Not Sure if this is a myth

H

Hubbawho

New member
A salesman once told me that their is some sort of "electric drum set" system designed to work with real, acoustic drums, and your computer. He said, you attach the motion detectors (or whatever they're called) to the actual drum piece that it's designed for. Then, they all run into your computer where you can select the sound that you want to assign to each drum. I'm assuming you just mic the cymbals, and then tune the real set so that it can some what resemble the computerized drum samples. Then when you record, you don't have to worry about correctly equalizing or compressing any of the drums. I mean this sounds fun and useful depending on how decent it is, but also a bit far fetched. Is it for real? And if so, can anybody point me in the right direction for more info? thanks
 
Yes, it's true. It's actually pretty common. All you need are drum triggers, and an interface. The trigger is a little clamp-like thing that you put on each piece of the drumkit. This trigger sends a small signal that indicates the volume of the drumhit to the interface, which connects to the computer. On the computer, you can use those signals (midi notes) to play samples of whatever (other drumsounds mainly, but anything is possible). This can be done realtime in sertain situations.
 
I feel like a complete ass. I just realized...soon after I posted, that triggers and vst plug-ins were what the guy was talking about. See if you had mentioned it to me now, I would've just figured that. But years ago, I remember the guy trying to explain it to me. I didn't even know what a DAW was, nevermind a plug in or a trigger. lol I just mis-interpretted what he was explaining and thought it was an electric drum set of some sort. (like a free standing yamaha kit just with "triggers" instead of drum pads)
Now that we have that squared away. Are triggers expensive or what? Also, do they negatively effect the live sound of the drum by dampening it in any way? And lastly, I have pretty decent drum mics, should I use both a mic and a trigger on each drum just in case the trigger fails in certain situations?

p.s. Is there actually any need for the triggers? Wouldn't a properly isolated miced drum track do the same thing? I'm only asking because if a trigger messes up on double bass, fast fill, or something, I wouldn't have a mic'ed track to replace it with. Also, it would save me money on purchasing triggers. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks for any help.
 
I remember checking these out awhile ago and I don't think the triggers were that expensive. I think it's the module that was the $$$.
As far as I remember, they don't mess with your acoustic sound at all. I just recall that, for me, it was an option type of thing. Like if I had triggers on all of the drums, and didn't like the kick sound, I just dial in a different kick from the module. I dunno. I don't want to lead you astray but I think this is basically the scenario.
fwiw............. ;)
 
For live use, I don't think triggers are that usefull if you already have decent mics and a decent kit. The big advantage of triggers is that you can actually get midi data from a normal drumkit, which you can then edit and assign to samplers all you want. It is a great way to get the "feel" of a real drummer and the flexibility of the DAW.
 
There really is no need for triggers if you use mics on each piece of the kit, as long as you have a program that can convert audio to midi. You just convert audio tracks to midi (using something like the convert audio to score feature in logic)and you have the same info you would get from the trigger. If theres a lot of bleed between mics it can cause you to have a lot of extra notes, but you can set a threshold in most programs so most of that is gated out. Triggers are nice if you can justify the cost for the convenience.
 
Triggers

Hubbawho said:
I feel like a complete ass. I just realized...soon after I posted, that triggers and vst plug-ins were what the guy was talking about. See if you had mentioned it to me now, I would've just figured that. But years ago, I remember the guy trying to explain it to me. I didn't even know what a DAW was, nevermind a plug in or a trigger. lol I just mis-interpretted what he was explaining and thought it was an electric drum set of some sort. (like a free standing yamaha kit just with "triggers" instead of drum pads)
Now that we have that squared away. Are triggers expensive or what? Also, do they negatively effect the live sound of the drum by dampening it in any way? And lastly, I have pretty decent drum mics, should I use both a mic and a trigger on each drum just in case the trigger fails in certain situations?

p.s. Is there actually any need for the triggers? Wouldn't a properly isolated miced drum track do the same thing? I'm only asking because if a trigger messes up on double bass, fast fill, or something, I wouldn't have a mic'ed track to replace it with. Also, it would save me money on purchasing triggers. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

I think the new craze is beefing up the BD.
If you add some low end that the mic cant reproduce then you can seriously bump it up! I have seen this through my friends setup and he can get the punch through his two 18's that the mic can't.
He plays on a Iron cobra double bass so I guess another Bass Drum would
give the option of dropping the second pitch or something crazy. :D
He runs it through a Roland TD8 and he has more options than he can ever use!
 
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