Patch 006 - ADK Snare

Like the ADK Kick patch from yesterday (Patch 005), I did a fair bit of reading up on what constitutes a snare sound. This time round though I followed the tutorial provided in the Fast Guide to Propellerhead Reason by Debbie Poyser and Derek Johnson closely, where a snare drum was synthesised using the Subtractor synth.

The sound of the stick hitting the skin is provided by a triangle wave while the vibrating metal snare across the bottom of the drum was provided by noise. A fairly open LPF was used (we wanted to retain a lot of the character of the white noise) with a filter envelope with moderate attack, decay and release with no sustain. The amp envelope has an instantaneous attach and moderate to fast decay and release (again, no sustain).

As with the ADK Kick patch from yesterday, put the voice into monophonic mode and turn keyboard tracking of the pitch off using virtual patch 1. I used Osc 2 so I could drop the pitch by a further octave. If you wanted to use a sine wave you'd have to drop the pitch by the same method as the ADK Kick patch (using the mod wheel) or of course you could have a higher pitched snare. Finally, I made some minor adjustments to the EQ.

Here are the settings (starting from init, shift+3):

Voice: SYT, SGL, MON, ---, ---
Pitch: 0, 0, 0, 2, 5 (unchanged)
Osc 1: SAW, 0, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Osc 2: TRI, OFF, -12, 0, ---
Mixer: 0, 84, 127, ---, ---
Filter: 12L, 75, 0, 0, 0
Filter EG: 25, 40, 0, 40, ON
Amp: 127, CNT, OFF, 0, --- (unchanged)
Amp EG: 0, 36, 0, 36, ON
LFO 1: TRI, OFF, OFF, 10, --- (unchanged)
LFO 2: SIN, OFF, OFF, 70, --- (unchanged)

Patch 1: TRC, PTC, -48, ---, ---
Patch 2: LF2, PTC, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 3: LF1, CUT, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 4: LF2, CUT, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Mod FX: FLG, 20, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Delay: STR, OFF, 40, 0, --- (unchanged)
EQ: 180, 4, 1.5, 4, ---
Arpeg. A: 120, 1.16, 80, UP, 1 (unchanged)
Arpeg. B: OFF, 0, ON, 8, --- (unchanged)