This tutorial was previously posted in the An1x groups by myself but I thought it would be nice to put it here as well. When you are fooling around on your synth (or simply following programming instructions like these) always keep playing the patch during creation. In this way you will be able to actually hear and understand what is going on.

The sound we'll make, is the snare you can hear a lot on early gabber and techno tracks. These consist of noise and a very distinct bottom end. We will start with a 130 init voice and select scene 2. (I will use scene 1 in another tutorial to make a nice kick/snare combination) Set the volume to 127, we want to hear this sound now don't we? Set OSC1 to pulse and it's edge to 0, this will create a sine wave. Set pitch decay to 9 and pitch depth to 63. This will emulate the stick hitting the snare drum's skin. The fast drop in pitch will give a distinct click to the sound. Shift the sound -24 semitones. To get that low sound (play the sound at the midrange though) Okay, since it's percussion we need an appropriate amp envelope: attack = 0, decay = 64, sustain = 0, release = 50. These settings will allow you to play the sound with a shorter and a longer decay time.

So, the sound is definitely percussive but a bit wimpy, I hear you think. Turn the feedback knob to 128 and try again! You did check OSC 1's volume is set to 127 did you? Still it's not a snare, it's something *very* close to a half decent kick. Put the noise value to 127 (or anywhere between 80 and 127) So what's next? What about some filtering? I like the sound of the BEF (Band Elimination Filter) best, so choose that and put it at a cut-off of 16 and resonance of about 12. This works best when you sweep it in mixes and seems to attenuate certain frequencies nicely. I know this might sound like bogus but just try it. Finish of by setting the eq to LF=80 boost = +12 to even further boost the bottom end and boost MF at 1k with about 12 db for that classic processed 909 snare sound.

I hope people like this 909 snare and I hope someone will produce an ever better one! Play with the cut off frequency and the amount of noise for a broad range of snares and other percussive sounds. this snare is excellent sample fodder as well. Check out the kick that goes with it too!