Hello,
Just trying to come up with some ways to duplicate some of the Snare roll effects I have heard on a few songs.
 
It sometimes sounds like the notes are going from quarter note hits to 64th note hits.
Also sometimes it rises in pitch as it happens.
I saw somewhere that it is called a Snare Riser or something like that.
 
Appreciate any tips or tricks.
Thanks!

Well, I tried something using the piano roll and it worked alright.
Using the pencil line tool I drew in successive quarter to 64th notes and that seemed to cover it.
The resulting sound was sort of static though.  Just looking for something a little more dynamic.
 
What I have heard is using some sort of pitch envelopes to bring an even more interesting effect.  Most of these demonstrations used Fruity Loops.
 
Any additional tips or concepts would be welcome.

I've had some pretty good results doing the following using BFD Eco and the PRV:
 
1) Alternate between various types of snare hits. Like hit, half, quarter, whatever you have available really. Sometimes you may also have access to different stick types like brushes. Try tossing some of those in there.
 
2) Disable *snap when putting in the notes. Stagger and overlap them almost randomly using the different types of hits. If you have an anti machine gun mode on your drum sequencer that helps too. When I've done rolls the PRV looks pretty messy and it takes a lot of trial and error. Make sure you use the harder midi hits to accent the beats or wherever you feel the should be an accent.
 
3) Mess with the velocities so no two hits are the same. Again use the higher velocities for the accents of the roll.
 
Unfortunately the program and quality of samples you use will likely play a big factor. For example the SD3 samples and SD3 itself that comes with Sonar don't have as much depth as say the Andy John's kit for SD3 and even less than using BFD with the Rock Legends kit (what I've been using almost exclusively now). If you have X2 you should have access to the Rock Legends kit for SD3 through the Content Club (it's the current freebie) but I haven't tried it yet. If it is as nice as the one for BFD then the snare seems to be pretty good for this type of work. It's still hard to beat a real drummer doing a real roll but with a bit of work and patience you can get pretty close. Cheers.
 
Edit: I originally typed audio snap but meant the grid snapping feature. Just been thinking about audio snap too much lately. ;-)

Two things are necessary to make this work: a drum sampler with round-robin samples plus MIDI velocity scaling (and optionally MIDI volume automation). Even then, it can be tricky.
 
When you perform this effect on a real drum, each new hit partially dampens the one before it. Each hit doesn't just play out through its normal volume curve, but is cut short by the next hit. Many drum samplers allow you to specify polyphony, limiting the number of simultaneous samples. Setting this to a low value helps define each hit and makes the drum sound more realistic. Unfortunately, you cannot automate polyphony on most samplers; you can, however, use a separate instance of the drum library.
 
Scaling velocity is an easy technique that you can either do manually or with the Process -> Scale Velocity tool.

If you provide a sample of what you want to do, I could probably do it for you and convert to midi.  Just give me a holler if you want.
 
Rimshot
 

Most of the 3rd party drum samplers and drum-machines should suffice for us purists ... who still actually luv drum-rolls.  (I can't believe how many drum-rolls I've toyed with in so many songs)
 
But consider all the unholy rex libraries (with Sonar) with all the drum-beatz mutations; hahahahah!  
 
OTOH, Rimshot's offering seems great ... especially if he could supply both the MIDI and his performance-recording (with your preferred ballpark tempo)

Jamstix is one of the drummer VST's that will still use rolls in what it does. I often have to edit the tracks it creates in certain styles and with certain of it's drummers due to rolls.....
 
Just as I edit them out, you can edit them in easy. most of it's parameters are automatable so drum head tuning is likely to be as well.