Snare drum recommendations needed!

[sambeau]

Hello,
I recorded a guy's drum tracks a week ago - when I had a horrible cold. At the time it sounded pretty good (the cold was messing with my ears!), but going back & listening to the snare now - it is the worst sounding snare I have ever heard! (the rest of the kit was fine - fortunately) I've tried EQ / effects etc. & it get's better, however, at best, it sounds like a garage band recording of a snare drum.

Normally, I record live drum kits & I have no experience with BFD or other such programs. Thus my question:

1) Could I use BFD or other program to replace the snare completely? In other words - have the recorded snare track trigger the BFD or other program. If yes - how would I do that?

2) I'm not giving up on the actual snare track - has anyone taken a crappy sounding snare & made it 'usable' (I know, subjective)? Any advice on the EQ/tweek/effect side would be appretiated also.

Thanks

[barstool719]

i had to do something similar back in may.

find a snare sample that fits, and slip it under the snare hits, and edit out the originals. this could be a bit tedious, but would pay off.

i understand that sound replacer from the MPTK can accomplish this easier, but ive never used it.

[erthquake]

What's the problem with the snare? If it's too much ring, you can try notching the offending frequency(ies), and/or try gating it so it doesn't ring so long. Or if it's "tone dead", try bussing the snare to an aux track and compress the heck out it using a fast attack. Use the original snare track for the transient (the "crack"), and the aux track for tone. Maybe play with the overheads if you used any.

Otherwise, download TL Drum Rehab from Digi. It has a fully functioning 2-week trial period. Saved my butt when all we had was a @#$! sounding snare to record one day.

[sambeau]

The snare sounds like a box or a tapping . . . it's pretty bad.

The snare has a lot of regular stuff (on the 2 & 4) - but, the drummer also has many grace notes (or taps in my case!). That's why I was looking for a way to trigger a good snare sample with the bad snare track.

[Michael P.]

You could try re-amping it. I've read (I think in a recent issue of Electronic Musician?) about people running the snare out a speaker and placing a snare drum (or a few drums) up against it. At high volume it will apparently "trigger" the drums up against the speaker, and you can record that sound.

That being said, I've never done it. Your mileage may vary. Caveat emptor, etc.

[guitardom]

hard to give advice on trying to save it w/o being able to hear it.

drumagog is great, (understand the drumrehab mentioned earlier is nice but never used it.) and it comes with some drum samples and libraries like steven slate are drum savers! also with drumagog platinum you can trigger bfd samples which gives you access to andy johns, joe baresi kits, so the best of both worlds. drumagog does a better job at hitting grace notes than soundreplacer would, though a bit of tweaking or automation or different techniques to get the grace notes properly.

the above scenario's are very easy to do, but the tough part is in order to pull it off you are gonna have to rely less on your overhead and room mics and more on close mics unless you can eq that snare out a bit of the mics. typically those mics have about more snare than anything in them, so can be tough, or just use the samples to enhance and not completely replace the original snare sound.

[fasttraxx]

You could download Drumagog and use it to replace the snare pretty fast. I also use Soud Replacer, but it is alot more time consuming then Drumagog.
I usually use Drumagog and the original snare on two different tracks. This way you can blend the sample with the orginal.
If you don't need/like the original snare, you could use Drumagog on the original snare track. Drumagog is a RTAS plugin that you would insert just like a compressor or any other plug. Then it has controls to hear more of the original snare or samples.
If you don't have or want to get any of these plugins or demo them, you could lock up a snare sample via midi pretty easy if they played to a click track. If they didn't play to a click, you could still do it using your original snare track and making another track for your snare sample, then just eye ball the original snare track using tab to transents comand in PT. Whatever way works for your need, you should be able to get a decent sounding snare track.

[sunburst79]

NickH does a lot of drum editing. He would have some good comments. I know He's mentioned Drumagog, the Steven Slate stuff and TL Drum Rehab.

[sambeau]

I just thought I would update the post. I ended up taking a great snare sample & using it in the recording. It was the easiest. I'm looking at drumagog also for future work. Thanks everyone for the replies.

Also - - I actually found out what happened. I got to listen to the drum again & it sounds great from a distance/room mic or from an overhead or from below - - - but - - - it sounds bad from the one mic that I used on the top of the drum (on the snare head). I unfortunately had deleted my room & overhead tracks based on the needs of the song (never again - I'll just inactivate!) & was left with just the one mic on the snare head. It must just be a characteristic of this snare drum - where the sound coming from the top head is crap - but, if you combine with the other mic's - it sounds pretty good actually.

Anyway - live & learn & I thought I'd pass it on.

[sw rec]

As a drummer, I must say the first factor is, tune the drum. This is critical.
And despite what your ears may tell you, if it's too loose it sounds like cardboard. There's a method to make sure the drum is in tune with itself, drop me an e-mail and we'll talk about it.
Secondly, it's amazing the sonic difference in a snare drum between hitting it lightly and smacking the tar out of it. So maybe a heavily-played sample in addition to your existing recording wouldn't be a bad idea.
Last album I cut has a killer snare sound, and I attribute a lot of it to fairly heavy compression with the BF3a. It really sticks out in the mix.