FruitarGeek
Can someone explain drum triggers to me? I have a decent understanding, but I want to make sure I'm on the same page as the world haha.
I came across this video:
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I asked myself, what are those little red things on his drums? are they mics? after many Google attempts, I found out that they are 'ddrum drum triggers'.
What I understand, is that you attach them to your drum heads, whenever you hit the skin, the moment is detected and 'recorded' as a midi note, waiting for you to put some nice midi effects on. Is this correct?
And if so, how does it go from an XLR to midi?
doc-phil
As far as I understand it, you are correct. Although I think the main purpose is for triggering drum samples and not just 'effects'.
For example, you love the sound of Lars Ulrich's snare sound off of the St Anger album (it is actually listed as one of the worst sounds ever created) and you have said sample on your pc. You could use triggers to play that sample over your PA system every time you hit your snare.
I believe it has application in both live and studio settings. If you have a sample library like Steven Slate Trigger or some such, the samples are configured in such a way so as to have multiple hits per sample, which allows for the sound to be improved while at the same time having a 'human' feel to it.
Not too sure about other genre's, but metal drummers use them a lot to give a more consistent sound, in light of the fact that it is difficult to get a consistent hit on a kick drum at 200+ bpm. Some consider it cheating.
AlanRatcliffe
It's just a piezo sensor - the same thing they use in an electronic drum kit. You hit the drum and the trigger sends a pulse to a pad-MIDI interface or an electronic drum kit "brain". It's relatively simple conversion compared to guitar-MIDI, as there is no pitch info needed, just note on. Look at the Alesis drum modules like the DM5 - that predates their electronic drum kits by at least a decade! You can even just gaffer tape a piezo buzzer or a "hot spot" pickup to the edge of a drum head and get a decent result (but very prone to stick damage - the red casing you see on the DDrum triggers is cast metal).
They are more commonly used in live sound than you would think as they avoid all the common problems with drum miking (feedback, bleed, crap mics, bad engineers), drastically cutting down on the number of live mics on stage (and mixer channels obviously). As doc-phil mentions, they allow a drummer to trigger his (or someone else's) studio recorded sounds - even on a song to song basis. Watch out for live shows where the drum mic setup seems minimal (usually only overheads and hats) - chances are they are using triggers.
FruitarGeek
Oh I see. So, if I own an acoustic drum kit (which I do), I could hook up some piezo sensors, and be able to record drums, albeit via midi?
Tell me, I understand everything thus far, except, when you have a cable hooked up to the piezo, where does that cable run to? I have an audio interface, but something tells me that won't work for what I need it for. Is there a product that receives all the jacks/XLR's, then has a midi out which I can send to my interface? Excuse the silly questions, this is the first time I stumbled upon this technology
AlanRatcliffe
You need a pad-MIDI interface. Or, more popularly, a drum brain (they mostly have the pad-MIDI interface built in and the drum synthesis as well as the MIDI out). Alesis DM series, Roland TD series, Yamaha DTX, etc.
FruitarGeek
Oh. I am getting this now. Well, in that case Alan, what in your experience is the most affordable, real simple pad-midi interface? I don't need one with its own samples. I really just need an interface that can hook up the drums, and have midi-out where I will use a plugin to provide the sounds. Also, what does one do for cymbals?
AlanRatcliffe
If you can find one, look for a Roland TMC-6 - About R5K retail last I looked. Probably your cheapest solution would be to find an Alesis DM5 module or older Roland brain secondhand and just use it for MIDI. Otherwise there is a kit form converter called MegaDrum which you can buy assembled for about R2.5K, less in kit form.
You do get cymbal triggers, but they don't work well in my (or anyone else's for that matter) experience. So usual method is to record the cymbals with an overhead or two and the hats (BTW - dampening the drums a bit helps both trigger mistriggers and cuts down acoustic drums to overheads, highpass filters also help a lot).
If you have enough inputs to spare, you can use a software trigger interface like Slate Trigger or drum replacement software like Drumagog, to convert drum recordings to MIDI. Most decent DAWs have some native way of doing it too - even Reaper comes with a plugin.
free2rhyme
Exactly what was said in all above posts
We also use triggers in studio to tame the drum sound for recording and to get a more consistent sound, also it potentially can make a cheap kit sound like a 20k kit. Also offers various sounds opposed to just what's bleeding through the mics
Onedayclint just bought Roland triggers and a dm4 module which we are using in studio, this will eventually be used live as well
A lot of people use bfd but myself and Clint both bought steven slate as a lot of the bands we like use them too
I have bfd 2 also but I find the samples are too clean and require a lot of mixing and processing to get a good sound
I suppose its all about experimenting with what u like and what sounds good to your ears too.
Maybe experiment with samples like ez-drummer before taking the plunge for a more prof expensive trigger sound
I know bands like Paramore used a mixture of live sound and trigger sound to get their studio and live sound
I find it much more convineint
