Drum Trigger Help

  • Thread starter Thread starter emergencyexit
  • Start date Start date
E

emergencyexit

New member
My basement studio is looking into purchasing drum triggers for my bands latest album. As of right now I know nothing about drum triggers except that they can clip on your drums and take the signal turning it into digital so that I can make the drum sound like any drum I want. Am I right? If so, I have found a set of triggers on musicians friend that I would like to know if they are suitible. These are them http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=home/search/detail/base_pid/442393/. Also if I buy these will I need software of any kind? Thanks.
 
First, what are you using to record with?

If you are using a PC, and can put each drum on it's own track live - then you can plug the triggers into ehere you would plug the drum mic's - then if you use Drumagog (or perhaps some other percussion Sample software) the software can use the trigger's pulse to playback a sample.

What a trigger does, is convert a drumstrike into an electronic pulse.

If you plug the trigger itn oa Drum sound module, such asa ddrum unit, or a Roland Twhatever module (such as the TD-8, or is it the TDM -8?) anyway these units have what i called a "Trigger to MIDI Interface which converts the Trigger's electrical pulse into a MIDI note.


Tim
 
Not only do you need triggers like those but, you also need a drum module like the ones listed here. They work together as a complete system. One without the other is worthless.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=home/search/d=tp?q=drum+module

The triggers sense when the drums are hit and how hard. They send low voltage signals to the module. The module simply plays sampled drum sounds and outputs them to headphones, sound system, or recorder. Some of the better modules allow sample editing and tweaking.

RawDepth
 
Tim Brown said:
First, what are you using to record with?

If you are using a PC, and can put each drum on it's own track live - then you can plug the triggers into ehere you would plug the drum mic's - then if you use Drumagog (or perhaps some other percussion Sample software) the software can use the trigger's pulse to playback a sample.

What a trigger does, is convert a drumstrike into an electronic pulse.

If you plug the trigger itn oa Drum sound module, such asa ddrum unit, or a Roland Twhatever module (such as the TD-8, or is it the TDM -8?) anyway these units have what i called a "Trigger to MIDI Interface which converts the Trigger's electrical pulse into a MIDI note.


Tim
Click to expand...
Ok we are running off a mac with logic express installed. We have 8 mics for a 5 piece kit with a bunch of cymbols which we dont wanna trigger. We are running through various pres boards and an A/D converter. Are you saying that we don't need to buy Triggers but we can just get the Drumagog and record everything live then convert it or what ever it is that it does with that?
 
emergencyexit said:
Ok we are running off a mac with logic express installed. We have 8 mics for a 5 piece kit with a bunch of cymbols which we dont wanna trigger. We are running through various pres boards and an A/D converter. Are you saying that we don't need to buy Triggers but we can just get the Drumagog and record everything live then convert it or what ever it is that it does with that?
Click to expand...
If you get the mics fairly isolated I am pretty sure that you can do that.
 
emergencyexit said:
Ok we are running off a mac with logic express installed. We have 8 mics for a 5 piece kit with a bunch of cymbols which we dont wanna trigger. We are running through various pres boards and an A/D converter. Are you saying that we don't need to buy Triggers but we can just get the Drumagog and record everything live then convert it or what ever it is that it does with that?
Click to expand...


If you are mic'ing each drum individually, and you can really isolate each individual drum, I believe that you can actually have Logic (at least you can in Logic Pro 7.0) replace the drumsounds with MIDI sounds internally.

What you need to do is use the EQ to really fine tune a very narrow Q bandwidth for each drum, so that you can "filter out" the sounds coming from the other drums and cymbals.... like a bandpass filter for each drum.

Or, you can use triggers.
:D

Tim
 
Save your money and make a decent kick tunnel (there's a thread about that somewhere around here...) and then use Drumagog. Or you could take some time and learn how to get the kick sounding how you want it (the second option seems like it gives the best results in the longrun)!
 
the only problem with triggers and using them with your software is that you need enough inputs on your sound card. you said you have 8. So I'm assuming you can trigger the bass drum, snare, and 3 toms. Then use 2 over heads, and 1 on high hat. You'll have to track your drums seperately from any other instrument then. (meaning, you'll have to fill in guitars and vocals later) One option, if you have an external mixer, is to use the mixer to combine all your cybal mics onto one track and free up 2 tracks for guitars. Other than that, the other option is to use an external drum module or "brain" that plugs directly into the triggers and converts them to the sampled sounds. Then the output signal from that module would be plugged into 1 or 2 of your inputs on your sound card. I wouldn't do that option, because then you can't change the sounds of the drums once they're recorded, and also you have to purchase an external module. I would just try to isolate my microphones as best as I could and then use them as triggers. But you CAN'T use a mic'd drum set with triggers unless you actually use an individaul microphone on each drum. Remember that. For example, The high tom has it's own track, then after recording, you select the plug-in "drumagog" (or whatever software you're using) and you assign a nice sounding high tom to the track. It now replaces each hit that it senses with that good sounding high tom. But you can't do this if you mic a couple of toms together on the same track. So be careful and isolate as much as you can.

In simpler terms...you don't need to buy triggers. You're mics should be suitable.

p.s. remember that you add the "drumagog" plugin after the drums have been recorded. So at first, you will have crappy sounding drum clips. Then replace EACH actual drum with the drumagog samples. (don't replace cymbals, fake cymbals sound horrible)
 
Now a question from me to everyone else.

Other than drumagog, is there any other software out their that you would reccommend. I want it to at least be able to do what drumagog does. I don't care about midi necessarily. I like to work with realistic sounding samples instead. Any thoughts?
examples: Drums from hell superior or BFD?

Or is drumagog the best out there right now?
 
Well, they could record the whole band, and he could go back and retrack the drums.

If you wanted to get really anal about it - your could pull a Scorpions and track each drum by itself. :D

Of course, if you did that - you wouldn't really need to do any track replacement, because you could do whatever you had to to make each single drumtrack sound killer - since you'd only be recording 1 drum at a time. You could record each drum in stereo. :p
 
Last edited:
Hubbawho said:
Now a question from me to everyone else.

Other than drumagog, is there any other software out their that you would reccommend. I want it to at least be able to do what drumagog does. I don't care about midi necessarily. I like to work with realistic sounding samples instead. Any thoughts?
examples: Drums from hell superior or BFD?

Or is drumagog the best out there right now?
Click to expand...
There is nothing out right now that will do everything that drumagog does as well is it does it.
 
thanks. I was pretty sure but just wanted to ask before I upgraded to drumagog. Right now I'm just using some crappy free ware that doesn't sense dynamics at all so it completely kills fills or rolls. At first, it was perfect for bass drum, but I want to test out drumagog on my toms as well. thanks.
 
Just wondering...
Is it only worth it to get pro or can I get basic, and if I do get basic, what do I loose?
 
Get the pro. The basic version doesn't have the, advanced triggering engine, live triggering, midi, auto sample rate conversion, auto align, and a few other things. The sample rate conversion is a big deal if you use pre made samples that are recorded 24/44.1 and you are running 24/96. They will play back an octave higher. Even if you are only running at 48k, the pitch will still be off.

This is a complete list of the differences
http://www.drumagog.com/buy.htm
 
not only that, but as u may find out from a bit more reading on their website, drumagog basic for version 4 isn't actually out yet. You can go to the "buy" page and it's not their yet. Read around a bit and you'll find out that they claim to have it out "soon" but until then they don't offer any other version, old or new. No past versions like drumagog 3 and no cheaper versions. Only drumagog 4 pro. So I guess you're stuck paying the full amount if you get it now anyways.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top