The TRUTH about dealing with SNARE BUZZ

if you're Desiring a nice clean Tom sound but you're frustrated by the onslaught of snare Buzz that happens when you hit your Tom and this lesson is for you I'll share with you some tuning and snare wire adjustment tips for reducing buzz but we'll wrap up with a really interesting and enlightening experiment that will ultimately show you the truth about how you really have to deal with snare buzz you can do this [Music] hey welcome to the non-glamorous drummer I'm so excited you're hanging out with me today I help beginner and intermediate drummers become the musicians that others want to listen to that sound awesome and we do this by teaching you the core skills that really get you rapid results quickly and hey if you were a drummer at any level who is plateauing stuck in a rut you just don't know what to practice next like you've practiced all the great things you found on the internet but you just feel stuck and you don't know where you're going where you need to go next I've got the resource for you this is my special gift to you the NOAA to practice next 6 six steps to Pro drumming e-guide this is really cool because it lays out all the steps you go through from beginner to professional studio drummer and it shows you the action steps of exactly what it practice to level up so this is your cheat sheet it's all right here you now know exactly what to practice and once you finish this here's what you do next and then here's what you do after this and so this makes everything so much more organized and clear this is how you get results and most importantly get out of that rut get off the plateau and make progress progress is how you master the drums so grab that guide this is for you it's going to help you out a bunch all right on with today's lesson so we're going to do a really interesting audio listening experiment here in a bit that's really going to open up your ears to what's really going on with snare buzz and it's going to lead us toward our ultimate solution here but first we're going to talk about the tuning move that reduces snare Buzz as well as the Gaff tape trick that literally just sucks it away and we'll talk about the pros and cons of these before we dive into that ultimate solution so we hit our rack Tom [Music] and there's a whole bunch of Buzz going on here the reason why this is happening is because a lot of times we have our rack Tom tuned fairly high and pretty close to our snare now if you have a drone that's close to your snare and is tuned roughly the same as your snare or especially if it's tuned higher it's just gonna create all these crazy interactions and sympathetic resonances there's going to be Buzz so here's your Simple Solution you may or may not want to do this but the simple solution is tune your rack Tom down just tune it lower listen to this so when we hit the rock Tom here's what happens [Music] a whole bunch of buzzing we hit the floor tom there's some buzzing it's inevitable but a lot less this floor time is the same size like it could have the same head on it as the snare it's a 14 inch yes it's it's deeper depth wise but diameter wise it's the same the difference is just that it's tuned lower because it's tuned a lot lower it's not creating all the sympathetic resonances here especially on the underside of the snare so when we hit the floor tom that's pretty manageable versus when we hit the rack Tom because generally we need to have our snare Underside head tuned pretty tightly for good crisp snare sounds if you have if you're if you're snare extra tip by the way if your snare sounds cheap or you've got a nice snare that sounds like something that's just total trash you got a total garbage sounding snare uh or if you have a cheap snare and it doesn't sound good you can make any snare sound better by tuning up the underside head because it's going to give you a better higher quality more crisp snare response that's just going to sound better even if you're tuning your snare low like tuning the top head low tune that bottom head pretty high it's gonna it's just gonna give you a better sound test it out don't just take my word for it test it out that's what I've always found to be true with all my snares and anytime I'm tuning a snare even if I want to go low I really like having the bottom head up pretty high too the only thing is that's what's going to help contribute to all this excessive buzz but what's interesting I've played around with this and detuning my snare and just like tuning everything down and even muffling my snare and even detuning the underside had some it really doesn't do a lot in getting to the snare Buzz there's not much you can do with your snare to actually reduce the buzz besides tightening the snare wires which we'll talk about a little bit in the next point because what does happen right now I've got my wires pretty loose and so there's a lot of Buzz but check this out if I start to tighten up a little bit so um this is probably about a full turn it's still there but it's a lot shorter right it's kind of like and then it's over versus so that was about a full turn of my my snare wire tension knob there and that's fairly manageable we'll go back to where it was which is about right here and there it is again so you can definitely hear a difference there as far as things to do to your snare tuning wise tuning is not going to have a huge effect so I don't recommend you do it because then you've got to sacrifice your snare sound to get rid of this but you can tighten up your snare wires a little bit which is kind of foreshadowing to where we're going next but our ultimate solution here as far as tuning is tune your rack Tom down if you can have a lower tuned rack Tom in relation to your snare you're going to get less of that buzz however that's really not ideal because what if we want the higher tune Rock time obviously here with my setup I've got my rackdown tuned fairly High my floor Tom's not that low either that's just the sound I like I love a really warm rack Tom so keeping that in mind say we don't want to detune the rack time we don't want to change any tunings what's what's another good alternate solution well let's get into uh solution number two here the Gaff tape trick that sucks away snare Buzz so this is kind of cool this is kind of interesting kind of unique you may or may not like the result here but this will get rid of a lot of the snare buzz and this is something um I I went to music school and majored in music and did all the classical percussion stuff and a lot of times we were trying to get rid of snare buzz on our classical snare I don't remember what type of drum it was it was one of those concert snare drums it's got all the fancy snare wires and everything so there's not supposed to be a lot of buzz but in an orchestra when you're set up right next to the trombones those trombones are going to activate so much sympathetic Buzz so a lot of times we would actually tape the underside of the snare and that's perfectly acceptable in the classical percussion world where you want that really crisp kind of snare sound with drum set is kind of arguable I'll show you what I'm talking about so thanks to our Underside air cam here you can see exactly what I'm doing first I'm going to put a strip of tape right here toward the edge of the snares you would think that this would make a big difference you'd think it would help listen to this so here's this near before that's our sound here's the The Buzz [Music] now let's do a strip of tape here relatively close to the end we're not out in the middle we'll see how the snare sounds [Music] foreign there's some difference not too crazy [Music] and that's definitely reducing the buzz now this is where we get into personal preference maybe that's good enough for you hey there's less Buzz maybe that's your solution maybe you can deal with the slightly crisper snare sound which honestly is so if you were doing like a classical percussion snare kind of thing this is perfect [Music] it works really well for that but it's not necessarily the the best drum set snare sound and it's still not perfect there's still a little bit of Buzz there foreign but we've almost eliminated it from the floor tom so we're definitely getting there so if we want to totally eliminate it here's what we got to do get another strip of Gaff tape by the way if you're unfamiliar with Gaff tape it's just like a higher quality duct tape that you can stick to pretty much anything it doesn't leave residue as stronger you pay a lot more for it but it's totally worth it you can stick Gaff tape on drums for muffling I've done that from time to time you can tear it into small strips like this to do this tape up your snare wires it's very useful for a lot of things I don't go to a gig without Gaff tape I think every drummer should have a roll of Gaff tape in their backpack so let's stick one right here in the middle this is where it's going to get a little bit crazy I'm going blind here you guys are all watching me failing and sticking this in the right spot we'll see how well I do okay I think we made it across all right so any guesses as to what this is going to sound like it might be interesting very dry very dry snare sound but listen to this [Music] in relation to the volume of the Tom there's not much near Buzz at all yes it's still there but you barely hear it when you know you're hitting the Tom firmly and down here on the floor tom barely a little flicker it's almost totally gone now we've done this at the expense of our snare sound [Music] unless that's the sound you want this might not be the best solution unless you're doing some Steve Gad [Music] it sounds great for Paul Simon 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover Steve Gad on drums at such an iconic drum part go check out that song If you don't know it the snare sound is great for that because it's a super tight kind of thing and that was the kind of sound everybody was doing around 1980 or so I think when that song came out so if you're playing in like a 70s band or you're doing a lot of chill quiet kind of things where you can get by with the [Music] it makes me think of too I think it's uh the strut where it's the uh if you're doing anything that's kind of funk based or very tight 70s this sound can work and hey you've got a nice dry drum sound you could complement it by putting some tape on your Toms and doing a dead or Tom sound and then like sticking a towel onto the outside of your Kick Drum to muffle down your kick this could totally work if you're doing the 70s thing because yes if you want the dead dry drum sound you need to get rid of the snare buzz but let's say let's say you're like most drummers maybe you're like me and you still want a normal snare sound for most of what you're playing for most music this is not ideal and so yes we've gotten rid of most of the snare bars it's virtually gone but it's still not ideal so what do we do at this point let's dive into our final point we're going to do a cool experiment here the truth about snare buzz and how you should ultimately deal with it because the problem at this point is that neither of our Solutions none of these little things we've tried have really been perfect or even great unless you just want a weird sound unless you're fine with tuning your rack Tom really low in relation to your snare or you're fine with taping up your snare wires or having your snare wire super tight unless that is what's working for the music you're playing and you like that sound we really haven't stumbled upon the perfect solution so here's the mindset we've really got to get into except that a certain amount of Buzz is inevitable and learn to appreciate it as something that actually ties together all the sounds of the components of your kit especially your Toms so that you have a more cohesive drum sound so this is interesting to me because if you've got I know a lot of you out there have electric drums I'm not a fan of electric drums as you may have heard from from some old videos I put out about this they're not ideal but they are a great practice tool and they can make drumming fun especially when you're a beginner so no shame if you have an electric drum set what's interesting is the really nice Roland e-kit I actually have a feature in the brain where you can adjust the sound of your drums in all sorts of ways but you can crank up the amount of snare buzz in your Toms and in your kick and what's really interesting is you can make you can almost it's hard to do this because it's still not a real drum set but you can start to convince yourself you're playing real drums when you're listening through the headphones and you've got you can change the microphone mix so crank up the overheads and whatnot but you can increase the amount of snare Buzz with your Toms and it makes the drums feel more real when you're playing an electric drum set and you hit a Tom And there's no snare buzz it almost sounds fake it's just it sounds too clean and pristine and just not like a real Tom but when you mix in some of the snare buzz it actually starts to feel like part of the drum set everything's all tied together and everything's kind of bleeding into the other and so it's all becoming one unit because that's how we have to think of the drum set this is an orchestra this is a single instrument made up of a lot of smaller instruments and so that snare Buzz can really help make it more Musical and more cohesive and more real as Roland knows otherwise they wouldn't have this feature included in their brains and honestly me personally I don't think Tom sound as good with no snare Buzz of course if if I'm playing something that's like super chill and like I'm playing with mallets then okay maybe I'll turn my my snares off and play something like this [Music] I love that kind of stuff maybe you like that sound that feel that vibe in that case it sounds awesome without the snares on it just takes you into this kind of other worldly drum sound but in most scenarios in most scenarios where you're playing normal drum set stuff the toms just kind of sound thin and empty without the snare Buzz [Music] it doesn't sound bad but when you turn the snare wires on [Music] it makes it more interesting it adds some Sizzle it adds some top end Sizzle and it almost it's almost like Distortion it's like adding a little bit of crunch Distortion to a guitar it just thickens things up and makes the toms sound more interesting so time for our experiment so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna listen to some different microphone combinations so on this kit the microphones that you're hearing I've got this lav mic that's clipped onto my shirt that is always capturing my voice I've got these overhead mics they are sure sm81s for those of you out there interested in that and I've got my close mics which are sm57s this is a very simple miking setup I've got a beta 52 on the kick and then I've got this cheap ribbon mic that's down there outside the kick so basically we have close drum mics and then we have the overheads and then I've got this lav mic capturing my voice so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna listen to the the snare Buzz we're going to listen to that buzz sound when I hit the rack time through this mic the reason why is because this lava lure mic it really captures everything the is pretty close to the way our ears hear it I found that in doing these comparisons when I listen back to like the the individual mics here this is the one that sounds like what I hear with my naked ears like if I'm just sitting here and I hit my rack Tom and hear all the buzz and everything when I listen back to the recording and I solo this mic this represents best what I hear so what we want to do is listen to what does a snare buzz sound like to our ears as the drummer that's going to be this mic soloed then we want to listen to okay what does the snare buzz sound like through the close mics now I actually don't have a close mic on my rack Tom because um if you clip a mic onto a rack time it doesn't resonate as well that's something I've noticed every setup is different you may or may not have noticed that if you've taken your kit on a gig and clipped a mic onto it that weight on a drum tends to suck away resonance so really you got to have it on a stand I use my overheads to capture a lot of my Tom sounds so I don't really need a close mic there but there is a close mic here on the floor tom all that to say we will solo the close mics so you'll hear the mic that's right here the sm57 is right here on the snare you'll hear all the closed mics and hear the buzz through those close mics down here right next to the drums then lastly we'll solo just the overheads so only the overheads I'll hit the the rack Tom you'll hear the snare Buzz just through the overheads and then we're going to talk about those differences and why these differences are really important foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] what did you notice there I think this is really interesting because what we end up noticing is that through the lav mic which again represents our ears our ears are right here super sensitive to everything going on and when we hear things loud it's just really loud we hear a ton of snare Buzz we as the drummer sitting at the drum set we are going to hear a lot of the snare buzz and the close mics will hear it too now when you've got the close mic that's like a dynamic directional mic that's right here pointing at the drum you don't hear a ton of it so you notice that okay the snare Buzz was less noticeable less loud less obnoxious through the close mics but then when we went to the overheads just the overheads suddenly there was significantly less snare Buzz why because the snare Buzz is going on way down here and the mics are way up here but think about this realistically so if you're if you're set up in a big room on a gig and you're miked up and everything a lot of the what the the audio engineer is going to use are those overheads and maybe some close mic but mostly the overheads probably to capture the full kit so that's what they're going to hear which means that's what the audience is going to here so there's not going to be a lot of noticeable snare Buzz even if you're in a smaller room and you're not miked your audience is not right here at your drums your audience is not sitting here with an ear where you've got your snare mic your audience is not right here hearing all the buzz your audience is way out there so what I hope this makes clear and shows you is that your audience does not notice snare Buzz nearly as much as you do and also within the context of the mix when you add in bass guitar and you add in a distorted electric guitar or there's an acoustic guitar and there's a vocal all these other things piano keys when you layer in all these all the other instruments into the mix snare Buzz becomes just negligible it doesn't even matter even if there's a lot of it going on because of the reasons we just talked about like if you're mostly listening to these mics and you don't have you know this kind of mic going on you're hardly going to pick up any of it and your audience way out there they're hearing so many of the other things going on and they're paying more attention to the vocal and the melody probably than they are you and they probably don't care about your snare sound so what this is ultimately coming down to here and this is the big big takeaway I want you to remember this is the big truth that we alluded to and the title the truth about how to ultimately deal with this is accept snare Buzz as inevitable know that you can reduce it with a little bit of Gaff tape or tuning But ultimately it is a cohesive element that brings your kit together and it is not nearly as obnoxious and annoying and in your face as you think it is it might be to you because you're sitting here at the drums it's just like ring by the way so this is a topic for another lesson a ringy snare is way more noticeable to you and maybe the close mic than it is to the overheads or your audience nobody else is going to hear the ringiness that's just you so if you've got a ringy drum and you've got a whole bunch of snare Buzz going on and it's driving you crazy okay do what you can to deal with it so that you're not Driven Crazy because you do need to be able to focus and play musically on the gig but know that those things are not big deal breakers and everybody else is not noticing them and they're not a huge deal that's what this all comes down to so as we wrap up question for you I gotta ask this tell me in the comments do you like snare Buzz or not maybe I've won you over do you like hearing snare Buzz do you like a little bit of snare Buzz do you mind a lot do you not mind a lot of snare buttons just tell me your thoughts do you like snare Buzz or not but also let's go a little deeper here which of these methods have you tried or will you try in other words are you interested in the detuning the rack Tom thing are you interested in taping up your snare wires maybe these are appealing to you or maybe you know that okay Steven I've just got to get into the mindset you're talking about and I've got to accept that the snare Buzz is going to be there and know that it's not as bad as I think it is maybe that's you so tell me about that which of these methods have you tried or will you try and before you go be sure to grab that know what to practice next six steps to Pro drumming e-guide it's going to help you out so much if you've been working on all the things and you've been watching YouTube videos and you there's so much information out there and you've been practicing all the things and you've done that and you're like okay what's next where do I go next how do I keep growing this is the guide for you because this lays out your entire drumming journey into six phases that I believe every drummer goes through and each of these phases has action steps you'll be able to easily identify which one you're in and then take action and be able to level up to the next one so that you're moving forward that's the key here constantly moving forward that's how you grow that way you eventually reach that Pro drummer Studio drummer status that's the end goal in this e-guide you're gonna love it it's gonna be a lot of fun so go download that it's going to help get you out of a plateau get you out of a rut and make sure you are on the fast track to progress and success as always thanks so much for hanging out today I hope this has been a valuable helpful lesson to you and your drum sound and is helping you be more musically inspired and able to play confidently and make great music on the drums know that no matter what you can do this you can become the drummer you were made to be I'll see you on the next lesson staying on glamorous

Channel: Stephen Clark

Views: 40,402

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Id: GhU_xWVXcYU

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022