In this blog post we are going to look at how to make a snare using Ableton’s simply scrumptious FM synth operator. The main advantage of building your own snare apposed to using a sample is you have full control over how the snare sounds. For example does the snare need more body or sizzle?. Does it need to be longer?. Can the pitch bend be deeper?. And that is just a small number of elements that you can change and through out the tutorial we will see the huge array of sound design possibilities that Ableton presents us when making a snare or in fact any drum sound.

Kick Drum samples are great but you can on can only push and adapt them so far. If you change the pitch to much you can lose the tonality of it. So if you are looking to have full control over your kick drums then maybe you need to think about synthesizing them.