Drum Triggers

[ez_willis]

What will I need to trigger my kick and snare? And I mean everything I will need!

I send my drums into a Tascam tm-d1000>RME HDSP 9652>Logic, if it matters.

[Farview]

That depends on what you plan on triggering.

1. You will need triggers, the actual things that you clamp to the drums.
2. Cables
3. A. a drum brain to play the sample when you hit the drum
OR
B. you plug the cable into your interface and record the signal from the trigger, then replace it with drum samples using Drumagog or something else.
OR
C. you use a drum brain to turn your hits into midi info that can play samples in a sequencer.

[ez_willis]

Originally Posted by Farview

then replace it with drum samples using Drumagog or something else.

If I were to use Drumagog, could I not just replace the existing snare hits, or is it better to trigger a seperate hit(to avoid gating, or something?)?

Also, I am a midiot. It would be helpful to avoid midi, but if it's the better route to take, I'd be willing to learn, as long as no one found out.


And if you'd be so kind, could you provide names or links for the trigger and brain.

[ez_willis]

Originally Posted by Farview

That depends on what you plan on triggering.

Snare and kick.

[Cult_Status02]

Originally Posted by ez_willis

If I were to use Drumagog, could I not just replace the existing snare hits, or is it better to trigger a seperate hit(to avoid gating, or something?)?

Also, I am a midiot. It would be helpful to avoid midi, but if it's the better route to take, I'd be willing to learn, as long as no one found out.


And if you'd be so kind, could you provide names or links for the trigger and brain.

I like to mic the snare with a 57 or something, then, you can use a cheaper mic on the snare as well to have a solid track to use Drumagog on. I then like to mix the two to my liking. Obviously, if you like, you can just skip the audio mic (the 57 in this case) and just use a triggering mic. I like to mic up my whole kit as if I'm going to keep the audio tracks, but then I use my old Nady drum mic kit and mic all the drums REALLY close (almost touching the heads) and trigger those tracks if I need to. I put the triggers on all the rack toms, at least, because I have one 57 per pair of toms (between two high toms, and between two mid toms) so I want to be able to trigger the individual toms. But for the snare, kick, and floor tom, I can usually just copy the audio track and trigger that with Drumagog.

Always (in my opinion) copy the audio track and then use Drumagog, I know it can go without saying, but you may want the flexibility back, or find that the trigger didn't translate as well as you thought it would.

Good luck.

[Farview]

Originally Posted by ez_willis

If I were to use Drumagog, could I not just replace the existing snare hits,

Yes you could. A trigger is sometimes easier because there is no bleed from other drums.

Originally Posted by ez_willis

Also, I am a midiot. It would be helpful to avoid midi, but if it's the better route to take, I'd be willing to learn, as long as no one found out.

It's not better, just different. Why exactly do you think you should be using triggers?

Originally Posted by ez_willis

And if you'd be so kind, could you provide names or links for the trigger and brain.

http://www.zzounds.com/item--DEPDDTTKIT
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ALEDM5

[TragikRemix]

Originally Posted by ez_willis

What will I need to trigger my kick and snare? And I mean everything I will need!

I send my drums into a Tascam tm-d1000>RME HDSP 9652>Logic, if it matters.

can you use the friggin search!

god...



firstly,
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ger?sku=449932

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ger?sku=449931

then

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ter?sku=442374

then
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ble?sku=361708

then

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ace?sku=701379

and thennn

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...age?sku=709985

if you an interface, omit the ubs adapter. also, this is for use inside a DAW. DFH runs as a plugin technically,

[Farview]

Originally Posted by Cult_Status02

Always (in my opinion) copy the audio track and then use Drumagog, I know it can go without saying, but you may want the flexibility back, or find that the trigger didn't translate as well as you thought it would.

Good luck.

I always use drumagog as an insert. I never use it as an offline process, so I can change the sound anytime I need to.

[travelin travis]

Originally Posted by ez_willis

Also, I am a midiot. It would be helpful to avoid midi, but if it's the better route to take, I'd be willing to learn, as long as no one found out.

You don't need to know much about midi to make use of it in most applications.

I haven't tried this but it looks very interesting to me: http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=102

That and a couple of triggers/1/4" cables would have you up and running. You would have multi velocity sampling and could upgrade to a better software/sample package later if you're not happy with BFD lite.

[ez_willis]

Originally Posted by Farview

Why exactly do you think you should be using triggers

Instead of drum replacement software, or either?

Firstly, thanks for the info.

I don't necessarily think that I "should" be using triggers, I just think it MIGHT save some time and improve my drum sounds.

I record only myself. My studio is in my garage and it's kind of small, so I'll usually set my drums up to record tracks for a few tunes that I wrote on guitar, then tear them down to work on everything else, i.e. guitars, vocals, etc. . My drums will be tore down for a month or two at a time, and drums are not my primary instrument, so tuning is time consuming. Plus, the room that I am recording in is less than stellar, to say the least.

And my hits are not consistant. I'm all over the place on the drum itself, and the volume varies, too.

I'm just looking at my options.

[ez_willis]

Originally Posted by TragikRemix

can you use the friggin search!

It's disabled on my machine. Something about XP SP2, or a firewall, or I'm lying.

And thanks for the links!

[ecktronic]

If you dont need to do it live then just get Drumagog and some very cheap dynamic mics. If you want to do it liave then you could get a cheapish MIDI drum kit and load in some meaty drum samples.

Eck

[Cult_Status02]

Originally Posted by Farview

I always use drumagog as an insert. I never use it as an offline process, so I can change the sound anytime I need to.

I use to use it as an instert as well, but sometimes my effects go silly and bog down my machine...even though it's a pretty good machine. Anyway, I like to make destructive changes to save Comp. resources, but only after saving the source file. I then can just pop into edit mode and undo it if I didn't like it.

Can you run a lot of effects at once on your set up, Farview?

[Farview]

Originally Posted by Cult_Status02

Can you run a lot of effects at once on your set up, Farview?

A TON of effects. My computer does nothing but audio, 2 gigs of ram, dual 3.6 ghz processor and a uad card. I have never bottomed out this machine.

[Cult_Status02]

Originally Posted by Farview

A TON of effects. My computer does nothing but audio, 2 gigs of ram, dual 3.6 ghz processor and a uad card. I have never bottomed out this machine.

Nice! I'm running an older AMD 2600 with a gig of ram and it gets squirrely sometimes. My other computer is a 3.4ghz with 1 gig but it's Windows media edition so it never worked too great with my audio programs/hardware.

So your UAD card is basically the resource host for your plugins, right? I was wondering about those, do they only host the plugins you buy with them, or can you like send route your other plugins to use that UAD processor?

Sorry to hijack the tread, willis.

[Farview]

The UAD card only works with the UAD plugins, but they are the best sounding plugins ever.

[ez_willis]

Originally Posted by Cult_Status02

Sorry to hijack the tread, willis.

No worries, bro. We're here for an exchange of information.

[MadAudio]

I recently recorded King Mixer, a local band, and for a variety of reasons I couldn't get a decent kick sound on the inital capture. So I decided to replace it in the mix. I ended up using the recorded kick as the trigger impulse into my Alesis DM5. I stuck a gate with a really quick release time on the original kick and used a volume envelope to even out the hits. I then sent that signal into one of the trigger inputs of the DM5, and tweaked the threshold level in the DM5, then recorded the sample kick to a new track. It worked very well, IMO.

[ez_willis]

Originally Posted by MadAudio

I recently recorded King Mixer, a local band, and for a variety of reasons I couldn't get a decent kick sound on the inital capture. So I decided to replace it in the mix. I ended up using the recorded kick as the trigger impulse into my Alesis DM5. I stuck a gate with a really quick release time on the original kick and used a volume envelope to even out the hits. I then sent that signal into one of the trigger inputs of the DM5, and tweaked the threshold level in the DM5, then recorded the sample kick to a new track. It worked very well, IMO.

Seems like more work than learning how to play and mic my drums correctly!

[MadAudio]

Originally Posted by ez_willis

Seems like more work than learning how to play and mic my drums correctly!

It all depends on your time frame!

[Todzilla]

You don't need to buy triggers to trigger samples.

If you have a clean close mic recording of snare, on its own track, and kick on its own track, you should be okay.

[ndutle]

Originally Posted by MadAudio

I recently recorded King Mixer, a local band, and for a variety of reasons I couldn't get a decent kick sound on the inital capture. So I decided to replace it in the mix. I ended up using the recorded kick as the trigger impulse into my Alesis DM5. I stuck a gate with a really quick release time on the original kick and used a volume envelope to even out the hits. I then sent that signal into one of the trigger inputs of the DM5, and tweaked the threshold level in the DM5, then recorded the sample kick to a new track. It worked very well, IMO.

I don't understand drum triggers that well, but I have a yamaha dtxpress3 and this made me wonder if it was possible to do what you just described with that. I realize that the pads on electronic drums are called "triggers" but can you just route any old 1/4" signal in there?

[Farview]

Originally Posted by ndutle

I don't understand drum triggers that well, but I have a yamaha dtxpress3 and this made me wonder if it was possible to do what you just described with that. I realize that the pads on electronic drums are called "triggers" but can you just route any old 1/4" signal in there?

Normally when people talk about drum triggers, they are talking about things that you attach to the head of acoustic drums. Electronic drum pads do 'trigger' the drum sound in the module, so it gets confusing. The triggers or pads are kind of like microphones, they turn vibration into electrical energy. That energy is what the drum module (brain) uses to trigger the sound. You can plug just about anything into the drum module, I have had some luck pluggin a 58 into it and beating on it to make it trigger the sounds. I've also run drum tracks into a drum module to replace the live tracks with the samples.

[ndutle]

Right on! I was planning on "souping up" the live drums (gating, compress) to get rid of extra noise and length in each one (mainly snare and bass like ez_willis was talking about) before I send it in brain.

This is like a new toy for me! WOOOHOOO