Snare 909

The TR-909 snare — the bright, crisp, noise-forward snare that runs house and techno. Where the Snare 808 leads with two tuned resonators, the 909 leads with noise: a short pitched body sits under a big, filtered noise crack.

How it works

Two short triangle "shell mode" oscillators give a pitched body (kept low in the mix). The star is white noise, lowpassed by Tone for brightness, then split into two separately-enveloped bands — a low "body noise" that follows Decay, and a short highpassed "snap" transient for the initial crack. Snappy sets the overall noise level, Body the pitched thump.

Controls

• Level — base hit strength (the loudness knob).
• Tune — pitch of the triangle body, 100–300 Hz.
• Tone — noise brightness (its lowpass cutoff). Down = dark and thick; up =

bright, hissy, cutting.

• Snappy — level of the noise (the snare's defining sound). This is a

noise-forward snare, so it's high by default.

• Decay — how long the noise rings, 0.05–0.5 s. Short = tight house snap;

longer = an open, splashy snare.

• Body — level of the pitched triangle thump under the noise. Low keeps it

crisp and modern; higher adds tonal weight.

Attenuverters

Each bends its CV input into a param (negative = inverted); at 0 the input does nothing.

• Vel — Velocity/accent CV → Level.
• Tone — CV → Tone (sweep the brightness).
• Snappy — CV → Snappy (accent the crack per hit).

Inputs & outputs

• Trig — a gate/trigger; each rising edge fires the snare.
• Vel — velocity/accent CV → Level (via the Vel attenuverter).
• Ptch — 1V/oct; shifts the triangle body.
• Tone CV / Snappy CV — modulation inputs, each scaled by its attenuverter.
• Out — the snare, at ±5 V.

Tips

• Classic house snare: Snappy high, Body low, short–medium Decay.
• Fatten it: raise Body and lower Tone for a rounder, deeper snare.
• Patch an accent CV into Snappy CV so ghost notes stay soft and downbeats

crack.