Way Huge Green Rhino Overdrive - How to Enhance a Snare with Multiband Saturation

Way Huge Green Rhino Overdrive


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How to Enhance a Snare with Multiband Saturation


Hey guys, hope everybody is having a good
week. This is Derek from Equinox Project Studio
and The Pro Audio Files. I'm gonna talk
to you guys today about snare drum processing
but we're gonna focus on some different
thing. Usually you see a lot of videos on
YouTube about compression or EQ, but today
we're gonna talk about actually applying
harmonics to the snare drum. And I'm gonna
show you how that can really open up the sound
of your drum in the mix. So let's go ahead
and jump right in to Pro Tools.
Alright guys, so again we're gonna take
a look at how adding harmonics can really
bring out your snare in the mix. So I'll
just dive right in and just show you how it
kinda sounds. In a breakdown section of this
track I'm working on right now.
[metal breakdown snare with bx_saturator
harmonics]
Ok, so one of the things I try to really get
out of it was that top end brightness and
kind of the sound of the wires, the snare
wires in there. Which come through really
nicely when you add some harmonics to the
top end. And then I also kind of wanted to
accentuate the body of the snare and make
it a little more full. And I did most of that
with harmonics. So what I'll do next is
just solo the drum group and let you listen
again with the harmonics on and then with
them off so you can hear exactly what it's
doing. So here's again with them on.
[drums with bx_saturator harmonics]
Ok, that's on. And I'll bypass them and
â€" it was adding some addition gain or volume
â€" about 5 dB, so I'll go ahead and throw
5 dB on there to compensate.
[drums without bx_saturator harmonics]
So, to me it just wasn't as full and it
wasn't as crisp on the top end either. And
I just feel like harmonics is one of the best
ways you can really just polish the snare
off and in this case it really almost turned
it into a completely different sounding instrument.
So what I'll do is I'll put a new instance
of the saturation plugin I'm using which
is the BX Saturator. Obviously you can do
this with any other number of plugins, but
this is what I use. And I'll show you kind
of my workflow when I go through and do this.
So I'll just set a loop region here and
we'll go through and apply harmonics. And
the way this plugin works is it has a crossover
frequency and then you can go and apply harmonic
content both below and above the crossover
point. So we'll go ahead and start and try
and search for the sweet spots when we're
playing back this track and find a good spot
to start adding harmonic content.
[metal breakdown drum loop]
And I actually in this case will solo this
snare by itself here.
[snare]
Ok I like that frequency down there. And fortunately
enough I like the one above it as well. Ok
so those are two good starting points to work
with that we found right off the bat. And
something I like to do in the lower frequencies
that I'm saturating â€" I like to get it
to clip actually â€" which really makes it
more aggressive and gritty and actually adds
to actually the attack and helps it just really
cut through in a dense mix with heavily distorted
guitars and a lot of midrange content. So
let's go ahead and get that clipping a little
bit.
[snare loop]
You can hear how that's clipping pretty
good now, which isn't gonna sound like a
bad thing at all in context of the mix as
you guys will see. Let's check out the high
end frequency and make sure those wires are
coming through.
[snares]
Alright, let's throw on the entire drum
group again here.
[drum group with bx_saturator adding harmonics]
Something else you'll notice is you also
have gain or these individual frequencies
and I wanted a little more body out of this.
We'll just go ahead and boost that a little
bit. And of course the master gain fader.
Or pot rather, that I'm using down here
to control the overall volume â€" output volume
of the plugin. Alright, so that I'm feeling
like is a good starting point. Let's go
ahead and play back the section with the full
mix going and see how it sounds.
[full mix with harmonics on snare drum]
Sounds cool, and you can hear that there's
a lot more of that top end â€" the wires are
coming through with a lot of nice smack. And
that it's also got that gritty midrange
in there too that kind of added to the body
and helps it sound a little bit bigger in
the mix. So those are just a couple of things
that you can do with a saturation plugin on
a snare drum. That's one of my favorite
places to use it. So definitely something
I advise you guys look into trying out.
So you guys can hear some of the benefits
that adding harmonics to your snare drum brings
to the mix. Gives you a lot more top end and
makes it nice and crisp. And also gives you
a lot of nice body and warmth in there too
that helps it kind of stand out in the mix.
Especially a dense mix. So harmonics are something
I definitely advise you guys play around with.
Start mess around with it on your snare. See
if you like it. And I hope you enjoyed the
video. Please stop by my website www.equinox-ps.com
and be sure to subscribe to The Pro Audio
Files. Thanks again for watching, guys. Hope
to see you again soon.