Snare Drum Music

Mixing the snare drum for dubstep

Your snare drum will be sitting at around 500hz-6khz, a +3DB boost at around 1khz will bring out some definition and bite along with some punch. Also adding a compressor with fast attack (1.5 - 3ms), 8:1 ratio and 8-10db of gain reduction will ensure the snare is prominent and hard hitting in the mix. I always add some subtle overdrive or distortion to my snares to further enhance the dynamics, and add more punch. Go easy, you don't need a lot.

Want to shine in the spotlight during your next drum solo? Not sure how to go about it? Drummers don't get a chance to solo as often as melody players in most performance situations. So, many drummers are afraid to take solos and have no idea how to create them effectively and relate to an audience.

It might surprise you to know you can solo using ideas from the "melodic" side of music. And you can do this even though you play a non-melodic instrument. The drumset contains relative pitches, so, you can imply or suggest melodies with your choice of drums. You can use the bass drum for the lowest pitch, toms for a higher pitch, and the snare drum for the highest pitch. Cymbals have relative pitches, too. You can make use of long and short notes to mimic the longer and shorter durations of your melodic band mates.

What is drum timing? To put it simply, it is the time frame taken between the sound of a hi-hat and the sound of a hi-hat with a snare drum combination being played together. Drum timing is that short, silent time gap between the sounds of the percussion & a drum.

Depending on the speed of any song as determined in the music score on the stave before the 1st musical note is being played, it can be as fast as 32 beats, which means that a drummer has to drum 32 times within 4 seconds; or it can be as slow as 1 or 2 beats.