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8. Synthesising a layered snare

1 Time to synthesise a powerful multilayered snare sound using Xfer’s Serum. We’ll use the synth’s Osc A for the snare’s transient punch, Osc B for the lower-pitched body, and the Noise oscillator for a splashy tail. Load Serum on a MIDI track, then load a brickwall limiter on your master bus to prevent clipping.

2 Set Serum to Mono mode, turn on Osc B, then change both Osc A and B waveforms to the purer Analog » Analog BD Sine. To pitch the second oscillator down an octave, tune Osc B down to -1 Oct. Keep phase consistent by setting both oscillators’ Random Phase knobs to the minimum 0%.

3 Next, we’ll use a separate, tight envelope to modulate the volume of these two oscillators independent of the splashy noise tail. Turn down Osc A and B Levels to 0%, then drag Env 2’ s mod ring over to both those Level knobs. Now click Env 2 and set Decay to 290ms and Sustain to 0%.

4 As with our kick, let’s sharply modulate pitch. Hook up Env 3 to modulate both Osc A and B’s CRS (Coarse Tune), then Alt-Shift-click to switch modulation from bipolar to Unipolar. Now shape Env 2’ s Decay to 30ms and Sustain to 0%. We now have a tight snare ‘body’ tone. Turn up Osc A’s Mod Depth to 50 for even more transient snap.

5 Now we’ve created the snare’s tonal body and snappy transient, let’s dial in the tail component. Turn Serum’s Noise Osc On, turn up Level to 100%, then call up the MicrKrg Noise sample. Pitch it to 85% for brightness, then activate OneShot mode to deactivate looping. Env 1 now controls this tail’s length – we set its Decay to 770ms.

6 Our raw snare is quite dry and limp, but processing will now ‘blow up’ the sound. For drive, turn on Serum’s Filter: push Cutoff fully open, set Mix to 50%, then crank Drive up to 90%. From here, we use Serum’s FX (EQ, compression and spatial effects) for even more personality – check out the video for an in-depth breakdown of our processing.