Bottom snare miking or reamping?

burn · Post by **burn** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 7:37 am

Should I care miking the bottom snare if I plan to reamp the snare later? Will I get the same type of sound, but better and with more control?

meblumen · Post by **meblumen** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:46 pm

The answer is, it depends. There are certainly differences between the two but one approach is not always better than the other. Why not on your next session, mic up the drums including a mic underneath the snare and record them to two seperate tracks. Then go back and reamp the snare using just the top mic and record that as well. Compare the reamped version to the one recorded during the orginal tracking and make your decision based on that. More importantly, really listen to the differences so if you ever run into a situation where you don't have time to do both or are limited by tracks, mics etc... and can't do both, you'll know which application will be better suited for the desired result.

Fletcher · Post by **Fletcher** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:24 pm

I have never found a bottom snare mic to work worth a damn for my sense of aesthetic [I know lots of people use them, but I've never been able to get one to sound anything like a snare drum... they always seem to sound like a "broken snare drum" to me]... but I have had tremendous success mic'ing the shell of the drum from a distance of 3-6 inches... mic aimed at the shell of the drum between the rims.

As for the "re-amping snare drum" thing... I've never found that to be a technique that resulted in much more than a "Band-Aid? on a head wound" kind of a fix... if I was you and you was me then you'd be trying to record the drum as best you can the first time and fix anything that needed fixing later [plan for success instead of failure kind of a thing]... fair enough?

Best of luck with all you do!

leftofthedial · Post by **leftofthedial** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:49 pm

At the risk of sounding retarded, what the hell is reamping a snare drum? Was it amped in the first place? Why? I'm confused.....

floid · Post by **floid** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:16 pm

send your snare (which has never been amped until this time) through a speaker, over which you have placed an upside-down snare, letting the blasts of air function as a "perfectly in time" drumstick - i use quotations because this is one application where you'll almost definitely want to do some type of time alignment to preserve phase relationships.
stupid question: wouldn't it be a good idea to flip polarity before reamping, so you're pushing air instead of pulling? this coming from a guy who's only tried this on drum machine stuff. (although given my current situ it might be worth looking in to)

nestle · Post by **nestle** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:24 pm

I've done both and only resort to the amp thing when the snare is really doinky and lifeless. I do like the underneath thing once in a while. top and bottom, mixing in just a weee bit (when you hear it it's too much) of bottom gated...there I've said it the G word in relation to a snare, shoot me.

floid · Post by **floid** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:31 pm

bringing a gated clone in just underneath the raw track seems to do some nice stuff, make it easier to bring in the bottom track less noticeably and more effectively

Slider · Post by **Slider** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 5:38 pm

I've only done this a couple times when I received something to mix that had that dull timbale snare sound.
Both times it sounded awesome.
I'm too lazy to do this regularly but man it sounds different than a bottom mic for sure. Really fat and almost synthetic.
Now I'm so lazy I'd probably just drumagog in a bottom mic sample instead.

For the record, I really like bottom snare mics. With the right mic it really adds something to the sound. I agree that it sometimes sounds like a broken snare, but that's usually when the mic is right up on the snares or the snare was tuned by a drummer.

syrupcore · Post by **syrupcore** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 7:53 pm

Slider wrote:For the record, I really like bottom snare mics. With the right mic it really adds something to the sound. I agree that it sometimes sounds like a broken snare, but that's usually when the mic is right up on the snares or the snare was tuned by a drummer.

word.

digitaldrummer · Post by **digitaldrummer** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 8:27 pm

my favorite bottom snare mic is an AKG D440. yeah, it's a pretty cheap mic (was probably cheaper than a 57) and placed about 4-6" from the bottom at about a 45-60 deg angle, it gets a very nice fuzzy snare sound that can really add some shizzle to the attack of the top snare mic. well, anyway, its worked for me for awhile. if you have one, try it sometime.

Mike

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Bottom snare miking or reamping?

Bottom snare miking or reamping?

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