Drum Triggers

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M Havlen

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What's exactly is a " drum trigger" is it like mic'ing your kit? If so , what's the difference? Thanks
 
i don't really understand what you mean by drum trigger? i think it has to do with electronic kits....?
 
A drum trigger is a transducer (a crystal) that takes mechanical motion and converts it into an electrical signal. This signal can then be used by a drum computer to trigger sounds or send a MIDI signal to your computer.

You can buy them for $20 or build them from $1.79 piezos from Radio Shack.

Here's a good site: http://edrum.for.free.fr/


(I just bought a Roland SPD-S and built my own trigger. It's very, very easy.)
 
Thanks Tim, so these are used on electronic drum kits only?
 
Nope, they're for accoustic kits. Electronic ones already have them built into the pads.
 
So, It's like mic'n your drums. Do you stick them on the heads? And you can plug them into a recording console? I notice there inexpensive compared to a good set of mic's. If your able to get good recording with them, why use mic's?
 
It turns a regular set into an electric. The triggers use the drumming you play and turns into a singnal a drum module can use. Then it plays the sound you choose on the module, but you can still use the drums.It is like a motion midi device.But I thought about getting some do they work good and sound good.
 
There are also software triggers like Drumagog. If you record your accoustic kit onto 3 tracks say, snare, kick and overhead and you don't like your snare sound, Drumagog will replace each snare hit with one of it's samples. The software is pretty clever - you can raise and lower the trigger threshold, pick up ghost notes, flams etc. and blend the sample with the real drum sound, Demo can be d/l'd from www.drumagog.com
 
or.

If you use SONAR 2 or later (I don't know about 1 ...or three even) The function "Extract Timing" can be used as a trigger. Essentially it scans the waveform and looks for audio peaks over a certain loudness...say -18 Db... and then puts a midi note there ...which you have to paste onto another midi track and then you have to run that midi track though a DXi... so if you want to replace the snare drum you get the midi track and then run it through a DXi with the sound you want...works wonders expecially on kick...
 
How about using triggers with mesh heads? I want to record triggered drums without the acoustic drum sound, but I want to use live cymbals. Could I replace my batter heads with mesh practice heads and trigger those?
 
" triggers are not mics.they send signals"

I know that . But If I'm using overhead mics for cymbals I don't want the sound of the acoustic drums in the mix, that's why I'm asking if acoustic drum triggers work with mesh heads.
 
Sure, I don't see why they wouldn't. You might have to play around with placement and sensitivity, but that should work just fine.
 
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