Jens Bogren’s Snare Trick: Parallel Control for Leprous Drums

Let’s be honest, getting the perfect snare tone is a battle. Raw, acoustic snares have an energy and vibe that samples can’t always replicate, but they often lack the surgical control we crave. You want that natural shell ring, but not so much that it washes out the mix. You need a sharp, cutting attack for fast passages, but you don’t want it to sound thin or clicky.

It often feels like a compromise. But during his Nail The Mix session for Leprous, legendary producer Jens Bogren (Opeth, Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir) revealed a clever parallel processing technique that gives you independent control over your snare’s attack and its sustain. It’s a killer way to shape a natural snare to sit perfectly in any section of a song, without sacrificing its organic character.

Here’s how he does it.

Setting Up Your Parallel Snare Channels

The foundation of this technique is simple: duplication. Instead of piling plugins onto a single snare track, Jens creates two dedicated parallel channels to process independently.

In the Leprous session, he starts by duplicating his main snare top track twice. He renames one duplicate “Ring” and the other “Attack.” This gives him three total tracks to work with:

1. The Main Snare: The original, core sound.
2. The Ring Track: This will be used to control the snare’s body, sustain, and length.
3. The Attack Track: This will be used to add punch and transient impact.

This setup is the key to everything. By splitting the snare’s fundamental characteristics apart, you can blend them back together with surgical precision.

Sculpting the “Ring” and Sustain Channel

The “Ring” track is all about adding body and length to the snare. In a dense metal mix, this is what keeps the snare from sounding like a tiny “pock” and gives it a sense of size and power.

Isolating the Sustain with a Transient Shaper

First, Jens grabs a transient shaper and puts it on the “Ring” track. The goal here is to completely remove the initial crack of the snare hit and leave only the tone and sustain that follows.

He does this by cranking the Sustain parameter all the way up and, crucially, pulling the Attack all the way down. What’s left sounds… well, pretty weird on its own. It’s mostly room bleed and the resonant “guts” of the snare drum. But don’t worry, that’s exactly what we want.

Carving Out the Good Stuff with EQ

This is where the magic happens. The next step is to use some focused EQ strategies to filter out the junk and enhance the desirable parts of the sustain.

1. Cut the Highs: The first move is to get rid of all that messy cymbal bleed. Jens uses an EQ to aggressively filter out the high frequencies, getting rid of the harsh “tsss” of the cymbals and hi-hats. This cleans up the track instantly and makes the bleed usable.
2. Find the Body: Next, he hunts for the snare’s fundamental body and sustain in the low-mids. For the deep-tuned snare in this Leprous track, he found the sweet spot somewhere between 140Hz and 220Hz. He sweeps around with a wide boost to find the frequency that makes the shell resonate and then dials it in.

The result is a track that contains only the length and tonal character of the snare, without any of the initial smack. When you blend this track back in with your main snare, you can add body and make the snare sound longer without making it boxy or muddy.

Crafting the Parallel “Attack” Channel

Now for the other side of the coin: the “Attack” track. This channel is designed for one thing only—adding that sharp, aggressive punch that helps the snare cut through the fastest, densest parts of a song.

Flipping the Transient Shaper

Just like with the “Ring” track, Jens uses a transient shaper, but with the exact opposite settings.

He pulls the Sustain all the way down, removing all the body and tail. Then, he pushes up the Attack (or “Punch”) to emphasize the very beginning of the hit. A pro tip from Jens: the fastest attack setting isn’t always the best. He recommends experimenting with the attack time to find the spot that sounds the punchiest and most natural, not just the clickiest.

On this channel, he doesn’t use the aggressive EQ from the “Ring” track. The goal is a pure, uncolored transient that you can blend in for extra smack when needed.

Blending It All for The Perfect Snare

Now you have a powerful, flexible snare mixing toolkit. You have your main snare track, a fader for adding rich sustain, and a fader for adding cutting attack.

• Verse feels a little weak? Nudge up the “Ring” fader to give the snare more weight and authority.
• Chorus getting washed out by guitars? Push the “Attack” fader to make sure every ghost note and rimshot cuts through.
• Blast beat section turning into mush? Pull back the “Ring” fader and push the “Attack” fader to improve clarity and definition.

This method gives you a level of dynamic control that’s impossible to achieve with standard EQ and compression on a single track. As a final pro touch, Jens puts a stock plugin with default settings on his main snare track. This ensures that his DAW’s latency compensation keeps all three tracks perfectly phase-aligned, preventing any weird filtering issues.

Go Beyond the Blog Post

Reading about a technique like this is a great start. But seeing a master like Jens Bogren actually implement it, A/B the results, and tweak it to fit a real-world mix from a band like Leprous is a completely different experience.

That’s what Nail The Mix is all about. You don’t just learn the “what”—you learn the “why” and “how” by watching the world’s best producers mix iconic metal albums from scratch, using the original multitracks that you get to download and practice with.

If you’re ready to stop relying on presets and want to learn the techniques that will truly elevate your mixes, check out our free guide, Unlock Your Sound: Mixing Modern Metal Beyond Presets.

To see this parallel snare trick and countless other pro-level secrets in action, check out the full Leprous mixing session with Jens Bogren exclusively on Nail The Mix.