Drum Samples: Analyzing Snares

Snares are just about an essential part of most popular songs; everything you hear on the radio and nearly all songs on all CDs in the rhythm and blues and hip hop, rap and dance genres. Snare use is determined based on the type of music and the groove of the song.

Snare drum samples are usually placed on beats 2 and 4 in urban groove songs such as most hip hop. The reason for this is that it’s usually the kicks that occupy the other, stronger points of the bar, but the snare still plays an important part and sets the tone for the rest of the song much of the time.

The amount of different snare types is staggering, but two of the types seem to be head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to popularity and identification. I’m talking about the live and real snares played by people in a recording setting, which are then sampled for use as drum samples in other applications. The second type is the raspy type of snares generated by electronic synthesizers and drum machines. They’re not always so unrealistic, though; some of the machines today can make great-sounding emulations!

Regarding effects, there are limitless possibilities you can spend years wrapping your head around. If you want to alter snare drum samples beyond recognition or to simply tweak them, have at it. From reverbs to distortion and delay effects, just about everything is available. What some music producers do is analyze the snare and determine what makes it sound so good, before trying to make the rest of the samples match its character. Coherence is the name of the game.

In dance music, the snare drum samples are often combined with the kick drums and ‘teamed up’ for beats 2 and 4 from the bar, with the kick hitting consistently from beats 1 through 4. This technique is used simply to relieve the ear of the persistent bass kick on every beat, and also serves other uses, especially if the snare and kick do not share the same groove template. This sort of an affect can result in a dynamic drum samples groove that is very pleasing to the ear and we can actually spot this in many club hits playing today. The technique has been popular for over 10 years now!

Using snare drum samples as best as you can is an art form, and it is an easy goal to reach consistently if you experiment enough. You need to keep an ear out for new methods and new techniques all the time, and apply what you want to your own tracks, not worrying about the fine things at this point.

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