A little snare reverb primer
A little snare reverb primer
This one comes from a conversation one of my production mentees asked me this week:
When you refer to having a snare reverb “burst out at the sides,” is that something that I can control in Valhalla or in Logic’s Chromaverb, or is it specific to a reverb that I don’t have?
My response:
When I say “burst out at the sides,” I'm referring more to the idea that there is a range of widths that the elements in a snare sound can have.
There's the initial impact, which in most cases is mono-ish and up the center. But then the ambience around the snare can take different forms!
If it's a real drum kit recorded in a room (including samples of same), then there can be overheads (stereo, relatively narrow stereo perspective on the snare ambience) or room mics (can range from mono to wider stereo, almost like a reverb).
If it's a sample, it might have stereo or mono ambience baked in.
And if there's maybe not enough ambience on the snare for the situation at hand, the question becomes:
What is the sense of space that you feel is missing?
And how do we scratch that itch?
I find it helpful to visualize what I'm going for before I do it. It can be very different from song to song!
For example, on our recent version of "Forever Young," the snare is in a massive hall reverb that's fully wide — <100 100> in Pro Tools. Just massive and enveloping — the snare is almost a lead instrument, an anchor in that huge, slow ballad arrangement.
But on our version of "West End Girls," it's just a little burst! Just to help the snare go “splat” and define a little space for itself in the arrangement.
So when I talk about having the snare "burst out at the sides," I'm talking about a sense of ambience that I feel is missing, and an idea of a sense of motion and interplay that I would hope to create between said ambience and the rest of the mix.
To make a “burst out at the sides” snare reverb, I would try the following:
Make a short reverb, like 0.2-0.4 seconds. It might be a hall or a room or a plate; they all have different sounds and attacks and buildups, and which one works best is entirely situational.
Put a stereo utility plugin after the reverb on the snare reverb return (here’s a free one if you need one), and use it to narrow the stereo width of the reverb to 50% or so as a starting point.
Then play the song, and play with the EQ and volume and width of the snare reverb until you find a combination that gives the snare ambience some interesting motion and interplay — wide enough to be interesting, but not so wide that it starts to feel detached from the rest of the kit or the mix.
The snare drum is arguably the second most important instrument in a rock/pop production following the vocal, so it’s really important to have it be a standout sound!
Pow — jamie