A buzzing snare can drive you crazy and draw your attention away from the rest of the mix, let alone the drums themselves. Let’s talk how to mitigate snare drum buzz to clean up your drums and mix.
How to Fix Snare Drum Buzz
Snare drum buzz is obviously best addressed before you record the drums, but that won’t help you if you’ve already got a recorded snare with the buzz on it in the mix.
As such, we’ll address how to fix snare drum buzz in both in the recording stage as well as after the fact in the mix if it’s baked in.
Recording
The best time to tackle snare drum buzz is before you record it.
Oftentimes the noisiest buzz comes from the bottom side of the snare, particularly when it’s too loose.
Tightening the bottom surface of the snare will either remove or at least minimize snare drum buzz to the point where you can more effectively clean it up after the fact.
Turn the snare drum tuning key a quarter turn to the right, then hit it again. Oftentimes you can find a sweet spot in these precise quarter turns to seriously attenuate the buzz.
Remember that if the top surface is already in tune with the bottom then you should likewise adjust the top to keep them in tune with one another.
This yields the maximum (natural) sustain from the snare so that you don’t have to supplement it as much in the mix (see my tutorial on how to mix snare for tips on getting more sustain from your snare in the mix through compression, reverb, etc.).
In the Mix
If you’re “stuck” with the snare drum buzz to the extent that it’s already on the recording that you have to mix, you can still attenuate the buzz’s visibility in the drums and overall mix.
It’s best to attenuate the buzzing early on in your processing chain via the EQ so that when you compress your snare you’re not adding more sustain to or drawing out the buzz itself.
To address this via EQ, you need to be aware of the frequency profile of the snare drum as I covered in my snare EQ cheat sheet.
As you can see, the snare drum buzz is predominant in that 3-5k range:
As I mention, a dynamic EQ cut specifically targets the buzzing to not remove more from the clarity and beginnings of the snare’s punchy frequencies than you need.
It’s a subtle difference if you try split testing between making this cut a static and dynamic cut, but it helps to keep your snare a little snappier and more visible in the mix without having to turn up the fader itself by virtue of those transients.
This is a feature of my favorite EQ, the Pro-Q 3 from FabFilter.
You can also grab a free EQ plugin with dynamic functionality like the TDR Nova to create a dynamic EQ cut around that 4k region.
The exact “core” of the buzzing may vary slightly, so sweep a drastic cut to hear what frequency center mutes that buzz the greatest, then dial back the threshold and/or dynamic range (see how to use dynamic EQ for more information) to get a more transparent adjustment.
When you have snare drum buzz which is baked into the recording, depending on the severity of that buzz, you might not be able to eradicate it COMPLETELY without sacrificing a lot of the clarity, punch, and other top end elements of that snare.
It’s oftentimes about finding the best compromise to where you can smooth out the buzz without drastically altering the sound of the snare.
If you can mitigate that snare drum buzz to a point where it’s not drawing the attention away from the rest of the drums and mix, that’s a win.
Otherwise, be aware of the tuning and excessive looseness of the snare head(s) in the future if you have that control before the recording stage.
