gating with triggers

[FSPirate]

A friend of mine just asked me about using triggers and gates for cleaner sounds. If I understand him correctly, and considering how bad he is at explaining things I probably don't, one would use a pre-recorded drum signal, say a snare, as a key input to a gate. Then, you'd record the same thing over again, sending the new drum signal through the gate and it will be gated perfectly and prevent any bleedthrough from the other drum pieces. Personally, I think that sounds overly elaborate the way I understand it so far. I'm no drummer, either, and quite inexperienced at recording drums. Anyone care to shed some light on this for me? I'd like to fully understand the concept before I try it and/or dismiss the idea.

 

[Farview]

There is very little chance that any drummer could play precisely enough to make that work. When I was doing live sound, sometimes we would put triggers on the drums and use those to trigger the gates (hook them to the key inserts) That way, they would only open when the drum was hit and could not feedback, ever.

 

[FSPirate]

See, that makes total sense. My friend was talking about using the technique (if you can call it that) while re-tracking drums. I agree that it will be the closest thing to impossible to get the drummer in perfect time with the pre-recorded gate key. That's why I was hoping someone would have that one bit of light to shine on this so it will make sense. We'll see.

 

[Farview]

Why don't you just use the gates normally? If you can't get enough isolation, the drummer isn't hitting hard enough (or with the right dynamics)