Jens Bogren’s Leprous Snare Hack: Total Attack & Ring Control

Ever found yourself wrestling with a raw snare drum track? You want that satisfying thwack and punch, but you also crave that perfect sustain and body. Trying to get both from a single snare track using just EQ and compression can feel like a losing battle. Boost the attack, and you might lose the body. Try to bring out the ring, and suddenly it’s all flabby. It’s a common frustration, especially when you’re aiming for the kind of powerful, nuanced drum sounds you hear on records like those from Leprous.

But what if you could have your cake and eat it too? What if you could independently shape the attack and the ring of your snare, blending them to perfection? Well, during a Nail The Mix session featuring Leprous, legendary producer Jens Bogren (Opeth, Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir) dropped a killer technique to do just that. Forget just slapping on a sample; this is about taking control of your natural snare sound.

The Core Challenge: One Snare, Multiple Personalities

Live snare drums are complex beasts. The initial hit (the transient or attack) is a very different sonic event from the decay and resonance (the sustain or ring). When you process the whole snare track, you’re often making compromises. Samples can offer more immediate control, but sometimes you want the organic vibe of the real kit performance. Jens showed a way to get the best of both worlds by treating the snare’s attack and sustain as separate entities through parallel processing.

Jens Bogren’s Parallel Universe: The Dual Track Setup

The magic begins with a simple but powerful move: duplication. Jens takes the main snare track – in this Leprous session, he worked with a track labeled “5 45” (likely his snare top mic) – and creates two additional, identical copies. These aren’t for subtle layering; they’re destined for some serious sonic surgery.

Crafting the “Snare Ring” Track: Adding Length and Body

First up, let’s build that sought-after snare body and sustain. This is where you can really add character and make your snare sit heavily in the mix.

Duplication and the Transient Shaper

Take your first duplicated snare track. The key tool here is a transient shaper. Jens inserts one and immediately goes to work on its core function: separating the attack from the sustain.

Isolating the Sustain

With the transient shaper, the goal for this “Ring” track is to get rid of all the attack. Crank that sustain knob way up and pull the attack knob way down. You’re essentially trying to leave only the tail, the resonance, and yes, even the bleed, of the snare hit. Jens notes that if it’s only bleed, the idea might seem counterproductive, but stick with it – there’s gold in that sustain, even if it’s initially messy.

EQing for Clarity and Focus: Carving out the Good Stuff

Now, this sustain-heavy track will likely have a lot of unwanted cymbal wash and potentially some muddy frequencies. This is where surgical EQ comes in. Jens emphasizes the need to EQ away the “disturbing treble or symbols.” You don’t want to gate it, as that would defeat the purpose of bringing out the sustain.

Instead, use your EQ to:

1. Cut Highs: Filter out the harsh high frequencies where the cymbals live.
2. Find the Sweet Spot: Hunt for the frequency range where the snare’s actual sustain and body reside. This will be in the mids. For the low-tuned Leprous snare, Jens found this sweet spot around 140Hz to 170Hz, though for other snares it might be higher, say 180Hz to 220Hz. Boost this area.

The beauty of this approach is that by EQing this isolated sustain track, you can bring out the snare’s body in a way that would make the main snare sound boxy or overly “mid-sound-ish” if you tried to EQ it directly.

The Result: Adding “Length” and Character

When you blend this “Ring” track back in with your main snare, you’ll notice it adds a pleasing length and depth. Even if a good portion of what you’re enhancing is the room sound or controlled bleed around the snare’s fundamental, it often works incredibly well, as long as you’ve tamed those harsh highs.

Engineering the “Snare Attack” Track: Dialing in the Punch

Next, let’s create a dedicated track to really emphasize that initial crack and impact of the snare.

Another Duplicate, Another Purpose

Go back to your original snare top track and duplicate it again. This will become your “Attack” track. Once more, a transient shaper is your go-to plugin.

Dialing in the Punch with Precision

This time, you’ll do the opposite with the transient shaper:

• Boost Attack: Crank up the attack or punch to really accentuate the initial hit.
• Reduce Sustain: Pull down the sustain to keep this track tight and focused on the transient.

Jens advises playing with the attack and release settings on the transient shaper to find the sweet spot. It’s not always about the fastest attack; you want a punch that sounds “nice and punchy” without being overly clicky or unnatural. Unlike the “Ring” track, this “Attack” track generally doesn’t need aggressive EQ – its job is to deliver pure impact.

Blending for Snare Perfection: Bringing It All Together

Now you have your main snare track, your dedicated “Ring” track, and your dedicated “Attack” track. The final step is to blend these three signals together tastefully. There are no hard and fast rules for levels; it all depends on what the song and the original snare performance need.

Jens also briefly mentions pairing this with the bottom snare microphone. While he doesn’t dive deep into it here, it’s another layer you can incorporate.

A Quick Pro Tip on Phase (and Oversampling)

Here’s a subtle but important detail Jens shared: when doing parallel processing, especially with plugins that might use oversampling, phase relationships can get a little tricky. To ensure everything stays cohesive, he sometimes puts a plugin (even on its default setting, doing nothing sonically) on the main snare track. This can help ensure that the oversampling filters in various plugins across the parallel tracks are “in phase” with each other, leading to a cleaner blend. It’s these small details that often separate good mixes from great ones.

Why This Parallel Approach Kicks Ass

So, why go to all this trouble instead of just EQing and compressing the main snare?

• Surgical Control: You get incredibly fine-tuned, independent control over the two most crucial elements of your snare sound. Want more smack without making the sustain disappear? Easy. Need more body without losing the transient definition? Done.
• Problem Solver: This technique is a lifesaver if you’re dealing with a drummer who has inconsistent rimshots or a snare that just doesn’t sound “edgy or smacky enough,” as Jens puts it.
• Versatility: While Jens demonstrates this on naturally recorded drums, he mentions you could absolutely try this on samples too, to further customize their character.
• A Different Sonic Experience: The result is often a “completely different experience” than what you can achieve by processing a single track. The parallel tracks add their specific character in a way that feels more natural and powerful.

This parallel snare technique is a fantastic tool to have in your mixing arsenal, offering a level of control that can truly elevate your drum mixes from good to phenomenal. It’s the kind of in-depth, practical knowledge that producers like Jens Bogren bring to the table.

Want to see Jens Bogren apply this technique and many more while mixing a full Leprous song from scratch? Check out the full Leprous Nail The Mix session to watch him work his magic. At Nail The Mix, we bring you behind the console with the world’s best producers every month, giving you the raw multitracks and the chance to learn their unique workflows. If you’re serious about taking your heavy music productions to the next level, it’s time to Unlock Your Sound: Mixing Modern Metal Beyond Presets and see how the pros do it.