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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Analyzing Snare Drum Samples

By John Gellei

Snares are just about an essential part of most popular songs; everything you hear on the radio and nearly all songs on all CDs in the rhythm and blues and hip hop, rap and dance genres. Snare use is determined based on the type of music and the groove of the song.

Snare drum samples are usually placed on beats 2 and 4 in urban groove songs such as most hip hop. The reason for this is that it's usually the kicks that occupy the other, stronger points of the bar, but the snare still plays an important part and sets the tone for the rest of the song much of the time.

The amount of different snare types is staggering, but two of the types seem to be head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to popularity and identification. I'm talking about the live and real snares played by people in a recording setting, which are then sampled for use as drum samples in other applications. The second type is the raspy type of snares generated by electronic synthesizers and drum machines. They're not always so unrealistic, though; some of the machines today can make great-sounding emulations!

When speaking effects, there are a few different ways to use them to alter snare drum samples. In fact, sometimes you would not want to alter snare drums but rather alter the rest of the samples to better match your snares - if the tone of it is so good, why not make the rest match, right? The reverb effect is use a lot in snares; it adds space and sounds just magical on many snares. You can definitely get some surreal effects, like applying a reverb IR file for, say, the Opera House in Sydney and have your snare sounding like it was played there.

If you listen to a lot of dance music (or even just a bit), you're probably instantly reminiscent of the two most widely used techniques for placing snare drum samples strategically. The first method sees the snare occupying the first and fourth beats in just about every bar, and this relieves the ear from hearing just the kick constantly, as it usually hits on every single beat. The second method involves applying different groove templates to the kick and snare to have a back-and-forth going on musically.

One of the recommendations often offered by professional producers who have made it is to experiment with the snare drum samples. The rules are not set in stone. The interplay between kick and snare can be as nice and friendly as you want, or as bad and as unpredictable as you can imagine. - 18762

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