Getting “That” Snare Sound
I suppose most boutique drum builders get requests to make a snare that matches the sound of the snare in a certain recording or a certain video; I know I get a lot of them myself. And when I go online, I see a huge number of posts from drummers who want to know what drum was used in a given video or recording, so that they can go buy the same model for themselves.
Here’s why I don’t build to match a recorded sound. It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that it doesn’t always make for a very good drum.
First, there’s the problem that the recorded sound is not the sound of the actual drum. Even for a simple recording setup there’s a ton of processing, transmission, and reproduction involved. Consider the variables in the recoding environment: the room dimensions, the wall/floor/ceiling surfaces, the microphone(s) setup and positions, the microphone quality, the mix of the drumset, the mix with other instruments – and that’s just to get the signal into processing. Each one of these is complicated; aim a close mic at the center of a drumhead or the outside area and you get two totally different sounds.
Then in processing there can be compression, gating, EQ adjustments, reverb, and similar treatments that don’t just tweak the sound – they can alter it pretty radically. Now, how does the recording reach you? Is it by CD, MP3, online video, radio broadcast? There’s more compression and processing involved in each of those. And how do you hear it? A computer sound card, the audio capabilities of a receiver, a pair of speakers, a set of headphones or earbuds, even the room you listen in, can all make changes to the recorded sound.
So it’s much more likely that the sound you heard is not what the drum itself sounded like.
What’s more, unless we’re listening through the same speakers, etc., the sound you heard is not the same as the sound I hear when I go to listen to it.
Second, of course, is that tuning is – as I’ve said in an earlier article – an enormous factor in a snare drum’s sound. Building a drum to match a sound doesn’t mean anything unless the setup of the drum is identical to what it what the example was. I make it a point to tune a drum before it ships out, but in transit it’s likely to encounter changes in temperature and humidity, besides the fact that a drum needs to be played for a while before tuning and wire tension can fully settle in. So to get a certain sound out of a drum, a player needs to know how to tune to that sound – the drum doesn’t do that.
Which brings me to the player. Again, I itemized in that earlier article that the artist is a key part of determining a drum’s sound, because of playing style, technique, and touch. To at least some extent, the same drum, even with the same tuning, is going to sound different when played by different performers.
Third, the sound you hear sitting over the snare is not the sound that an audience hears, even in an acoustic situation. Nor is it the sound a microphone hears, since we don’t play with our ear three inches above the drumhead. So if a drum you’re playing sounds to you exactly like the sound you heard on the recording, just be aware that it won’t sound like that to anyone else. Including the recording you’re making, if you happen to be making one.
But with all this being said, why not build a drum to the desired sound anyway? After all, what you want is the sound you heard; in a way it doesn’t matter what the original sound was.
My answer goes back to my days working as a photographer, a lot of years ago. In the days of film cameras it didn’t matter how much manipulation you might do in the darkroom or in retouching – if the information wasn’t on the original negative, it wouldn’t be possible for it to be on the finished print. So my goal was always to make each shot as close to perfect – in the camera – as I could. It’s the same thing in a recording studio; you want to give the engineer a great original sound to work with, no matter what he’s going to do with it. Give him a boxy or sloppy sound to start with, and he’s just not going to be able to make it sing.
So instead of building to match a sound, I build a drum that is capable of that sound – and more. It’s also going to be capable of a wide range of tuning, a wide range of volume, and response and snare sensitivity at all volumes and all areas of the head. Somewhere in those ranges, a player can then dial it in to a specific target sound, or to a bunch of others. To build only for that sound would risk serious underperformance in other areas that I personally would expect – no, demand -- from a drum, and I wouldn’t want a client to receive anything less than a drum with full capabilities.
