Are snares and kick supposed to be triggered at the same time or is it normal to delay the snare by about 0.01ms?

timing differences is rather tough to control and i personally couldn't get the samples to sit right, just by nudging them.


I have a drum machine/sampler, that allows me to adjust the decay and attack of the samples. I also use layers to create one drum sound, as well as rendering out the layers into one take,and then slightly adjusting the attack and decay even more.


You can make a drum beat how ever you want it to sound like, but if we're talking technicality here, it'd be wise to mix your song with a 4x4 beat in mind. Then you have that option available to you. Unless you definitely know you won't be having kick and snare on top of each other. Use the reference point to mix with given the song's components.

i personally say they are supposed to be triggered at the same time and sometimes possibly sidechain to the kick so it comes in cleaner

It depends on the genre.

In progressive house yes.
In uplifting trance yes.
In dubstep no.
In d&b no.

See where I'm going here?

It depends on the genre.

In progressive house yes.
In uplifting trance yes.
In dubstep no.
In d&b no.

See where I'm going here?

BUT YOU'RE SUPPOSE TO BREAK THE MOLD THOUGH.


plus there's a few tunes in the d and b and dubstep genre where kicks and snares(or claps) do smash at the same time....


It just depends on on what you want in your track. Because you will have to compensate for a particular reference point with pattern creation or sound design.

I heard somewhere that snares hitting slightly before the kick contribute to a quicker, more tense feel to the song, while snares/claps hitting slightly after the kick contribute to a more slow and relaxed feel.

This has to deal with the fact that the human ear is really good at noticing when something is out of place. In fact, from an evolutionary standpoint we have one of the most developed senses of pattern recognition of any species. So those minor deviations are detected but not really consciously perceived.

You can apply that same sort of timing discrepancy to any instrument, by pretending that the person playing it is either energetic or lazy. If your drummer is really excited, even if they've got a great sense of timing they're gonna be charged up to hit that snare drum - so they will jump a bit ahead of the beat, making everything feel a bit faster as he just wants to get to that next snare hit ASAP. If your drummer is feeling lazy (or maybe he got too stoned before the show), he'll be playing catch-up with the beat and lackadaisically taps the snare drum when he needs to.

The real question is do they fit together well in the specific case you're asking about.