8

Chapter 24 Ultrabeat 401
Creating Snare Drums
The sound of an acoustic snare drum primarily consists of two sound components: the
sound of the drum itself and the buzzing of the snare springs. Try to approximate this
combination in Ultrabeat with a single oscillator and the noise generator.
To create a basic snare drum:
1 Load the Standard Tutorial setting. Deactivate Oscillator 1, and switch Oscillator 2 on (in
phase oscillator mode).
2 To get rid of the sine wave (which is not especially desirable for a snare sound, in
contrast to the bass drum), modulate Osc 2 Pitch with a rapidly vibrating LFO with a
medium Ramp Decay value. To accomplish this, choose LFO 1 in the Mod menu of Osc
2 Pitch. The pitch value for Osc 2 Pitch should be around G#2 and the Mod amount (the
blue Mod control) should be about 3 to 4 octaves higher.
3 Set LFO 1 to a high Rate. Choose a value of 20 for Cycles and –20 for Ramp. The LFO
Waveform parameter should be set to a value of about 0.58, which is a square wave.
4 Use Env 1 to control the volume of Oscillator 2 by setting Vol to the lowest possible
value (–60 dB), choosing Env 1 in the Mod menu and adjusting the modulation
intensity to a point just below its maximum value.
The screenshot shows the settings of Oscillator 2 and Env 1 described in steps 2 and 3.
5 Experiment with different Slope and Asym values to impart a more or less electronic
character on the sound.
6 Turn on the noise generator and control its volume with the same quick envelope used
in Osc 2 Volume.
7 Use the filter parameters of the noise generator to either roughen up, refine, or add
bright frequencies to the noise component of the snare drum sound. Select a LP filter
type, and try a filter frequency between 0.60 and 0.90. Modulate it with LFO 1 that
you’re already using to control the pitch of Oscillator 2.
Note: The snare drum sound is called Snare 1 in the Tutorial Kit, at a pitch of E1.