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Post by swurveman on Apr 18, 2019 15:22:56 GMT -6
Setting aside sample/midi world (or not) transient designer can be great for reducing/increasing punch. Thanks notneeson. I have the SPL transient designer. So, I'll check it out too. If you look at all the approaches in this thread, it's amazing how many ways there are to deal with the issue.
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Post by swurveman on Apr 18, 2019 15:28:01 GMT -6
Thanks for your reply. jazznoise. Are you sure about the compression? Here's the micing and processing of the Avatar kit I used from a Toontrack Moderator: Edit: I see the Amb Close mics-which I used - use the Neve 33609 Compressor SnareTop: Shure SM56 ->Neve EQ-> Pulteq EQP SnareBottom-> AKG 451 OH: AKG 460 ->Neve EQ AMB Close: Neumann KM54-> Neve EQ ->Neve 33609 Compressor I didn't use any of the other room mics, which are compressed. There is, however a "snare compression" channel, which the moderator doesn't mention and I used. I could take that out. However, your point is taken, perhaps the tracking EQ overcooked the snare. If I tried using a fast attack compressor, or a transient designer, would you do it on the Drum Bus, or on the top/bot snare + overheads + close room mics? They all have a different snare sound. I typically never compress a bottom snare mic for example, but I'm looking for what people do. So, any additional feedback is greatly appreciated. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's no compression on any Superior Drummer samples. I know TT compresses samples in EZ Drummer, but they keep SD pretty raw. Knowing that you're using Avatar makes a difference in this case, though. I find the Avatar drums to be a bit tricky to get what I want out of them. Is it the drum hardware choice? Is it the room (Avatar/Power Station)? Is it the player (Nir Z)? Is it the engineers (Mattias Eklund + someone else, maybe?)? Probably a combination of all four. Listen to the drums on John Mayer's Room for Squares album, esp. "No Such Thing," "Why Georgia," and "Neon". You'll hear some very familiar sounding drums, and that album was played by Nir Z. It works great in the context of that album, and Nir Z is a monster drummer, but tonally speaking, it's rarely a sound I'm personally going for. I remember back when Avatar was the only drum pack I had from TT (10 yrs ago), and it was really difficult to get the snare where I wanted it. If I remember correctly, my biggest success came with using Massey Tape Head liberally on the snare bus (which would've consisted of snare top and bottom). You can also use the envelope tools in SD to clip off the front end of a drum just a bit, and it still sounds natural in the context of the kit. Watch out for the Avatar snares in the OHs: they're hella punchy. As ragan said, you can dial the snare back in the OHs in SD. Once I started exploring other expansion kits, I found SD much easier to do what I wanted. One of the things I like about the TT approach is that it's meant to capture a particular kit (or set of kits) at a particular moment in time, in a particular studio, played by a particular drummer. All of those things have character to them. It makes for a consistent sound within each expansion pack, but it also somewhat limits the ability to import a drum from a different pack and have it match. Ultimately, if you don't like the snare sound in Avatar, you just don't like the snare sound in Avatar. Thanks Mark. I actually love the "Room For Squares" drum sound. Perhaps that's why I always go back to Avatar. Also, the challenge to deal with not a lot of too heavily processed samples. I'm a sucker for punishment trying to do it the old school way. I too am a TT guy. I don't dislike the snare, just want to tame the punch.
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Post by swurveman on Apr 18, 2019 15:33:17 GMT -6
I'm seeking advice on how you guys tame a too punchy snare. Below is a demo I'm writing and recording as I go along. So, everything is raw and will be tweaked and re-recorded. I'm just looking at structural composition in this phase. However, the (Superior Drummer) snare is too punchy imo. And of course the snare is everywhere: Top mic, Bottom mic, Compressed snare mic, OH mics, Close room mics. I stem out the Superior Drummer channels to Cubase, because I like to treat it like a real drum kit that's already been recorded. I parallel compressed the close mic Drum Bus to make the drums come forward. I like the spaciousness of the snare sound as it is. I just think it's too punchy. My question is: To tame the punchy-ness of the snare, do you do it at the Drum Bus, or do you do on in the individual channels? I've always struggled with this, and have never been satisfied trying to EQ snares in multiple mics, or the Drum Bus, but never asked. So, if anybody wants to discuss this, I'm interested. I'm open to any suggestions and am curious of what people do. Transient designers? Where? EQ? Where? So many mics and busses. A fun challenge. https%3A//soundcloud.com/songflowerrecording/so-far-away-april-17Add some reverb to the snare to push it back in the mix a little. Thanks Jesse.
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Post by joseph on Apr 18, 2019 16:45:06 GMT -6
You could try reamping it through a preamp DI.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 18, 2019 17:18:39 GMT -6
I never could fix the smacky SD2 snare. It bugged me endlessly. The original sample was just whacked too hard. I think when drummers record these things they're out of context and it gets easy to hit too hard . Sometimes I changed the tuning of the snare a little and it helped a bit.
I've heard SD 3 is much better in that regard, but I never upgraded. When and if it's under $100, I'll think on it.
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Post by ragan on Apr 18, 2019 17:29:04 GMT -6
I never could fix the smacky SD2 snare. It bugged me endlessly. The original sample was just whacked too hard. I think when drummers record these things they're out of context and it gets easy to hit too hard . Sometimes I changed the tuning of the snare a little and it helped a bit. I've heard SD 3 is much better in that regard, but I never upgraded. When and if it's under $100, I'll think on it. Again, how hard it’s hit is totally up to you. They record a crapload of samples at all velocities. If you tell the snare to top out its velocity at 120, it will be using the softer hits, it won’t use the hard hits.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 18, 2019 18:29:24 GMT -6
Thanks Ragan. I understand it should work that way, but I went as far as adjusting every single velocity on every single snare beat on many tracks, and it still wouldn't just sit in there. There were some other softer hit patterns I had, but the ones I liked just wouldn't be tamed. Here's an example, I tried everything. I would loved to have just used a real drummer, but I could only make that happen on a few other tracks.
https%3A//soundcloud.com/martin-john-butler/09-somethings-coming-mastered-album-track
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Post by ragan on Apr 18, 2019 20:23:56 GMT -6
Thanks Ragan. I understand it should work that way, but I went as far as adjusting every single velocity on every single snare beat on many tracks, and it still wouldn't just sit in there. There were some other softer hit patterns I had, but the ones I liked just wouldn't be tamed. Here's an example, I tried everything. I would loved to have just used a real drummer, but I could only make that happen on a few other tracks. https%3A//soundcloud.com/martin-john-butler/09-somethings-coming-mastered-album-trackOh ok, yeah. If you'd already messed with velocity then they either didn't sample enough or you just don't really like the way the drummer played it. Fair enough.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 18, 2019 20:44:03 GMT -6
I would really love it if when they were sampling, they had snare hits that were close, not a mile's worth of difference. Hopefully it didn't distract from the song too much.
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Post by the other mark williams on Apr 18, 2019 21:21:50 GMT -6
Again, it all depends on which drum pack you're using, Martin John Butler. It's not endemic to all TT drums.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 19, 2019 9:50:34 GMT -6
Yes of course Mark. But I do in fact find it on many drum packs, especially ones I like the drum sound on, which is frustrating
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Post by ragan on Apr 19, 2019 9:53:11 GMT -6
Yes of course Mark. But I do in fact find it on many drum packs, especially ones I like the drum sound on, which is frustrating That was always my issue with every Slate drum sample. Way, way over cooked. SD3 just sounds like drums. From there you can take it anywhere you’d take any other recorded drums.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 19, 2019 9:57:36 GMT -6
I probably need to spend some more time learning to tweak them. I used them on my album and some very experienced friends asked me who the drummer was, so you're not wrong Ragan!
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Post by kilroyrock on Apr 19, 2019 12:06:14 GMT -6
I probably need to spend some more time learning to tweak them. I used them on my album and some very experienced friends asked me who the drummer was, so you're not wrong Ragan! Dude, that snare is great for that track, it has the nice "back of the room" smack, the only thing I'd ever do is experiment with the tuning of the sample, which is great to get that big deep snare, but the snare fits the vibe of the song great.
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Post by the1984studios on Apr 19, 2019 21:21:54 GMT -6
Some good suggestions here for sure guys! But I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mention the simplest solution...at least, IMHO! =D
A very simple, elegant solution to the "too-punchy" snare "problem" is to simply use a clipper plug-in. Kazrog K-Clip comes to mind but is probably overkill. If you're on Windows, my favorite hands down for simplicities sake is GVST's GClip. Works AMAZINGLY well. If you're on Mac, the JST Clipper plug-in is essentially GClip, but with a prettier GUI.
Pull down the ceiling or threshold until the Attack of the SNR is killed to your liking. Adjust Wet/Dry if needed.
DONE.
::high-five::
P.S. - Another VERY easy way to handle this that has already been mentioned is using a transient designer plug.. which can work well, but I've always found a clipper to be the best sounding solution. PLUS, it can be used in more "normal-case" scenarios where you WANT a punchy af SNR, but don't want it killing the crest-factor of your mix, which will cause MAJOR problems down-stream when you're trying to achieve a desired RMS or LUFS level in mastering.
Hope it helps, man!
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Post by the1984studios on Apr 19, 2019 21:26:18 GMT -6
I probably need to spend some more time learning to tweak them. I used them on my album and some very experienced friends asked me who the drummer was, so you're not wrong Ragan! Dude, that snare is great for that track, it has the nice "back of the room" smack, the only thing I'd ever do is experiment with the tuning of the sample, which is great to get that big deep snare, but the snare fits the vibe of the song great. I agree 100% with this! And as counter-intuitive as it may sound, coming from a background in extreme genre's of music where programmed drums are the NORM, and REAL DRUMS are the EXCEPTION, using Trigger with a couple one-shot samples that are the complete OPPOSITE of your Superior/EZDrummer SNR can work WONDERS. I have a whole pack of ONE SHOT SNARES that I used to sell years ago. If anyone is interested, I'll post them up here! TCI and WAV files!
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Post by jeromemason on Apr 24, 2019 21:02:03 GMT -6
Waves L1 or L2...... We literally call those two plugins snare killers. 33609's and DBX160's.... it's nice to have them for parallel because they really make the snare cut and can give a track some groove. Some guys out there will cut drums with them and you either toss the snare and sample it, or throw an L1 on it and dumb it back. Live drums anyway, that's what I've always done.
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Post by matt@IAA on Apr 25, 2019 8:02:34 GMT -6
I never thought to use L1 on a snare but that’s a great idea.
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Post by the1984studios on Apr 26, 2019 17:03:05 GMT -6
Similar to the classic trick of using L2 on Overhead tracks with TOO MUCH SNR in them (when heavily using samples on the direct mics, for more extreme genres, hard rock, etc). Works a TREAT. Kills the SNR but basically leaves the brass untouched.
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Post by svart on Apr 26, 2019 18:16:52 GMT -6
The problem I've always found with limiters is that even though they're supposed to be working on the transient, you still always get too much of the bleed coming up when using them like this. That's why I like squishing the transient with the methods I suggested earlier, because it doesn't affect the body of the snare and you can adjust just the transient alone.
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Post by the1984studios on Apr 26, 2019 21:50:51 GMT -6
The problem I've always found with limiters is that even though they're supposed to be working on the transient, you still always get too much of the bleed coming up when using them like this. That's why I like squishing the transient with the methods I suggested earlier, because it doesn't affect the body of the snare and you can adjust just the transient alone. Agreed! Your methods are super cool, I've tried similar things in the past, but never thought of the gate + reverse polarity on a mult before. Now THAT is a cool idea! I still prefer just slapping on GClip and calling it a day... plus the benefit of no phase weirdness, etc... just taming the transient to increase the crest factor of a mix to completely killing the transient for effect. Very effective. ;-) SO MANY WAYS TO SKIN A CAT!
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