Snare Ring

A metallic, "designed" snare built from ring modulation rather than a physical drum. Two sine oscillators are multiplied together to make a dense, clangy cloud of inharmonic partials, and a short noise crack rides on top. Reach for it when you want an industrial, electro, or sci-fi snare/clap that a 808 or 909 can't give you.

How it works

Ring modulation multiplies two sines, producing new partials at the sum and difference of their frequencies (fA ± fB). When the two oscillators sit at a non-integer Ratio, those partials don't line up into a musical harmonic series — so instead of a pitched tone you get bell-like, metallic clang. That ring-mod body is struck with a fast decay envelope, and a separate highpassed burst of noise adds the transient snap.

Controls

  • Level — base hit strength (the loudness knob); nothing needs patching for a

full hit.

  • Pitch — frequency of the first oscillator, 100–400 Hz. Sets where the

metallic cloud sits.

  • Ratio — the character knob, 1–4. This is the ratio of the second

oscillator to the first; because it's continuous (not locked to whole numbers) it sweeps from tuned-ish through increasingly clangy, bell-like, and dissonant.

  • Decay — how long the metallic body rings, 0.05–0.5 s. Short is a tight

metallic tick; longer is a splashy, resonant clang.

  • Snappy — level of the highpassed noise crack layered on the body.
  • Tone — brightness of that snap (its highpass cutoff, 500–6000 Hz). Low

keeps the noise thick and dirty; high makes it thin and sizzly.

Attenuverters

Each bends its CV input into a param (negative = inverted); at 0 the matching input does nothing, so the knobs above rule.

  • Vel — Velocity/accent CV → Level.
  • Ratio — CV → Ratio. Modulate it for evolving, clangy metal — an

envelope or slow LFO makes every hit a different bell.

  • Snappy — CV → Snappy (accent the crack per hit).

Inputs & outputs

  • Trig — a gate/trigger; each rising edge fires the snare.
  • Vel — velocity/accent CV. Scaled by the Vel attenuverter and added to

Level (so unpatched, or with Vel at 0, the Level knob alone sets loudness).

  • Ptch — 1V/oct; shifts both oscillators together.
  • Ratio CV / Snappy CV — modulation inputs, each scaled by its attenuverter

(±10 V = full range).

  • Out — the snare, at ±5 V.

Tips

  • Sweep Ratio by hand while triggering to find sweet spots — the clangy,

inharmonic zones make great industrial claps and rim shots.

  • Patch a per-step CV into Ratio CV so a drum line rings a different metallic

tone on each hit.

  • Short Decay + high Tone gives a tight electro tick; long Decay with

a low Ratio gets closer to a resonant, gong-like body.