Using a delay plugin to create a snare pocket

I’ve talked before about playing with timing to create pockets and grooves in programmed rhythmic parts; here’s a fun little trick that you can do on the audio side:

Use a delay plugin to move the snare a little bit back in time!

I like to use modeled digital delay plugins for this. PSP Lexicon 42 and UAD Korg SDD-3000 are favorites; Valhalla Delay and Echoboy would be good too. The PSP and UAD ones I mentioned just seem to crunch up a little bit more in a way that I often like.

I put the delay on the “snare all” bus — this is a bus that I often have for everything snare-related; all audio tracks that are contributing to the sound, all fx returns, etc. I put the Mix to 100% wet, and I set the delay time to 2-4 milliseconds, feedback to 0, and all tone controls off / at default.

And all this does is it delays the snare ever so slightly! That’s it. I used this trick a couple of days ago to move the snare off the kick — when they were hitting at exactly the same time they were making the master bus go splat a little bit. And with the snare a bit delayed, the song got groovier and hit harder. Win/win.

Also, the snare audio runs through the circuitry of the plugin when you do this, which can change the sound in some cool and subtle ways — more girth, or more edge, or more grit, or a bit thicker, depending on how you’re hitting it. And you can experiment with the tone-shaping knobs too!

I also like to do this on toms, kick, percussion — you name it. If I don’t want the timing to change, I’ll put the delay time to 0 ms so I just get the tone of the box; fx units from the 80s, which is what these are all modeled on, were slightly lo-fi in the best way. Running your audio through them can make your sounds more specific.

Snare (snare snare snare) — jamie