EQ mag march edition.

[nerol1st]

So I have the march edition of EQ mag sitting in front of me. I just read an article about "how to record trigger-ready drums" by Jeff Anderson.

 

Anyhow it was interesting but I found the method to be a bit silly honestly. Most people I have been talking to who have the intention of triggering the kit don't go out of thier way to make the kit "trigger happy" through tuning and deadening in addition to the use of super close micing. I understand why he wanted to use an acoustic set in conjunction with samples but I don't understand why he did it the way he did.

 

Nay. They just slap acoustic triggers on each drum and run them right into a cheapo preamp. If they clip they clip (as I have heard they can do). But the result is a much sharper easier to trigger track than the result of microphones. And as a plus the result is also easier to set side chain options on compressors etc.

 

So when I got done all I could think was "why did he do it that way?" I don't know maybe mics are more reliable than triggers.

 

 

Anyhow at the end of the article it pointed to the bands myspace (http://www.myspace.com/seedfinklestein). I am not sure if these songs are the ones accociated with the session but I personally don't care for them. All well to each his own!

[UstadKhanAli]

I've never heard of anyone doing that before. I think I'll continue to try and record drums as good as possible, and if, after that, a track isn't working, then and only then will I explore drum replacement. I enjoy trying to get drums sounding as good as possible, something that I think is much more musical and infinitely more enjoyable than replacing drums.

[TBush]

 

I've never heard of anyone doing that before. I think I'll continue to try and record drums as good as possible, and if, after that, a track isn't working, then and only then will I explore drum replacement. I enjoy trying to get drums sounding as good as possible, something that I think is much more musical and infinitely more enjoyable than replacing drums.

 

 

I second that emotion with extreme prejudice...

[nerol1st]

While I agree with you guys there are times when it just plain not doable.

 

For instance in metal it's common to want the drums to be at the same strength. Weak hits don't sound good etc...

 

The guy in the article actually was going for this only he was using samples from the kit itself instead of fake ones. It's like reamping to me it makes sense to do this instead of track the drums a million times trying to get the drummer to hit harder (maybe he is a wimp who knows). It's also just the popular thing to do in metal music at the moment.

 

For rock and most genres I see the point. As I said as well triggering the drums isn't always for replacement (most drummers don't know this) sometimes they are used for gates and compressors as the keyed inputs. Why? Because the acoustic trigger produces a sharper transient with a faster decay than a mic.

 

 

I think the problem is when people say "drum trigger" they think fake quantized drums. This isn't always the purpose.

[UstadKhanAli]

Sure. The guy stated that he was using that kit's samples, and I understand what you are saying and why he was doing it. I just don't have any interest in doing that myself. Also, if you followed the link to the MySpace account...well, see what you think. I actually wasn't all that impressed with the final drum sound (although this is sort of besides the point, as I think the idea may have some merit regardless of whether it interests me personally or not). But see what you think. I don't have the magazine with me here or else I'd post the link.

[nerol1st]

Oh neither was I. I thought the drum sound was horrible honestly and the way the guy was talked up in the article I was exspecting amazingness.

 

But see I am really just confused as to why he didn't use triggers instead of going out of his way to try to get natural, easy to replace toms. Trigger produce a much better transient. I think this picture gives a good idea:

 

 

 

The last track is the trigger (he is using it as the sidechain keyed input for the gate) and you can see it's a much better transient than the above miced samples and if I were replaceing drums I would rather have the 3rd track to slap drumagog on rather than try to use the first 2.

 

But yeah totally agree with both of you, I go natural as well if I can personally (well except maybe the kick, depends though).

[UstadKhanAli]

You'd get much less leakage with triggers, that's for sure. I know that he wanted some of the room mics to make the drum sound more realistic...and maybe he should have leaned on those room mics a little more, as the final result really lacked, in my opinion.

 

I know that the one drawback to how I do it is that sometimes the snare can create false triggers in Drumagog. That said, if I am quite careful in Drumagog, I can minimize these false triggers by messing with the EQ response in Drumagog. I can also get better triggers by EQing and "expanding" the kick track before using Drumagog.

 

One thing that's really all about the drummer...it's amazing to me how different a drum can sound from song to song. During the same recording session, I'll have the toms sounding *amazing* on one song, and sounding really dead or just plain wretched on another song...or perhaps part of a song. So much of this is ultimately about how the drummer performs in the first place. And it's in these instances in which I'll likely go ahead and replace a couple of hits or whatever, just to make everything sound good. I don't want to get in a habit of immediately reaching for Drumagog every time a sound goes awry, but at the same token, if I can save an otherwise good sounding performance by replacing one particular thing (the kick) or a few tom hits, I'll do it.