Recording a drum hit (for a sample) and having it trigger?

[creedthoughts]

I'm new here, I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum. I've been recording for awhile but I generally do things the "long way", or "traditionally" I guess. I heard of a method that really improves bleeding from other mics that basically consists of you sitting at a drum kit and hitting the kick drum once to get a sample, snare once to get a sample, etc. Then when you go to record, every time you hit that snare or kick, it will track the recorded clean sample instead of the live hit you just did. I constantly have to gate and eliminate drum mic bleed which gets sort of annoying after awhile. I heard of this and wondered how people do it and what I'd need.

Thanks!

 

[Steenamaroo]

Hi,
There's a few approaches here and a few things to consider.

The first is probably the one you're not interested in but, genre dependent, bleed is usually good!
I mean there are limits, sure, but it's something to consider.
Manually tracking independent hits may sound unnatural as a whole because there's nothing glueing it together. No real room mic or overheads...never mind the bleed.

Next is that the performance will sound unnatural, particularly on repeat hits/rolls because every instance of each piece of the kit is identical.
No variations between hitting dead centre or closer to the rim, light/soft/hard etc.
You'll get the dreaded machine-gun-effect.
Again, that's genre dependent. Maybe that's ideal for what you're doing?


Is it important to capture your kit, or do you just want access to a kit without bleed?
Never one to discourage experimentation and independent thought, but SSD or addictive drums or something is going to do this a lot better than any of us could...and a lot easier too.

The straight forward answer is yes...You can do what you're asking.
You'd need to use drum trigger/sample software in conjunction with a midi drum kit, or some kind of midi input instrument.
Doing so would also open up the possibility of manually drawing/editing performances and/or using midi loops from elsewhere.

SSD is capable of loading user samples; I know that for sure. @jimmys69 is probably the man to talk to for further recommendations.

 

[JimmyS1969]

Howdy creedthoughts.

Your best bet there for acoustic drums would be Steven Slate Trigger 2. $150

There is a cheaper $99 EX version but much less choice of samples. And I like the bigger Trigger 2 Platinum version GUI much better. I don't believe EX had sample rejection. That is a way you can send signal from say a tom that triggers the snare sample, and it will ignore those.

Both versions come with a separate program called Trigger Instrument Editor. There you can record numerous samples of varying velocity and create triggers from your own individual drums. Then use Trigger to, well trigger them. I am surprised how little latency the program causes. I almost always record live with kick trigger. I can't remember the last time I used the actual kick mic.

But the nice thing about trigger is you can also blend the sample with the live so you don't get too sterile sounding.

Trigger does not replace cymbal hits. Only drums. So the overhead mics are always going to bleed. But that is a good thing as long as the drums/sound good. Bleed is something to be controlled, not something that has to be completely removed.

 

[cavedog101]

Yes to this! Slate Trigger Platinum is the real deal