Big Fat Snare Tutorial

5 Steps to a BIG FAT SNARE

Step 1 - Tune the Snare

To do this you must first know the key of the song then you listen to the snare and find its natural fundamental. This song is in Em and the natural snare resonate is in F. You can use your ears and a piano or synth to listen and fins the key from there you can transpose the sample to fit the note you want. using the first pitch of the key (AKA the tonic) is always a safe bet. In this case its E. You make have to use fine tuning as well to get it just right, but mostly use your ears!

Step 2 Stack the Octaves

Once you get the snare tuned you stack the octaves one above or one below or all three.. experiment here. You might have to do some math during the process of tuning 12 semi tones. I believe in you!

Step 3 Boost the Fundamental

Now that you have the stacks its time to boost the fundamental again use your ears or an EQ analyzer (usually in the plugin) or a frequency chart to find the frequency you want to boost. You can kind of go crazy here as desired with your boost because we are going to tame it a bit with the next step

Step 4 - Saturate the Snare

Using a distortion plugin or compressor drive the signal into the plugin until some distortion happens. It would be great if the plugin had a mix knob to blend in the original signal.

Step 5 Add Reverb with Large Pre Delay

Lastly add a reverb to your sound with a fairly large pre delay. The size of the pre delay will depend on your taste and the tempo of the song. I landed at 86 ms for this tune.

Now Go Make Music!!
Kirk