Snare blast beats

T

ThomasT

Member
Sep 1, 2004
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Erfurt, Germany
www.krachwerk.de
Hi,

how do you deal with the sanre drum during fast blastbeats.
The drummer I recorded hit it very quite. I got problems with gating and/or eqing. Especially the hihat and even more the crash cymbals are too loud in the snare channel. When he plays normal snare it is ok.

How do you mike them?
Use the bottom mike?
Trigger them, maybe with samples of itself?

Greetings Thomas
 
Generally I mic top and bottom and use a trigger this way I have more options. For your issue (which I've experienced before) you can try a number of different things. If you are wanting stick with your natural snare drum sound then ride the levels accordingly in your automix. Another option of sticking with your naturnal snare sound is to find a solid hit and copy and paste it over your week hits. If you are using drum replacement (ala Drumagog or Apptrigga) then that will probably take care of the problem for you. I always have a very high success rate with Drumagog. Hope that helps!

and hey I just noticed your user name... I too am a Thomas T... LOL, good stuff!
 
I augment the natural snare with samples using drumagog. I use the dynamic tracking at like 50% so that the blasts won't be that soft on the sample track. It helps to balence out the dynamics, makes the blasts sample heavy and the hard hits natural heavy.

If I'm gating I automate the gate on the blasts.
 
+1 to drumagog. I have only recorded one drummer who played his blast beat snare hits at the same velocity/volume as the rest of his playing. For everyone else I have recorded that has an issue with this, I blend in some samples.

I like to make samples to use from the same kit they are using if possible. That way it sounds like their kit and is different than the stock samples you normally hear.
 
Yeah, I like to throw apTrigga on a track with the dynamics turned off completely and blend a sample in at around 15-20% so I have a snare hit in the background that is always at the same volume and it sort of works like a compressor on the snare to beef up the quiet hits and doesn't affect the loud hits very much.
 
If the drummer is good the only way to justify drumagogging your snare is if it sounds crap or has to much bleed imo.
I HATE drumagog on blastbeats..

Compression and good eq can get you the same results and it'll sound much more natural :)
 
Can't really add to this ... only agree with most of what is said ...

I usually run a 2nd snare track in combo with the natural snare. Drumagog the main snare with another "clean" snare and ride your sensitivity through the track, when you get to the weak spots, adjust to suit. After just nudge your new track in time to the original and EQ, Comp, Verb to taste and blend in under natural snare.

Cheers!
www.myspace.com/shadowdancemusic
 
Well our drummer does actually play really fast. Some songs reach 250bpm with 16th and i had a major problem even using drumagog. I recorded the snare from top and bottom with 57s but during blastbeats the snare was as loud as bass drums and hats, so drumagog would either ignore the snare or make too much snares out of bass drums etc. when adjusting the threshold. Sadly i didn't use the trigger on the snare because i currently only can record 10 channel simultaneously and i wanted some natural sound of the snare with samples blended in to a certain amount. Otherway around if i would mic the snare real close, so the volume of the snare becomes higher compared to other drums i wouldn't get a good sound. The funny thing is, that the drummer isn't actually hitting the snare weakly during blast beats, you hear the snare very well in overheads and stuff, but i guess i'll just drop the bottom snare mic and record the trigger.:zombie:
 
Well, snare hits in blast beats are a bit more quiet, hard to find a way around it. Parallel comp/distortion, crushing the room mics, and automation(!) will surely help


Funny that this thread is so old, and 6 years ago everybody turned their drums into a machinegun-like abomination of a drum sound :)
 
xFkx: Well automation wouldn't help with this recording, because if i make the blast beat parts louder, the other instruments will get louder as well =( But i now suddenly have an idea: maybe there are some felts that, you know, are louder, i.e. don't require so much kinetic energy to sound louder, without sounding thin and crappy? any expirience? Sometimes i wish the snare would be in an isolated booth :D
 
Pretty sure no one on here would recommend that pile-of-shit Drumagog anymore haha. Sorry to inject more life into this thread, but since it's already back from the dead it might as well help someone.

Before beginning, I like to manually replace any missing or very low level hits so that it's not so jumpy and Trigger can function better, then automating the natural snare and adding two triggered tracks: one with 50% dynamics, and one at 0% dynamics for consistency, at least I've found this works very well for me. Keep the 0-dynamics track pretty low in relation to the others, it's just for a base level. The 50% beefs up the natural without sounding too fake.

All in all it's weird, but it works for me. No rules when it comes to this stuff!
 
Didn't read every comments but what's good sometimes is to do like I do for ghost notes when needed: duplicate the snare top track and cut to let only the blast parts. You can process it in a different way and/or replace/enhance it with sample (preferably a sample from this particular snare) You can use this track only or add it to the original track.

Edit - What? May 2008??? I think this guy has solved his problem ahah! Damn 2008...
 
Fluffbot said:
Pretty sure no one on here would recommend that pile-of-shit Drumagog anymore haha. Sorry to inject more life into this thread, but since it's already back from the dead it might as well help someone.

Before beginning, I like to manually replace any missing or very low level hits so that it's not so jumpy and Trigger can function better, then automating the natural snare and adding two triggered tracks: one with 50% dynamics, and one at 0% dynamics for consistency, at least I've found this works very well for me. Keep the 0-dynamics track pretty low in relation to the others, it's just for a base level. The 50% beefs up the natural without sounding too fake.

All in all it's weird, but it works for me. No rules when it comes to this stuff!
Click to expand...

Ah, an interesting approach. What's about drumagog? Why is it that bad? I already heard this before, when i was in a studio, the producer told that he stopped using drumagog and switched to Trigger. Is there such a great difference?
 
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