Are drum triggers cheating?

[ahuimanu]

When you strike a drum head, the tension in the head causes the head to move back into place rather quickly. The force of the strike and the articulation of the stike also effect the manner in which the drum head snaps back towards neutral. The process of the head moving back and forth as it stabilizes and neutralizes is a reverbration of sorts.

All the while, the air in the drum shell has been compressed by the movement of the top head and the remainder of the shell vibrates in reaction to the struck batter head. We hear these series of events as a percussive note.

Some drummers, drums, rooms and recording techniques make this whole process sound better than others. These sounds can be sampled and played back so that a drum sound is consistent. Furthermore some percussion instruments are too rare or difficult to include in your daily/nightly kit setup.

So, with triggering, you are still getting 100% of your intended peformance on the acoustic drums AND more.

We have triggering for enhancement, reinforcement and variety. All of which are in addition to your regular kit.

What's the problem?

 

[Schloo]

I usually record with triggers, but not my drummer. He's so bad on timing it would take a year to record 4 songs, with or without acoustic drums. I don't even record him. he sits by my side and I write every little thing he does on guitar pro. Then edit it to make it more natural (random velocity and quantified hits) and insert it in ezdrummer.

Would you call it cheating!??!?!

cheating or not, it's still worth, much less time consuming, final result is about the same

I think the only thing being cheated is the drummer. He needs a new bag if he is that bad.

 

[chestwick91]

If your talking about the triggers that cover the rim of your acoustic set..... then NO! you still need to know how to play the drums to get a beat...(they just change the sound) if your talking about a desktop midi controller or a groove/sampling station...then seeing as how i play the drums....i am not gonna go there because they do great things, but i just might agree that, yeah there cheating...if you tell everybody you play the drums

 

[Zetajazz44]

I just "recorded" my first set of drums 2 days ago. I typically record bluegrass bands and had never recorded drums. Although the drums were acoustic drums, the drummer had mesh heads on all of his drums with the exception of the kick and snare, but ALL drums had triggers on them as this is how he typically plays them at live gigs. At live gigs, he uses 1 drum trigger processor for all of his drums. If I used this same set up for tracking I wouldn't have individual mixing control over each drum in his kit when I started mixing later, as his processors only have 1 out...the entire kit on 1 track.

My approach:
The drummer had some "spare" drum trigger processors, 4 in all. His kit consisted of: Kick, Snare, 2 rack toms, 1 floor tom, and of course the usual cymbal stuff. I used triggers for the 2 rack toms, floor tom and snare, each recorded to a different track. Since by this time I had used up all of my trigger processors, I used a Red5 Audio kick drum mic to mic the kick, and Rode NT5's for the overheads.

The overhead mics, I'll use as I recorded them, but the recorded kick mic sound will only be used to "trigger" a sound, a GOG file, in Drumagog, as will all the other recorded sounds from the drum processors...they'll get the GOG file treatment from Drumagog as well.

So far, to my tastes, and to the drummer's tastes, these Drumagog GOG file sounds are good enough... Of course I just got the drums tracked this way 2 days ago and have not mixed them yet, but I believe it will fit the bill for what I'm wanting to achieve sound-wise, and I believe that since I'm using actual recorded acoustic samples in Drumagog, in the end, the kit will sound "more real" than if I had just used the recorded drum trigger sounds in my mix.

 

[IronFlippy]

I think of triggers in the same way I think of synths. When you play a Moog, you're still playing it, even though electronics are making the sound. Programming, on the other hand, doesn't do it for me. When you program, it isn't you that's playing, it's the computer. It's the same as when you write out the notes in MIDI and have a softsynth play it. I'd much rather hit record and play it myself, even if i'm just recording MIDI. It's still me playing the instrument.

$0.02

 

[Farview]

I just "recorded" my first set of drums 2 days ago. I typically record bluegrass bands and had never recorded drums. Although the drums were acoustic drums, the drummer had mesh heads on all of his drums with the exception of the kick and snare, but ALL drums had triggers on them as this is how he typically plays them at live gigs. At live gigs, he uses 1 drum trigger processor for all of his drums. If I used this same set up for tracking I wouldn't have individual mixing control over each drum in his kit when I started mixing later, as his processors only have 1 out...the entire kit on 1 track.

My approach:
The drummer had some "spare" drum trigger processors, 4 in all. His kit consisted of: Kick, Snare, 2 rack toms, 1 floor tom, and of course the usual cymbal stuff. I used triggers for the 2 rack toms, floor tom and snare, each recorded to a different track. Since by this time I had used up all of my trigger processors, I used a Red5 Audio kick drum mic to mic the kick, and Rode NT5's for the overheads.

The overhead mics, I'll use as I recorded them, but the recorded kick mic sound will only be used to "trigger" a sound, a GOG file, in Drumagog, as will all the other recorded sounds from the drum processors...they'll get the GOG file treatment from Drumagog as well.

So far, to my tastes, and to the drummer's tastes, these Drumagog GOG file sounds are good enough... Of course I just got the drums tracked this way 2 days ago and have not mixed them yet, but I believe it will fit the bill for what I'm wanting to achieve sound-wise, and I believe that since I'm using actual recorded acoustic samples in Drumagog, in the end, the kit will sound "more real" than if I had just used the recorded drum trigger sounds in my mix.

You could have just plugged the triggers into the mic preamps and recorded the signal. Then use that to trigger Drumagog. No need to use any mics other than the overheads.