Thread: fat '80s snare sound

ok here's how we did it back then.

tune the top head as low as possible (sometimes it would even start to wrinkle) and dampen it with an old wallet taped to the head. the snare strings should be tight.

that should get you there.

to add to Kurt's excellent method,

A lot of 80's sounds were also, samples triggered from Linn, Akai MPC60, Emu so don't rule that out either. I haven't listened to the example you are referring to but don't rule that one out, ever. And the 80's were heavy on reverb and gates.

i forgot to mention as BT says sampled snare. the big rage then was the Roger Nichols "Wendell" computer to trigger snares and kicks. check Steeley Dan records for that ... "Hey Nineteen" is a perfect example.

whta are you doing awake at this hour Chris ???? i thought i was the only night crawler around here ....

The snare drums of the day were deeper than 5.5" too. I remember more of them being metal than wood, and 7" or more in depth.

Hey thanks all. I tuned the snare by tightning lugs by hand and then 1/4 by key, it got wery low

No to the afterwork...I don't want to go with samples, I would like to get the sound with the natural recorded sound. Would someone like to give it a try with a raw clip of my snare if I upload it on Dropbox? I figured it would be the easiest way of learning if someone eould make an "correct" sample clip and describe how its done, that way I could hear what you did and not just read tips on it.

Thanks,
Fredrik

don't forget the wallet. it's a very important part of the method. it should be leather btw ...

I listened to hey nineteen but that wasn't my goal...I thought more of an ballad snare, the ones with endless reverb that seems to get the drum to ring until next stroke. Altough it was a nice fat sound in hey nineteen it was to short for what I had in mind

Steely Dan is famous for that "dry" sound. Fagen and Becker very rarely used any kind of reverb, tending to lean to the dead room sound. still the snare is the same typical deep / low tuned tone sans verb.

you can do the low tuned / leather wallet treatment and then add some verb perhaps gating the aux send on the way to the verb to prevent the rest of the kit from bleeding ..... go for a 225 millisecond verb with a little pre delay.