the heck out of. I liked the result that I got sound wize, but as someone on this board put it, it took the snap out of my snare. I agree.
Any ideas on how I can remedy the problem, or maybe a different approach to doing this in the first place.
Also, if this has been answered elsewhere let me know, I did a search but I didn't really find what I was looking for.
You don't really need to hear the track to answer the question but if you think it will help: www.myspace.com/DJ0045 use the flash player in the bio if you need to skip around, it has a mp3 320 of the song, as opposed to the crappy myspace sound quality.
long release (150ms+)
an attack long enough to let a bit through, but not much (ie about 5-40ms)
big old ratio setting, 8:1 kinda thing
and threshold so that you're compressing to a maximum of around -6db
but i'm sure you knew that, so beyond getting some nice samples in the first place n careful post+pre compression eqing theres not much else to it.
what program you using?
if you want, try sampling a snare out of some metal tune, i find theyr always 'snappy' enough to punch through that wall of guitars
[edit] ok i just listened to it lol, yeah i can see what you're getting at - if i were you i'd definately start by layering some snap, and compressing it slightly differently to the snare sound you already have.
I wouldnt try eqing any highs into that snare, because it might be a bit gash.
Last edited by sonic criminal on 10-02-2007 at 08:59 PM
You will need a place to host the file though. They offer one, but I don't know how good it is, mine is on a private server we use to host other websites, hence why it is so fast.
If your snare had a snap before layering the splash, but layering the splash made it snap less, try adding an envelope with a bit of an attack to the splash so it lets the snap of the original snare come through before the splash comes in. Just a few ms or so.
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quote:Originally posted by jaydizzle God, Control Rate, the Tooth Fairy, etc...
quote:Originally posted by Feeding Cone Supposably, mixing an EQ's wet signal with its dry signal causes phase issues, but it's never bothered me. It's kind of like the Swamps of Sadness in the Never-ending Story where if you don't believe in it, it won't hurt you.
here's what I'll try, and thanks to all of you that answered so quickly.
1. splash sound: move the starting point to a later peak (not zero) in the sample, so that it gets to the distortion sooner.
2. add ~20ms attack to the splash so that snare's pop peaks before it realy starts - I'll adjust compression ratios to suit, presets never work with compression IMO
3. cut out some of the tail of the splash so that it doesn't fizzle for so long
4. add stronger compression to the original snare to help with the above.
5. maybe add a short snappy sound on top (eq to make it inaudible - just for punch)
Any other thoughts.
Also, say I didn't want to use the splash in the first place, any suggestions on a good way to make to make a clean snare dirty (filthy is even better) - I find that I can never match a dirty sampled snare for its dirtyness, but I can also never seem to find a dirty snare that I wouldn't want to make a little differently. I always prefer to at least try to make samples from scratch.
Obviously I know that distortion or reverb&distortion might work, but does anyone have any specific ideas.
quote:Originally posted by Sanguis Mortuum If your snare had a snap before layering the splash, but layering the splash made it snap less, try adding an envelope with a bit of an attack to the splash so it lets the snap of the original snare come through before the splash comes in. Just a few ms or so.
Take a snare and put a compressor on it, tweaked to unnatural proportions to bring out the attack transient far more than you usually would, and then distort it back down, only to bring it back out again with another compressor, and so forth.
Then mix this with the natural dry snare to taste if you want, as this can sound unnatural by the time you bring out the character you want.
Another thing that can drastically effect the snap is EQ-ing the body and snap of the snare separately, via sending the snare to one channel where it is saturated or heavily limited, and also send the snare to another channel where the attack transient is brought out via compressor. Then you can EQ the body and transient of the snare separately, if you want the "snap" to have more higher presence, or for the body to have less lower presence without weakening the transient, etc. Dynamic eq can do this as well without the parallel processing but I like control you get through 2 parallel dynamically different channels.
quote:Originally posted by shadowline There is the sun that shines everyday, we will live for so long and humans will invent new shit, we can drive sick cars on the highway the we can kiss boys and listen to drumnbass and watch lesbians.
Then we go to Parties on weekends, because we work all the week, it's kinda Gayish, isn't?
Last edited by Feeding Cone on 10-03-2007 at 05:11 AM
quote:Originally posted by Feeding Cone Parallel processing works wonders.
Take a snare and put a compressor on it, tweaked to unnatural proportions to bring out the attack transient far more than you usually would, and then distort it back down, only to bring it back out again with another compressor, and so forth.
quick question... are you talking about multiple stages of compression followed by distortion (then sampling maybe)?
This I have not tried... does it work?
More complicated question: I have tried something similar (though opposite) - in house music with kicks, in order to elongate the power of the sound but maintain its punch - and it has not worked because multiple chains of compression tend (for me) to accentuate parts of the sound in a bad way, is there some way (or methoD) to avoid the audio character that multiple compressions of the same sound cause? E.g. creating a damn near poping sound out of a kick, or something of that sort.
Come to think of it, are you saying that it doesn't matter because you end up mixing it back in with the original - this I have also never tried with a snare but have obviously done with other things.
Dogs On Acid > The Grid > Making a gritty snare snap?
10-02-2007 08:29 PM
anything but the white noise lol