Triggering Your Own Drums / Stereo to three tracks

G

guitarboi89

New member
I’ve got three questions based on a single problem, here we go :)
I would like to record drums, but in my recording soundcard there’s only 4 inputs (delta 44) and I don’t want to upgrade for one session. The music doesn’t really suit the "stick two microphones up and hear exactly how the drum kit sounds" approach and more control later on sounds useful. In my computer there is also a two input soundcard built in.

Here’s my plan:
Use two overheads (recorder man style) and a kick and a snare mic and send them to the recording soundcard. Then also put triggers on the three toms, putting tom one completely left, tom two centre and tom three right and send the stereo track to the built in soundcard.
Before/After I will make my own samples of each tom close mic'ed and trigger them.

Here’s what I’m presuming you will ask:
Q: Why not mic up the toms properly?
A: Because I only have 4 channels of mic preamp, plus a small behringer mixer with one mic input. Also the built in soundcard sounds EVIL.

Q: Why not use someone else’s tom samples?
A: It is an option but I’m not sure how they will fit with the OH which will be my main drum sound.

So heres my questions:
Is it possibly to split a stereo signal into L, Centre and R? (Would this be called a midside decoder?)
How feasible is it to sample my drum kit? (Has anyone done it themselves for this reason?)
Will it be a problem running two asio soundcards (delta 44 and on board using asio4all) together? Will the recordings be out of sync?

Thanks in advance, Colm
 
Question is, why do you wanna have individual mics on the Toms?

Plus... since you'll be triggering, why do you need to mic them anyway? Just sample your toms (preferably multiple velocities plus left/right hand samples if you can) and load them up in a capable sampler such as Kontakt and trigger them via MIDI. Record the MIDI triggers along with the audio... Done.

Depending on what app you use, you may or may not be able to use the internal soundcard along with the Delta. I know for a fact you cannot do that with Cubase. Plus... with the above method, there is no need. Just use four mics (stereo overhead, plus snare and kick mics), as the rest will be triggered MIDI data.
 
noisewreck said:
Question is, why do you wanna have individual mics on the Toms?
Click to expand...

Especially if you're using the "recorder man" method. It picks up the toms just fine. With a snare and kik mic, you should have all the control you need.
 
Drums are pretty dang transient, why not just listen/look to the overhead tracks waveforms and line up your tom samples that way. Just a KISS approach.

Cheers-
Ian
 
Because the two soundcards don't run off the same clock (the thing that determines when each sample is taken) they won't necessarily be in sync with each other.

Yes you can get an M/S encoder decoder but at 1am I can't really think of how that would help you.

M/S works like this:

You have signal A (left) and signal B (right)
The middle signal = A+B, the side signal = A-B.

To regain A and B (decode the M/S) the following is done:

M + S = (A + B) + (A - B) = 2A
M - S = (A + B) - (A - B) = 2B

So I don't really see how you'd get signal C in and out too.

As for sampling a kit - yeah I've done it. You wanna take each sample and cut away all the silence at the beginning of it, so the hit sounds instantly. As suggested you can line them up by eye, or use a plugin to trigger them from midi.

Have you got the triggers already? If so what are they? Doesn't the Delta 44 have a midi input? If so you could get a set of midi triggers if not you could still get some and a cheap midi interface. The triggers don't need to be velocity sensitive; you can edit that later.
 
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