The bottom of the snare

[Recycled_Brains]

BOREDOM ALERT.

Listen, I always mic it. It's always an after-thought. 20 years of "oh yea, I guess I should put a mic there. "

I get that you want the snare wire, but how do I record the bottom of a snare drum the correct way? I've never once thought it sounded good and it's THE most heavily eq'd thing in every mix I do, and it's also the most frequently muted track. I'll go so far as to mute the track, but then use distortion or something like that to either bring the wires out of the top mic more or create an effect that mimics that sound (which, in fairness can sound pretty cool).

Anyways. pretend it's 2001 and I'm a 19 year old idiot.

[T-rex]

Maybe someone can help us both!

I always mic it, usually with a 57 or lately the little clip on Sen 609? or whatever. I try to get the same distance and angle as the 57 on top. Then I hate it, er I mean gate it. (I finally accepted Fabfilter as my personal digital savior), so I use the Fab gate and adjust it so I get the length that I want. Then EQ out the low end and a little harshness depending.

I send it to the same drum bus and parallel comp as the top mics, but just a little bit seems to do the trick. I don’t do anything crazy unlesss it’s for an effect.

Personally I’ve been using a lot of 8” deep snares so when it’s me I really need that bottom snare mic. I keep saying I’m gonna add a SDC to the 57 to see how much snap that brings but I never seem to do it.

[trodden]

Maybe someone can help us both!

I always mic it, usually with a 57 or lately the little clip on Sen 609? or whatever. I try to get the same distance and angle as the 57 on top. Then I hate it, er I mean gate it. (I finally accepted Fabfilter as my personal digital savior), so I use the Fab gate and adjust it so I get the length that I want. Then EQ out the low end and a little harshness depending.

I send it to the same drum bus and parallel comp as the top mics, but just a little bit seems to do the trick. I don’t do anything crazy unlesss it’s for an effect.

Pretty much the same here. For live sound (which often gets multitracked as well) 57 or clip on 609. I'll use very little in the FOH mix, as it's mostly for recording or the broadcast mix.

Studio wise, Stedman N90 (dynamic mic that looks like it should be a LDC) or a ATM-25 if I'm at my place. Not sure which I prefer. The ATM-25 being hyper-cardioid still doesn't do much on keeping the kick out. Other studios, if I forget the Stedman or ATM-25, it's a 57 or 421. high pass up to 200 or higher. Low pass around 16k. Gated, which is always something i'm fucking with until I just say "good enough". As mentioned above, it goes through all the same drum busses as the top snare mic (main and parallel). It never sounds good on its own, but once I take it away from the snare sound, I miss it.

[digitaldrummer]

I also always mic it and infrequently use it. I had an Audix D3 on it for awhile, and tried a few other things. Just a 57 on it right now (I mean I have a 441 but why waste it here?). At an angle similar to the top mic, but pointing at the wires, but sometimes also toward the bass drum head a little (depends if I want that in there or not - sometimes it's cooler than the snare sound). Anyway, most of the time I eq most all of the low end out and just get a shzz or fzzz or sometimes with compression more shhhzzz or splat depending on what I'm looking for. sometimes I'll use it in the mix (if the snare needs some of that ) but more than likely I'll only send it to the reverb send to get more splat or fzzzz there. But never foshizzle. oh, and maybe once when the top mic took a foshizzle (and I had not realized it), I used the bottom mic track to trigger a snare sample (to save the track)

[Nick Sevilla]

Styles of music I mic the bottom snare on:

Jazz. Ambient. Slow Blues. Anything where the sizzle of the snare wires is actually going to be a part of the drum sound.

[T-rex]

“but once I take it away from the snare sound, I miss it.”

Yeah this is the truth. There’s a lot of stuff that sounds like crap solo’d, but mute it from the mix and you miss it, you immediately know it’s gone.

On a related note, in my search for a good tape
Stop effect I can across wave factory plugins and they have a free Snare Buzz plugin. It’s legit snare buzz that you can tweak and mix in with any track. I can’t decide whether it’s insane or genius.
https://www.wavesfactory.com/free-vst-plugins/

[Colorblind]

I use it more often to help me get a bigger sounding snare than for the sound of the wires. The added bottom mic with the phase flipped usually just sounds more full to me than the top mic alone. The hi hat mic is most frequently muted for me.

[digitaldrummer]

wave factory plugins and they have a free Snare Buzz plugin. It’s legit snare buzz that you can tweak and mix in with any track. I can’t decide whether it’s insane or genius.
https://www.wavesfactory.com/free-vst-plugins/

I would put this on the same level with a plugin that added more string squeak to your guitar tracks. But hey, if that's your thing.

And if you like a "relic'd" guitar, I have some relic'd drum sticks and heads for sale too.

[drumsound]

I mic the snare bottom in a similar way to how I mic a tom. It's not pointed at, or right under the snares themselves, but pointed at the head a little ways in from the rim. Blend varies. Not unlike T-rex, it's kind of a 'miss it when it's muted' thing than an "OH WOW" sound.

“but once I take it away from the snare sound, I miss it.”

Yeah this is the truth. There’s a lot of stuff that sounds like crap solo’d, but mute it from the mix and you miss it, you immediately know it’s gone.

On a related note, in my search for a good tape
Stop effect I can across wave factory plugins and they have a free Snare Buzz plugin. It’s legit snare buzz that you can tweak and mix in with any track. I can’t decide whether it’s insane or genius.
https://www.wavesfactory.com/free-vst-plugins/

Wavesfactory has a few useful freebies. I have tried the snare buzz, and might have used it on one mix of an EP MoreSpaceEcho just mastered. The free transient shaper is the first one I've tried that actually did what I wanted one of those to do. They have a 'Bass drum out' plugin as well.

[Recycled_Brains]

wave factory plugins and they have a free Snare Buzz plugin. It’s legit snare buzz that you can tweak and mix in with any track. I can’t decide whether it’s insane or genius.
https://www.wavesfactory.com/free-vst-plugins/

I would put this on the same level with a plugin that added more string squeak to your guitar tracks. But hey, if that's your thing.

And if you like a "relic'd" guitar, I have some relic'd drum sticks and heads for sale too.

I feel like it might be useful in very small amounts on tracks with programmed drums. Kinda like how tape hiss sort of binds things together.

[andychamp]

(...) they have a free Snare Buzz plugin. It’s legit snare buzz that you can tweak and mix in with any track.

The Reaper gate lets you mix in some noise. (beats me why they didn't also include a tuneable sine generator )

[T-rex]

The Reaper gate lets you mix in some noise. (beats me why they didn't also include a tuneable sine generator )

That’s interesting. I tried reaper back in the day but I wasn’t computer literate enough to really get the most out of it at the time. I should revisit it.

[trodden]

The Reaper gate lets you mix in some noise. (beats me why they didn't also include a tuneable sine generator )

That’s interesting. I tried reaper back in the day but I wasn’t computer literate enough to really get the most out of it at the time. I should revisit it.

Same. I recently downloaded it for my ancient macbook for remote recording since PT doesn't want to run on it. Just for recording a few mics though, and then dumping the audio into protools. I don't have the know how with software to learn another DAW, so Avid will continue to make money off of me.

[losthighway]

It's usually about 5% of the mixed snare sound for me. The top head+ overheads is the foundation, the bottom mic is seasoning. It always sounds weird by itself.

[roscoenyc]

I always mic the bottom. If I get tracks from somebody with no mic on the bottom I re-amp the snare track with a snare drum sitting on top of a Fender Pro Jr and mic the snares there. I almost always have an 1176 plug on the bottom snare fast attack/slowest release.