When you think of snare drum enhancement you might usually think of layering snares with other snares. More often than not that is what is most likely to be happening, but adding more snares isn’t the only way to give a snare a bit if what it may be lacking.
With that in mind, we are going to have a go at giving a snare something it’s lacking by using white noise. As a bonus we are going to set it up so that it triggers automatically. As an additional bonus, you can also use this technique for drum replacement.
White Noise Snare Enhancement With Kong And Pulverizer:
The snare drum in question is in a track that I am currently working on that is destined to be low-level background music in a video. So, the snare quality isn’t vital but… The video below just has a before and after A/B test so you get an idea of what we are going for.It’s a little exaggerated so the difference is easy to spot, but you get the idea.
Video – Snare Enhancement A/B Test:
The white noise is just adding some top end which makes the sample appear to be a little brighter. It’s not difficult to set up and once you’ve done it a couple of times you’ll be throwing this sort of thing together in under a minute. Anyway, let’s get on with it!
We will need:
- A snare track with a bypassed pulverizer as an insert.
- A track with a Kong attached.
- A white noise sample.
Step 1 – Adding Pulverizer As An Insert On A Snare Track:
As you can see from the above image; we’ve dropped a Pulverizer as an insert into our main snare drum track. As we’re only going to be using its follower, you should bypass it so it isn’t colouring your snare sound in any way.
Step 2 – Create A New Instance Of Kong:
Drag a new instance of Kong into your rack. I chose to pop it inside the track but it’s not essential. The kong is going to be loaded with a white noise sample from the factory sound bank, let’s do that next.
Step 3 – Locate And Load A Noise Sample:
Search for the word noise in Factory Sounds and you will get a list like the one above. Select the CS_NOISE_C3.aif sample and drag it onto pad one of the Kong.
Step 4 – Connecting Pulverizer To Kong With CV:
To connect the two devices, all we need to do is to run a CV cable from the follower of the Pulverizer to pad 1’s gate in on the Kong.
Step 5 – Fine Tuning The Noise Sample In Kong:
Ensuring you have pad 1 selected, head down to the Velocity section of the NN-Nano, and adjust the level to 0%. This will ensure a good and constant white noise level on each snare hit. Next, hit play and adjust the decay time for the noise sample so it doesn’t stick out past the snare. Depending on your needs at the time, you may want to also adjust the pitch of the sample.
Troubleshooting:
If your noise sample isn’t triggering consistently in time with the snare, adjust the follower’s threshold setting. This can be found on the front of the Pulverizer, as shown above.
conclusion and further uses:
As you probably already noticed, the only thing separating this from drum replacement or sample layering is the type of sample you load into the kong. Also, if you were to chain some of kong’s pads together, you could load in your entire replacement sample chain…
If you set this up for yourselves, let us know how it worked for you!