processing a brush snare

DamagedTrax

any tips on how to make it stand out in a busy mix? i really want to hear the brush sounds.

madtheory

Compressor, slow attack to bring out the brushes attack. Maybe follow with an eq boost, and maybe a limiter. Or you could turn everything else down...

DamagedTrax

its not the actual snare hits, they're sounding fine. its the little bits in between.. like the brushes rubbing around the skin.

madtheory

OK, fast attack, adjust ratio and threshold to increase "sustain". You need a v good comp to do that with a brushed snare tho...

DamagedTrax

madtheory wrote: »

OK, fast attack, adjust ratio and threshold to increase "sustain". You need a v good comp to do that with a brushed snare tho...

i think im getting there, slightly slower attack than i'd usually use on a snare and im driving the UAD neve 33609 a touch. the driven sound is bringing the little brushes out nicely.

trackmixstudio

A transient designer plugin, as discussed here recently, could help.
Or if you are having trouble getting the lower level brush parts up in volume the way I would do it in logic is like this. I don't know if PT works the same.
1. Make a copy of the whole snare track to a track below.
2. Strip silence on the first track to get just the hits
3. Make sure you are in "no overlap mode" then drag the stripped snare hits to the track below and then back up again.
You now have 2 tracks. 1 with the full snare hits and 1 with the brush swirls.
You can now easily set relative level between them.
Another thing to do is put an analyzer on the brush snare track and find the fundamental frequency and boost it then cut the same frequency a bit on everything else.

DamagedTrax

got it sorted with "transient monster" just increased the sustain for the areas i wanted to bring the brushes out in . thanks lads!

madtheory

The strip silence trick is very cool!

Incidentally, was the snare recorded with a dynamic mic?

trackmixstudio

madtheory wrote: »

The strip silence trick is very cool!

It is.
I use it a lot for doing dialogue replacement (ADR)
You get the actor to redo the line, strip silence then drag the track onto then back off the original dialogue track leaving you the original track minus the replaced dialogue. Makes it much easier to sit the replaced dialogue into the scene.

shayleon

Enhancer saturator can do the trick as well.