Designing a TR-808 style snare drum from scratch

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No drum machine is really complete without a punchy, snappy snare. Together with the kick, it creates the rhythmic backbone for most grooves.
So in my ongoing quest for creating a Roland-inspired DIY modular drum machine, I knew I had to come up with a snare circuit that would complement the kick and hi-hat I‘ve already designed. After a lot of fine tuning, I landed on a circuit that can emulate a TR-606, TR-808 or TR-909 snare. If you want to build along, here's the bill of materials:
RESISTORS
1M x2
910k x1
470k x1
120k x1
100k x7
47k x3
39k x1
33k x2
27k x1
22k x5
10k x2
1k x2
470 x1
330 x1
CAPACITORS
1 uF x1
470 nF x2
33 nF x3
10 nF x2
2.2 nF x2
1 nF x2
POTENTIOMETERS (ALL LINEAR)
100k x3
5k x1
1k x1
DIODES
1N4148 x4
TRANSISTORS
BC548 x4
BC558 x2
CHIPS
TL074 (quad op amp) x1
TL072 (dual op amp) x1
Chapters
00:00 Intro & Sound Demo
02:55 Percussive Oscillator & Decay Control
06:43 Attack Stage
09:36 White Noise Generator & VCA
14:39 High Pass Filter & Mixer
18:19 Control Voltage (Pitch/Snappy)
21:20 Final Demo & Outro

[@Ezkie]

I find learning about circuits much easier if it's dealing with audible sound, so I'm genuinely grateful you create these videos.

[@bathedincloudsofblood]

pretty sure thats a known teaching trick, if i remember right. helps u remember by giving ur brain more inputs at once. ive never been able to recall info on electronics better than i can from these vids, you're right

[@scrummyvision]

they're really, really good. I finally understood transistor biasing!

[@geliasr2562]

I know that Brazilian Real is quite devalued against Dollar. But it comes from heart!

[@MoritzKlein0]

hey thanks @geliasr2562, i appreciate it!

[@austinma8586]

The secret to learning true circuit design is just watching Moritz Klein videos (mandatory in every EE undergraduate curriculum by 2030)

[@AM-ui9mc]

My great sadness in the synth world is that so few designs let you apply CV to attack and decay. In my opinion the most useful expression to modulate. I cannot understand why it’s often so overlooked You are a great engineer and teacher. Love your work

[@MoritzKlein0]

you're right, that would be useful. i'll see what i can do for the next percussion circuit!

[@michelnielsen2855]

would be awesome with a new 'EG2' module with CV inputs for attack and decay.

[@maxmaxington5873]

Get into modular

[@dustmighte]

That demo at the beginning is true peak electro love it

[@matzer8846]

This "Labor" device is pretty cool ... great for us lazy prototypers

[@nickwallette6201]

If I had a breadboard for every time I wished I had a test harness for audio circuits, I would have an empty breadboard. Maybe.

[@Zach010ROBLOX]

Do you have a Q&A about your background? How did you gain so much intuition about filters/amps/pulse modulators to use in circuits? Do you have a catalog in your mind of the different options, and if so where did you learn all these different circuits? I've just graduated as an EE from college and I understand all the individual components and I can reason the purpose of certain circuits by eye, but I don't have the experience or catalog of knowledge to pull upon to feel confident designing something myself.

[@MoritzKlein0]

it just all accumulated over time. i started off making very simple little oscillators, filters, amplifiers and then gradually increased the complexity from there. you always encounter the same issues over and over again, so i found solutions for those that worked well enough. it's like building a muscle i guess! what's key (i think) is to always have an achievable goal that you work towards - just trying to absorb pure concepts never worked for me.

[@anexoworkshop]

Please create an analog electronics course, I'd be more than pleased to pay for it.

[@MoritzKlein0]

what would you like to see covered in a course like that?

[@anexoworkshop]

@@MoritzKlein0 An introduction course to analog electronics. Starting from the very basics from amplifiers, filters (I know that you already have a few videos on it), oscillators, analog-to-digital converters, etc. Explaining the necessary math behind it with the excellent video graphics that you always come up with. It's hard for me to grasp how do you come up with the circuits. Like the Bridged-T Oscillator, how did you know that the components had to be arranged like that? Where did the 33nF value come from? It just seems so amazing to me that you think of a specific sound and know right away what kind of circuitry would emulate that.

[@AuratticStride]

These are some of the coolest videos around - combining analogue circuits, audio theory, great explanations and engineering principles. Every video is super cool and enjoyable! Keep up the great work! If I could suggest some future ideas for videos, it would be designing drum synths beyond what you see in a typical kit, so something like a timpani or bongo or steel drum synth would be super cool

[@MoritzKlein0]

that's a great pointer, thank you.

[@fedorkirichkov5996]

the demos at the beginning of the video always sound amazing

[@BosleyStarr]

Woohoo, always happy to see another Moritz Klein video.

[@Slashx24]

I just finished building a version of your kick circuit today with a few mods and was playing around with a snare sound so now I get to see how close to yours I got haha

[@chupathingy5862]

Moritz Klein. Mild mannered breadboarder by day, dance floor assassin by night. That was an awesome intro track.

[@huxley_a5288]

Moritz, you are the man. Thank you for the effort you put in to teach us audio electronics design. Have a great weekend!

[@marcusstenbeck]

I really appreciate the attention to detail in animations for explaining what happens in the circuits. You must also be an animation geek like me. 😄

[@MoritzKlein0]

maybe :)

[@a.k.8731]

What tool do u use for such animatoins?

[@MoritzKlein0]

@@a.k.8731 an ipad app called adobe fresco :)

[@polosandoval]

I’m probably never going to make any of these but I really enjoy learning from you and your videos thanks 🙏

[@sturdyblock]

As always, fantastic stuff.

[@vincivamos2118]

This blows my mind. I like that my studies from university can be used for understanding sound synthesis and that it basically boils down to some engineering. Very nice presentation of the concepts! Looking forward to your future Videos.

[@Dragonmastur24]

This is the Red Means Recording of analog circuits, and I'm all for it!

[@erbro]

Your videos and explanation are absolutely brilliant. I never understood the full working of every component in a circuit so completely as like when you explain it. Thanks!

[@forrestbaer]

Great video & presentation, the Erica Labor looks really nice, glad to see something like this come along since the Casper Electronics OMSynth isn't available any longer.

[@MoritzKlein0]

exactly what we were thinking :)

[@R.K.994]

I love it when art and technology come together

[@gmfCoding]

I really enjoy your animations and styles. Nice work!

[@astrobearmusic1977]

I eagerly anticipate all of your drum synthesis videos. You now have a kick, hat, and snare - almost a full kit! I don’t do diy synths but I still find these fascinating to watch - and they have helped me do some analog modeled patches which I am very happy about! Maybe a clap next?

[@MoritzKlein0]

i think i‘ll focus on effects & sequencing for the next two videos!

[@cusemoneyman]

​@@MoritzKlein0 do you have plans to build a module for toms at any point? I'll be picking up all the drum modules soon, just curious about future modules. Thank you so much for all of these amazing resources

[@MoritzKlein0]

@@cusemoneyman yeah, i‘ll do a video on a 909-style tom - but the next one is a bucket brigade delay :)

[@cusemoneyman]

@@MoritzKlein0 That's going to be awesome. Which BBD chip are you planning to build the module around?

[@MoritzKlein0]

@@cusemoneyman probably the MN3207, but my main focus will be to explain the inner workings of BBD chips in general!

[@coco805]

Such beautiful diagramming! Greatvideo

[@Linguae_Music]

Thank you Moritz ^~^ Hope you're having a good one!

[@zerstaerker]

Nice to see your videos get more advanced as well as you're coming up with all that great stuff. (Labor)

[@hi-ccowboy7983]

I look forward to these videos more than you can imagine. 😀

[@laminatedmoth8282]

oh damn, cannot wait to get my hands on the labor at 5:00

[@misterbonzoid5623]

Excellent quality work. Thank you.

[@ZbyszekJot]

I love your current flow animations :)

[@Galova]

Oh thank you so much for this video! I love all your videos and I find it very educative. You explain how electronic parts work here and why they do what they do and you also allow us to hear how it sounds when it works. I do not know any other person who even bother to explain, not talking about such in-depth representation with comments. Now I wonder how 909 snare works and why, because it sounds so much different. And there is no way to confuse it with other snares by ear. I hope you explain it too.

[@FaBianrecord]

Dude, it sounds amazing!, Love it.

[@banksideleopards2791]

Thanks for yours Drums synth project, it's very cool. I would to see a 909 modular seq in the future. It could be super cool to play it with the already existant modules

[@MoritzKlein0]

will definitely do a drum sequencer!

[@CHEpachilo]

Difference between acoustic and electronic snare is that acoustic snare always has bunch of interesting ringy resonances, similar to what you did with hi-hat. Also acoustic snare tends to have a 6k resonance at a stick contacting the plastic. It would be interesting project to try to implement it to electronic snare, it would made it much more aggressive and characterful. Btw, love sound of your CV controlled pitch, it sounds really natural.

[@modal-kkurt4986]

Love the your videos as always. Keep up the good work!

[@LautaroGracia]

Love your videos as always

[@RelznirZ]

I come here for the electrical engineering but the demo was beautiful

[@johnniefujita]

What a beautiful synth pad there... loved the music...

[@vitamins-and-iron]

love these videos so much

[@jishk8980]

Hey Moritz just wanna say that you are outputting some of my favorite content right now. Keep doing what you're doing! It is truly inspiring.

[@MoritzKlein0]

thank you, really glad to hear!

[@tino5877]

Love this Channel! Keep up the amazing work.

[@i_never_asked_for_an_alias]

Dang, you stepped up your game from last time i watched. Good stuff !

[@mephistosprincipium]

this is so fun and interesting to watch

[@szymonwieczorek2667]

Cool sounding snare

[@ross302ci]

That opening demo was so good

[@JustPyroYT]

Amazing! And congrats for hitting 100k ❤❤

[@MoritzKlein0]

thank you!

[@petrokemikal]

This is awesome, If you really wanted to make it sound like an 808, all youd have to do is add the second detuned osc that makes up the overall tom sound, I think then the tone control knob on an 808 was just a blend or mix potentiometer between the lower and higher pitches.. The key to getting it to sound like an 808 was the correct dutuned pitch of the 2 tom oscillators..If your off by a semitone then it sounds terrible.. They were brilliant engineers..

[@djsoulfeggio]

I think it sounds great - wow

[@AytacKORKMAZ604]

Great job!

[@ellopropello]

hey, that labor thing looks really interesting as well :) and i guess it is time to get the soldering iron out again. nice job there

[@MoodyRiffs]

Let's goo I was waiting for it !!

[@aksela6912]

The tuned part of the drum sounds a bit too "clean" to me. It clashes with the pitched sounds in your opening demo. What would happen if you added some diode clipping or similar to that part to add some harmonics? Maybe there are other ways to "hide" the pitch information.

[@Merrick_Carey]

Your channel is so sick. Most awesome music vids on KZbin atm.

[@netluci]

I wish I had your videos when I startet sdiy. Highly educational and fun videos. Weiter so!

[@PCBWay]

That's IMPRESSIVE!

[@simonburns1055]

Prophet 6 really kicks

[@2.Plus.2.Equals.5]

This is great stuff

[@TooSlowTube]

Good stuff. For the noise source you can also use a Zener diode in the usual reverse bias configuration - i.e. the way it's used in a simple regulator. I happened to read about that recently. Since it's designed for that, it may last longer than a poor mistreated transistor.

[@MoritzKlein0]

good call. when i first designed my white noise circuit, i actually tried a couple zener diodes but couldn't get any noise out of them. would be worth it going back to that though!

[@a.k.8731]

WOW! looking farward to LABOR project!

[@Scrogan]

Very cool. I’m not sure how CV usually goes (i.e. if it can go below 0V), but it would be neat if you could change the pitch and duration of the snare both up and down with CV control. A more resonant snare filter with a variable frequency could be cool too, to add a pitch to the noise, but that sounds like a lot more work. Labor sounds really cool, I love mini prototyping workstations like that or Jumperless. I’ve got an old Heathkit digital logic trainer myself, gives me a nice split rail supply for audio experiments, plus buttons and toggles and LEDs. The name reminds me of Patlabor.

[@m.a.6478]

The labor is very cool! I'm currently working on something similar for guitar pedals ;-)

[@fmiramar]

Great again!!!!

[@divad78]

Please tell me Labor will be a DIY kit. Either way looks awesome.

[@MoritzKlein0]

yup, it'll be a DIY kit! though some parts of it (mostly the SMT stuff i think) will come pre-soldered.

[@JoseRibeiro-it2xu]

Perfeito - eu amo música e eletrônica, Obrigado.

[@mmilerngruppe]

I really like your carpet, would love to see it more often.

[@Sycokay]

This is awesome. I want a "Labor" too....

[@schizophrenicghost]

Thanks!

[@MoritzKlein0]

hey thanks @schizophrenicghost, i appreciate it! hope you have a great weekend 💖

[@duckghetto]

Thanks for such helpfull vid! Amazing work with images and describing complex things in simple manner. Maybe something FM for next series, FM Perc?:)

[@cylam9188]

Me: wow, this is awesome My brain: what the hack these theories are?!

[@tobiasschulte5075]

First of all, very nice series! Thank you for your effort in creating these videos. Do you get your designs made somewhere? If you do, would you mind making a video/series about your process, creating your schematics, layouting etc.? I think quite a lot of people would be interested in that, especially as it's quite cheap and easy to order your own pcbs nowadays.

[@MoritzKlein0]

these days Erica Synths are doing all the PCB work for me. i might get back into doing my own layouts at some point, though.

[@user-hz4tc2pf3x]

You should distort the snare at the final mixer stage. Maybe add a 1khz bump to the noise if it's possible.

[@christiantorma2440]

Viel zu geil ❤danke man 😎🤘😊✌️

[@growupjohnny9374]

I just wanna hangout and play with synths for hours

[@PorchBass]

Changes in trigger length can vary the strike to the filter too. Can't wait for the full system! Sounds good. Don't the roland machines use two pitched filters?

[@morgan0]

i wonder if you could use a pot to send some amount of the tone signal into the noise path before the “vca”, which would then bias the distortion and hopefully make the tone have low end freqs which align with the tone part, and a bit more grit. also, personally i feel like snares should have some rolloff on the highs

[@nilsbarth3138]

I’d buy the demo song ❤

[@stoatystoat174]

Thanks for your videos ❤ I have a Drumbrute Impact and i was wandering if igot the 'EDU DIY Snare Drum' i could use the snare output of the Drumbrute to trigger the EDU DIY Snare Drum. so i would have an interesting new snare. I don't really know anything about euro rack stuff so sorry if thats a daft question

[@rockgvmt]

PLEASE DO A TR909-TYPE BASS DRUM!!! (the one with 2 VCO)

[@MoritzKlein0]

will eventually do that, but next percussion voice will most likely be a 909-style tom :)

[@MJLouer]

Hi Moritz. Great module. Again as usual👍😁 I have build it but would like to know if the 5k en 1k potentiometers could be replaced with 10k potmeters?? Are there any resistors that i need to change in order to use these pots, or can i just replace them? Thanks in advance for your advice. Kind regards and have a nice day

[@g.gustafson1822]

Intro track went STUPID hard

[@kimjunkmoon2298]

Adding an envelope to the noise highpass cutoff would allow for alot more flexibility in the snare sound. What's next from the drum machine, cymbals?

[@MoritzKlein0]

true, not sure how easy it is to make a sallen-key high pass voltage controllable though. would be worth investigating! i think for my next video, i‘ll build a bucket brigade delay.

[@axymoulm]

Geile Sache! Klingt sehr authentisch. Cooles Feature wäre vielleicht noch, wenn man die Welle vom Bridge-T-Netzwerk clippen könnte. Idealerweise zwischen Sinus und Triangle wechseln… Aber dann geht es wahrscheinlich nicht mit einem Bridged-T, oder?

[@kristianstepancic3440]

What would you recommend for design of a fixed stable cca 50 Hz oscillator and its automatic gain control? Wien bridge, t-bridge or maybe phase shift?

[@kevinmcdonald7648]

🎉🎉🎉

[@prinzbach]

The first track is great! Do you have a Bandcamp?

[@IronMayonnaise]

ultra. rad.

[@akiliinstitute6819]

How do we get the other gear you use in the video to follow along? Thanks for the content.

[@MoritzKlein0]

you mean the prototyping board? it‘ll release in a couple weeks - i‘ll post an update on my channel!

[@ChristianSchmid]

Bist du zufällig auf der Fusion??? Also auch zu Musik machen??

[@MoritzKlein0]

leider nicht :)

[@Gruftgrabbler]

Wichtigste Frage von allen 😅

[@elluisito000]

This so beautiful. What opams do u use? TL074? 😊

[@MoritzKlein0]

yup, TL074 and TL072!

[@neilclay5835]

Hi. I've long had a dream of building a TB-303 out of valves - I think it might sound awesome. I thought that perhaps I could take the 303 schematic and convert it into valve based circuits. Have you ever built a synth or tone generator using valves?

[@buzz8711]

I want to try and build this for myself. How would I power it?

[@silkproduction]

brilliant! what about a clap? :)

[@MoritzKlein0]

clap is coming at some point! just gotta figure out how to do it without an OTA.

[@drewfrcee2023]

This is probably a dumb question, but for someone who kind of knows circuits and not much about electronic music and mixing and so forth, how are these sounds produced? is there a speaker he has things hooked up to? I want to build the snare, kick, and hi-hat combo he has shown as a demo for students to get them interested in engineering, and i am not sure if the sound waves he shows are being amplified externally or if the sound just resonates from somewhere within the circuit. please help me if you can!

[@flounderflounder6833]

Id buy the labor

[@TheAtomstrike]

shouldn't the drum signal modulate the noise?

[@zerstaerker]

Does it matter if the BC548/558 are B or C?

[@MoritzKlein0]

no, should not make a difference!

[@-arm-5116]

Hi, I want to realize a circuit like this but I've a problem. How do you generate dual alimentation? Converting a positive DC in a negative or using a dual power supply?

[@MoritzKlein0]

you can either use a dual power supply, or wire up two 9V batteries to generate +9V/0V/-9V. for instructions on how that works, check this document, page 6: www.ericasynths.lv/media/SNARE_MANUAL.pdf

[@-arm-5116]

@@MoritzKlein0 I thank you so much man. I appreciate it.

[@-arm-5116]

@@MoritzKlein0 sorry, last question. Do we generate a mono sound, right?

[@MoritzKlein0]

@@-arm-5116yes!

[@blenderbuch]

Wow that prototype board. Will it be on superbooth?

[@MoritzKlein0]

yeah, stop by the Erica Synths booth to check it out! i'm also doing an electronics & circuit design basics workshop using the Labor in case you're interested: www.superbooth.com/en/events/details/diy-workshop-erica-synths.html

[@blenderbuch]

@@MoritzKlein0 I will be there at the first day for the German make magazin. Would love to have a chat with you.

[@MoritzKlein0]

@@blenderbuch sounds great! feel free to message me on instagram (@moritzklein0) to coordinate!

[@diegoceballosrios3437]

is the sound demo an actual song?!

[@MoritzKlein0]

not yet!