Any one useing Drum Triggers when recording ?

Hi Norrie,

Yep I do this all the time and have been very lucky with any trigger as long as the brain/pad to midi interface has the right options. I've used Fishman Transducers with awesome results. The key is for me to bring my Roland TD-10 or TD-20 with me so I have more control over how the triggers react. I run them on all live kits as a safety net.

Cymbals are tough like this though because of the constant vibration and ghost notes they put out. Even with strict triggering rules applied, the vibrations make things very difficult. This is also tough to do on hats because there is no "pedal" midi note and will need to be created. For cymbals, there are 2 ways to do it in my experience.
 
1. You make sure you have a good cymbal rig going on with good mics and placements. Most times, unless they sound like dark trash can lids or are hissy and abrasive sounding, you can make them sound good to where they won't have to be replaced. If they do have to be replaced, thank God we have Audio Snap which can really be helpful on the transient end for replacing cymbals.

2. If you do have to trigger them, you have to experiment with the controls inside the brain you use. It's not going to be perfect because if you jump on the controls too much, you won't get the sensitivity and triggering you need. If you are too sensivite, the vibrations will form one long midi note that will look like this _______  ________________  _________________ and sometimes it will be hard to tell where the transients are unless you compare the wave file to the midi to get rid of the unwanted midi notes. That's a lot of work and to me, it's not really worth it. Most crash cymbals are going to work in a project no matter what. Look at it this way...how many times have you listened to a song and said to yourself "Mmmm that's a really great sounding crash cymbal there?" Me neither...unless you're a drummer. LOL! I'm a drummer myself, but crashes aren't as intimate sounding as let's say a snare, a good set of hats and a killer ride with the bell of doom on it, ya know?

So I'd really not worry too much about safety netting cymbals. But you should have 0 problems using the Fishman Tranducer or heck, even those little Radio Shack transducer work extremely well too. You just need a good pad to midi interface that will give you the right control over the triggers. I'd say buy a Roland TD-10 and don't look back. You just want it for the trigger control, not really the sounds. Most of the pad to midi interfaces I've tried do not give you the same control the Roland stuff does. So definitely keep some of this stuff in mind. Best of luck. :)

You're quite welcome Norrie. Yeah if you have the Roland brain, you're in great shape already. You'd just set the triggers up the same way you do pads and then experiment with the thresholds and other stuff inside the Roland brain for each drummer's hits. These will always be different, so you'll have to set this up each time for each drummer. I had a guy that I recorded a few months ago that hit the drums like a 10 year old. So I had to set the thresholds much higher for him or I wasn't getting the right triggering. Then I'll get one of those metal basher guys to come in, and I have to drop the thresholds considerably to compensate for the excessive force. You just have to play around with everything until you get what you're looking for, but it shouldn't take you much time to dial in at all...I promise.

The other thing to keep in mind, if you are recording this stuff, use the Roland to track the midi stuff and use the sounds in it. The reason being, you will not have to reduce your latency to record your drum modules and the Roland tracks way better than any drum module. You just want to get all the midi stuff tracked correctly, then edit it and bring in your real drum module after. If I'm unclear about this, allow me to explain.

I've noticed that if I record with say Superior drummer or BFD or Slate etc, (even though the midi is coming from the Roland brain) that some of the hits are strange. I can get my latency down to 64 samples without a problem...so I'm ok there. However, I have had the best luck tracking with the sounds of the Roland and then editing the midi with the Roland enabled so that what I'm working with, is completely consistent and spot on. There's always a little bit of drift or something weird when I track with one of my modules. But once I edit everything up with the Roland, and then switch to one of my modules, everything is perfect. So just keep that in mind when you are doing this. Most times, you shouldn't have to track with any midi sounds going at all for the drummer. YOU want to hear them to make sure they are printing and are in sync etc, but he shouldn't hear anything but the sound of the real drums in my opinion. This just stops any possible confusion. Add your drum module last after editing...it honestly works much better that way...at least for me. Keep me posted on things, and best of luck. :)

Danny I noticed you said above that you recorded with Slate ?

I just got slate 2 days ago and am trying to find some advice about how to map out perfect cymbal swells and do mutes

I have put a post up here about it :) http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2257322

Do you have any sugestions ?

Thanks again

Norrie