SNARES
Examples:
Crunchy drum sounds:
TRX → SN
PTCH DEC BUMP BENV
13— 110– 44 — 0
SNAP TONE TUNE CLIP
60– 127– 127– 57
AMD AMF EQF EOG
0– 0— 24- 63
FLTF FLTW FLTQ SRR
39– 49– 109– 11
DIST VOL PAN DEL
127- 127- 6– 0
REV LFOS LFOD LFOM
1– 108– 66– 64
Put the LFO on Ptch, triangle shape plus reverse exp env
Free-running, SPEED = 108 depth=68 Schmix=64
PTCH=13 = F#4 = 185Hz
e12-snare-machine can be good: You can also find some kind of brushed snare there (with high distortion I’ve managed to get it to decent snare sound). Another good snare is Trx-snare, which is so close to tr808 snare. Here is some things how I do my snares:
1. I always try set the pitch of snare very carefully. Sometimes when you have ‘good snare sound’ you find out later that it’s too whimpy, because the pitch is set too high. As for me, I like sizzling snare and it happens a lot of times. I always try to watch that the fundamental hit is somewhere 400 Hz. If it is higher I know it’s going to be problem later on.
2. I have also found out, that I cannot hear if snare sound is good or bad, until I play it with other material. You can get very high-end sounding snare with e12 and pitch set only to ‘3’ and little srr (8), when you have right background. This is true for trx-snare also, sometimes it doesn’t sound like 808-snare at all when in right background.
3. Sometimes I layer snares. Like for now I’m doing new song and I have trx-snare layered with Pi-snare. I love the way it sounds! Must be the best snare sounds I got from Machinedrum!
4. I like to do fills and rolls with snares a lot. Because of this I almost always do one snare that is the accented one. It might be layered. So I hit my accents with this. Then I usually use e12-snare with retrigs to do rolls and stuff like that at lower velocities. Getting a good rolls is really a matter of velocities and I feel it doesn’t matter what’s the basic sound on those rolls, just make it soft enough and they start to work.
Use the stereo outs to pan different parts in different areas, this is also good with the stereo delay. After panning everything use the filters in the routing menu (not the synth menu). This puts the drums in a high or low part in the pan. The pan is left and right, and the filter is up and down.
I think the filter will really put the snare out there, not to mention using the multiple trigs But once you get one snare set in the stereo pan copy that machine and make another one in the same pan and everything but change the synth parameters.
You could copy the track trigs to another track and then change that track’s machine to a tom sound, then turn it down very low with a medium amount of decay. You shouldn’t be able to tell that it’s a tom sound, but it should thicken up your snare. If you take a real physical snare drum and turn the snares off, it sounds like a high-pitched tom; you can hear the body of the drum. Once the snares are on, they create a noise effect and blend with this body sound; that’s what makes a real drum sound thick/full. When your Machinedrum snare has too much noise and not enough body, adding this tom sound on another track should do the trick. you just need to be careful to balance the levels right so that it doesn’t sound like a tom but like they are the same instrument.
You can also use the multiple trigging option for this, but I don’t since I usually have some quiet snare “ghost” notes that I don’t want to add this sound to.
LAYERING:
Try combining the PI-MT-synth and GND-NS. EQ the PI-MT to add more mid range, add some compression and reverb with pre-delay set to about 70. Some mild compression adds a nice punch to the sound. My fave snare out of the MD to date was a PI_tom and GND Noise mix. The great thing about this snare is you have too completely seperate parts almost like having a really special mic arrangement.
Try to sweep the high pass filter with a single-shot ramp, with fast settings you might get a similar attack portion to the snare.
Experiment with the gate knob on the reverb. it makes snares sound awesome. also using other machines that are not particularly snare machines works well, pitched down hi hats for example.
Have you tried layering? For example if you want a harder attack you can layer the SD with a short decay RS. Or layering two different SD’s, one for the attack and the other for the snare decay. I’m sure others can give more specific examples. Layering is a solution to many of the supposed limitations with the MD’s sound. Hats, kicks, snares, all of them can benefit from layering.
Mimicking snare drum ‘flam’ sounds: You can also use the retrig function on the e12 sounds.
Its a little tricky buy you can offset another track slightly with swing. Completely fill a track with swing triggers and set swing at about 51%. This track will run slightly behind the other tracks.
Program the main beat on the swung tack and add flams on the unswung track.
Making snare rolls: Check out re-trigger with the e12 drums. It really speeds up production time for rolls. If you use parameter slides over a roll that starts off with a low volume, then builds to full volume, it sounds wicked. Also play around with sliding other parameters during rolls. One of my favorites is setting fltw low, then sliding fltf from a low setting to a high setting. Try an e12 rim shot with hi retrig with slow timing. Some other tweaks and some echo too. Go to the filter and give it a high q. Turn the filtf or filtw and the sound goes from brain-rumbling to 303 style squeeks.
REPEATS:
I duplicated the snare sound onto another track and cut the highs a bit to make it sound darker. I then put a few ghost hits of this second snare before and after the “real” snare hit from the other track. Then lowered the ghost track to about a volume of 25 and applied the track LFO to volume using a sample and hold waveform in HOLD mode. LFO speed and depth were about 64 each. Exactly what I was looking for. I also used the same technique on another glitchy little embellishment in the pattern to give it a little activity as well.
Believe it or not, for hats: GND-NS; Dec: Very short Filtered all the way up to ca. 122 / around that, EQ’d a little bit in the high-end.
The Noise and the TRX-BD are the building blocks of everything I do.
EFM HH mainly parameter lock on decay tremolo pitch and feedback, feedback can transform the a hit hat sound as a voice sound ...
GND IMP with lot of filter and sample rate reduction.
Also I generally always put some LPF on both bass drums. AND, most importantly, HPF everything else!!! A little HPF on the snare drum, a lot of HPF on the hats, and some HPF to taste on your fx and whatnot. Clears out the sub freq’s for your BD’s = more Boom! Actually, that’s a very important tip for any mix (it’s the first thing I do on any mix). But it also helps to do it inside the MD
EFM SD - Turn the main decay down quite a lot (10-20?) but increase the Noise Decay. Result: Instant Kraftwerk snare.
I use EFM hihats a lot, love the way it could be tuned if you remove all the feedback ( FB )
I start with a short decay and full FB EFM hihat
Put a trig on the uptempo steps (you know 3,7,11,15)
Then p-lock FB, decay in those steps
After that I porogram another line over it, in the same track....something that could be a complementary with the uptempo one but adds another rythmic feeling
Save the kit
Now turn down FB at all, rise decay and p-lock the non-uptempo steps to make a melodic line
Press FUNCTION + CLASSIC/EXTENDED to bring back the original FB + decay settings for all the steps (p-locks still there)
Last: p-lock volume for the uptempo steps
Now when you´re playing you get a mutable but controlled hh line,
turn down volume and you get a more dancefloor feeling
rise decay and all the setps but the downtempo ones rise in lenght,turn down FB and over your dance hihats appears a melodic line that has the hh rithmic sequence but without loosing the uptempo ones...is great to make it live so people could hear the HH mutate into a sequence and back but without loose the more rythmic hihats
GND IMP is also very useful for layering snare and add a more violent attack !
GND IMP is one of my go to machines. great for clickity bippity and also can make some nice bass drum layering.
Also, remember to eq, and do it before compression. I usually cut -6 dB at around 315Hz with narrowish Q to remove cardboard box sound.
Compression guide: http://www.newearthsound.com/Compressor_How_To.doc
I have used that trick as well in many patterns, although not for kicks but for hihats. If you want a hihat to stop immediately, put the decay on max and modulate the volume parameter using the trick above. A suddenly stopping hihat easily creates more aggression in the mix. In general, a squarewave lfo on volume of decay can be abused for stutter effects or for abrubtly muting a sound
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