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Record a stick hitting a tree with your mobile phone, can get a good snare drum out that. I know I got a good clap sample when I sampled myself and my friend clapping in a abandoned mental asylum and recorded it via my phone.

continuumdnb wrote:slam a cutlery drawer shut.

No i'm not joking

i just had fun sampling everything in my kitchen thanks

Layering your snare is one of the first steps.

Try and use no more than 4 snares at once, I usually pick a nice chubby low end snare from a Roland, an acoustic snare and a snappy high end snare, depending on the sound I'm going for I will usually add a clap or ride with the snare to give it more metal or a rimshot to give it a woody sound.

From that point you want to play with the attacks and tails of the samples, depending on the feel. Then, level your snares by turning them all down to 0% and turn your low snare to the volume you want and slowly raise the rest until they're nice and equal then send them all to the same channel on the mixer. Tip: Pitching your snare low will give it a darker feeling and pitching high will give it more energy.

Adding a small amount of reverb and a very low amount of valve distortion will give it warmth. TIP: low amounts of delay can add warmth as well.

Compress your snare with a very low attack speed, around 20-40ms and keep your release about 100ms higher than that for a very snappy snare sound. I won't go into compression details, that's for a different thread.

Once you have your snare sounding warm and snappy it's all about EQ'ing. First chop your snare at 150 and under, those sub bass tones are messy and not needed. Using a parametric EQ boost your snare at 250hz to +2db to +5db with a very tight peak. Pull your lowest band down to -2db to -5db to lower the 150hz-250hz range so the peak you made at 250hz is touching 0db with an arc from low to high at 150hz to 250hz. If you find your snare isn't sounding loud enough but is still peaking over 0db, boost the EQ range between 2000hz-4000hz +2db to +5db.

These tips might not be for everyone but I thought I'd put in my 2 cents

A lot of my snares these days are 2 layers, one of which is an acoustic sample taken from my sample collection and I tend to layer it with a beatboxed snare I record specially for the tune. Gives some interesting results but not very brosteppy if that's what your after.

watch sub focus masterclass.

find a snare that hits around 180hz

eq boost 180hz.

Layer with vengeance snare.

watch rusko masterclass

add clap and white noise hit

eq boost 325hz

???.

profit.

and nice tips joe!

Vengeance essential house, layered with some real snares, compressed to high heavens.

jsills wrote:edit: deadly mentioned breaks so i must say that the old jungle warfare packs are also dope to chop up. i just wish mine werent trapped on my internal harddrive on my dead computer those packs are gold.

i'm so sorry... i just discovered them and my snares have noticeably improved.

gravity wrote:fuck sample packs

make/sample your own

As much as we would love to have lots of drums lying around to beat the shit out of its not always possible.
However getting some nice samples and layering them with other sounds can make them sound shit hot.
Whip cracks, basketballs, hitting forks together allsorts.

I've been using XLN's addictive drums a lot recently, and they are reaaaaly tasty. Lots of velocity layers so you can have more than just LOUDSNARELOUDSNARELOUDSNARE.
You can get some nice organic sounding drums.

Oooh oooh, and big elastic bands snapping against stuff.

Indiana Jones whiplash

EDN wrote:Oooh oooh, and big elastic bands snapping against stuff.

Great idea!

Me favourite snare is one I made by recording me hitting a tree with a fuck off great big log.

i forget where i got em, but i have some spackle knife samples i've been having fun with lately

I don't know what a spackle knife is but I want one.

a trip to your local hardware store with a lil bit of cash can turn up all sorts of interesting things you can record for percussion (and other stuff)

deadly habit wrote:
a trip to your local hardware store with a lil bit of cash can turn up all sorts of interesting things you can record for percussion (and other stuff)

what the hell do you use that for OTHER than recording samples?!

EDIT: oh... you spackle things...

EDN wrote:

gravity wrote:fuck sample packs

make/sample your own

As much as we would love to have lots of drums lying around to beat the shit out of its not always possible.
However getting some nice samples and layering them with other sounds can make them sound shit hot.
Whip cracks, basketballs, hitting forks together allsorts.

I've been using XLN's addictive drums a lot recently, and they are reaaaaly tasty. Lots of velocity layers so you can have more than just LOUDSNARELOUDSNARELOUDSNARE.
You can get some nice organic sounding drums.

i didnt necessarily mean record your drums i meant sample them from other music. theres about a zillion breakbeats floating about - an endless goldmine of kicks, snares, hats, rides, bongos, toms, and all other sorts of goodies. plus you have the added benefit of someone having actually played them so you can use more than one snare from the same break to get some natural variation in your hits.

then you can think about layering them up with eachother if you want.

these days im well into making drums out of synths anyway.

If you use something like battery for drums, a tip would be (if using a sample pack/s), to audition on the fly with your snare layers. it's quicker and easier than committing to sounds and having to mould with EQ compression and transient shapers to make them fit. It'll also save you on some precious CPU too.