Using snare drum room samples in Cubase

Want to give your snare that colossal, wide, and powerful sound that cuts through a dense metal mix? Joey Sturgis, renowned metal producer and co-founder of Nail The Mix, often employs augmented stereo snare room samples to achieve just that. In a detailed walkthrough, Joey showcased this technique while mixing the Vesta Collide song "Seven," revealing how he adds that extra dimension to his snare drums. This isn't just about slapping on a generic reverb; it’s about meticulous control and creative sample layering within Cubase.

Why Bother with Stereo Snare Rooms?

The core idea here is to inject serious power and stereo width into your snare sound. Instead of relying solely on the close mics or a single reverb, creating dedicated stereo room sample tracks gives you a much larger, more immersive snare presence. Think of it as building a custom acoustic space specifically for your snare, one that you can shape and control precisely.

Prepping Your Cubase Session for Snare Domination

Before you even think about loading samples, getting your session organized is key. Joey’s method involves a bit of prep work to ensure maximum flexibility.

Multiple Tracks for Multiple Hits

First up, Joey duplicates his main MIDI snare track multiple times, creating dedicated stereo tracks for different aspects of the room sound. He mentions tracks like "snare room, crack snare room, hard snare room, medium snare room, soft." This multi-track approach allows for nuanced control over how different velocities and articulations trigger the room samples.

Crucial Cubase Setting: "Automation Follows Events"

This is a big one. Before you start copying your MIDI snare performance to these new room tracks, you must enable "Automation Follows Events" in Cubase (found under the Edit menu). Why? Because any velocity changes, mutes, or other MIDI automation you’ve painstakingly programmed on your main snare track needs to come along for the ride. If you forget this, you’ll lose all that detail, and your room tracks won't accurately reflect the nuances of the original performance.

Making Flams Work with Room Samples

Flams can be tricky, especially when you're layering them with big room sounds. If not handled correctly, they can turn into a muddy mess or an overly aggressive, machine-gun like attack.

Joey's Take on Flam Velocities

Joey has a specific philosophy for programming flams, regardless of what some drummers might say! He treats the first hit of the flam as the loudest, with the second hit programmed one velocity level below (e.g., hard then medium). This approach, he finds, translates best when working with samples and building a powerful sound.

Flam Timing: Player vs. Grid

When it comes to the timing of flams, Joey generally prefers to keep the drummer's original feel if it's solid. However, if a drummer's flams are inconsistent or you're doing full replacement, he suggests that a 32nd triplet often sounds natural for many tempos. For "Seven," the drummer's performance was good, so the original 32nd note flams were kept, giving them a slightly spacier, thicker feel. It’s a musical choice, and he advises using your ears, especially as tempo can drastically change how different note divisions feel.

Why Flams Need Special Attention for Rooms

When these flams trigger room samples, having two full-velocity (hard) hits right next to each other can be complete overkill. The combined energy in the room can be overwhelming. To combat this, even after programming the initial flam (e.g., hard-medium), Joey might go back to the room sample tracks and pull down the velocities of the flam hits even further to prevent them from becoming too intense.

Efficient Workflow: Duplicating Your Snare Performance

Once "Automation Follows Events" is on, you're ready to populate your new stereo room tracks.

The Magic of "Paste in Place" (Alt+V)

Joey selects all the MIDI events on his main snare track, hits Control+C (or Cmd+C on Mac) to copy, then clicks on the first stereo room track and uses Alt+V (Option+V on Mac). This "Paste in Place" command is a lifesaver, as it pastes the events directly below the original, maintaining their timeline position perfectly.

Quick Automation Sanity Check

After pasting, it's wise to quickly reveal the automation lanes on your new room tracks. Make sure the velocity automation copied correctly and there’s nothing obviously weird or broken. For instance, you want to ensure that if a hit was loud on the main snare, it’s correspondingly represented in the room track's MIDI, and quiet ghost notes are also translated.

Loading and Tweaking Your Snare Room Samples

Now for the fun part: loading up those room samples. Joey uses Drumagog in the video, but the principles apply to most multi-sample drum VSTs.

Choosing Your Weapons: The Right Room Samples

Joey auditions a few snare room samples before settling on one he likes. This is subjective, but you're generally looking for samples that complement your main snare and provide the desired spatial characteristics.

Matching Sampler Settings for Consistency

He copies the Drumagog instance from his main snare track to the new room tracks. This ensures that basic settings like Z-level (which he sets to 4 for the room samples in this instance) and other foundational parameters are consistent. Then, he loads the chosen stereo room samples into each instance.

Leveraging Multi-Layered Samples

Modern drum samplers often use multiple velocity layers to capture the natural dynamics of a drum. Joey’s chosen room snare has five layers, while his main snare sample might have four. This difference isn't a problem; the key is having enough layers to create a dynamic and realistic room response. You'll then map these layers across your hard, medium, and soft room tracks.

Fine-Tuning for Rolls and Soft Hits

This is where the granular control really shines. During a snare roll, if the room samples sound too overpowering or machine-gun like, Joey dives in. He might turn down the volume of the samples triggered by softer hits within the roll or even experiment with different sample layers. For instance, on the softest hits, he might try using the very bottom layer of samples from his chosen room sound, or even a completely different, perhaps drier, sample to clean things up. This kind of detailed sound design is much easier when you've separated out your velocity ranges onto different tracks.

The Real Advantage: Unparalleled Sonic Control

Why go through all this trouble of creating multiple tracks and meticulously adjusting MIDI velocities for room samples? The answer is control.

Customizing Every Nuance

This setup allows you to make incredibly specific decisions. For example:

• Soft Hits: Don't want any room sound on your ghost notes for a tighter feel? Just mute the "soft snare room" track or turn down its volume significantly.
• Different Samples for Different Dynamics: You could decide that for soft hits, you want to use a completely different, shorter room sample, or even a close-mic'd sample blended in subtly, rather than just a quieter version of your main room sound.
• Targeted Processing: Each room track (hard, medium, soft) can have its own EQ or compression if needed, giving you even finer control over the tonal balance and dynamics of your room sound.

Sculpting a Tighter, More Professional Drum Sound

By having this level of control, you can avoid the common pitfalls of generic room reverbs, like washy, undefined snare sounds, or rolls that turn into a boomy mess. You can precisely dictate how much "room" each part of the snare performance gets, leading to a much more polished and professional result. This is the kind of detailed work that separates good mixes from great ones.

Building Bigger Snares, One Sample at a Time

Augmenting your snare with dedicated stereo room samples, as demonstrated by Joey Sturgis, is a fantastic way to add serious power, width, and professional polish to your metal mixes. By carefully setting up your tracks in Cubase, managing flam velocities, and leveraging the power of multi-layered samples in plugins like Drumagog, you gain incredible control over your snare's spatial characteristics. It’s about more than just making it loud; it's about crafting a sound that truly serves the song.

These techniques offer a glimpse into the detailed processes used by top-tier producers. If you're serious about taking your metal productions to the next level and want to learn directly from the pros who mix your favorite albums, check out Nail The Mix. Each month, you get access to real multi-tracks from massive songs and watch producers like Joey Sturgis, Will Putney, and Jens Bogren mix them from scratch, explaining every plugin, every decision. Want a deeper dive into modern metal mixing beyond just presets? Our Unlock Your Sound course is the perfect place to start. Stop guessing and start learning the methods that work, directly from the source. Visit Nail The Mix today and transform your mixes.