Creating Snare Rolls - basic approach plus extra ideas

To create a basic snare roll using a sample player instrument...

First create a midi part with a snare sample assigned and mapped to a desired key note.
Then assign note on velocity to volume and sequence notes in 16th's with increasing velocity values from approximately 25 to 127 over the length of the midi part.
This will create a basic snare roll that starts quietly and gets louder at the end.

Increase the amplitudes release setting to open the snare samples length whilst being triggered.
This will give the sound a more realistic effect.

For added effect, assign a filters frequency parameter to note on velocity, a lo-pass or band-reject filter works well.
Click to hear an example of a basic snare roll with a small amount of lo-pass filter frequency assigned to note on velocity.
This sample uses a 909 snare sample and a short laser hiQ sample on the same midi note.

To make the roll a bit more exiting try using effects such as flangers or phasers to add a little movement.
Click to hear the same sample with added effects.
In this second example a phaser was used along with a filter plugin and a simple delay. The filter plugin was used via the send bus and set to band pass. An LFO was assigned to filter frequency with a rate of 2 cycles per beat. The filter then had a tight delay of 17ms assigned after it with a high feedback setting to give the subtle metallic sound.

Other ways to enhance the effect of a snare roll are; adding a white noise rush or rise, a filtered breakbeat that surges up under a lo-pass filter, a high resonance sweep or even a second snare roll with a different pattern.