A question about triggers and samples in a show

[acappa]

Hey everyone! This is a question to all the live engineers that pass thru this forum! I am preparing the future tour of my band. In spain, engineers are the useless people in the world, and to be honest, I dont trust them at that. That´s why I need your help those who are related to live situations regarding trigger stuff!
OK, this is the tip: For my live shows I´d like to use triggers for toms, snare and BD. I´ll use drumagog and Slate samples, then I´ll give and L+R to the tech and hope he can´t destroy my sound! But the fact is that I dont know really the best way to do this. I assume Slate samples dont need any comp or eq, so the only thing they´ll need is reverb.
Who could I make this????? Any best choice????

Thanks a lot!!1

Alex

 

[Z3R0]

Are you planning to run it through a laptop? If so, it would be just like monitoring a recording, but not actually recording. I do this for my drummer when we practice. He uses a DMPro live.

But i would give MALE XLRs to the engineer, LABEL them what it is in nice big letters. So if you end up at a shit bar somewhere with a hick who's missing teeth doing your sound, you at least have a chance at having everything work.

 

[arv_foh]

I would rather have individual channels than a left and right, so I could adjust each drum accordingly.

 

[acappa]

Thanks for your answers, my idea was to create L+R where pan and volume are already set, just like panning in your daw...
My great fear is about latency...
Ok! More ideas???

 

[xFkx]

We do the exact thing, so it can be done.

A macbook runing ableton live with aptrigga and slate samples, we trigger only BD and snare.

We use a alesis io|14 firewire interface, the latency is comperable to a drum module, maybe a little bigger.

I could advise you to buy your own DI Box, as we've encountered once a place that didn't have any di boxes. But that was just an exception i guess.

Good luck

 

[Gelatin]

I would rather have individual channels than a left and right, so I could adjust each drum accordingly.

I agree, the foh sound engineer has to be able to adjust each drum as they see fit. What sounds like a good mix coming out of the laptop doesn't necessarily work with the full mix in the venue sound system. I would at least have mono cables for snare & bd and then maybe a stereo L-R for toms..

Also: unless you're playing some 250+ bps stuff, I'm afraid you'll lose all the drummers dynamics with triggering the snare & toms. My drummer triggers his snare and it sounds killer in fast blastbeat parts (95% of our music) but in slower parts it always sounds weird. I understand the benefits with going the trigger way but keep in mind that there are also disadvantages.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

I agree, the foh sound engineer has to be able to adjust each drum as they see fit. What sounds like a good mix coming out of the laptop doesn't necessarily work with the full mix in the venue sound system. I would at least have mono cables for snare & bd and then maybe a stereo L-R for toms..

That's simply impossible here.

 

[arv_foh]

That's simply impossible here.

No, it's not. If you have an interface with at least 5 outputs, you could output the kick, snare, tom 1, tom 2, and tom 3 separately.

 

[beyond dead]

he means that he is pretty sure most the sound guys will be useless tools who are not competent, therefor he wants to control panning, volume and reverb himself so that everything goes peachy.

I dont blame him!

apples mainstage program that comes in the logic studio bundle is perfect for this type of shit!

but, the only problem i could forsee would be the latency.
providing you have enough ram, you could try to set your daw to the shortest latency possible.
i imgine things should work out good for ya bro!

are you using a drum brain, or trigger i/o, or do you plan in using drumagog to convert mic signals to midi in your daw?

 

[arv_foh]

Gotcha. If you used Logic 9 in low latency mode you should have zero latency if you're using it with ApTrigga2, or if you put it in live triggering mode in Drumagog.

If I were doing it, I would have 2 sessions set up, so you could run it either way the engineer wanted, either a 2 channel mix, or individual drum channels if the engineer so desired.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

No, it's not. If you have an interface with at least 5 outputs, you could output the kick, snare, tom 1, tom 2, and tom 3 separately.

This is correct

he means that he is pretty sure most the sound guys will be useless tools who are not competent, therefor he wants to control panning, volume and reverb himself so that everything goes peachy.

Why should I depend on a dude that's on 99% probability to suck unbelievably hard at FOH mixing?

I prefer to bring my own template from home, it will work on every situation as long as the venue is half-decent, and I'm not playing on a shitty place. Also I 'd bring my own trustable tech to do all the minor adjustments.

 

[acappa]

Also I 'd bring my own trustable tech to do all the minor adjustments.

Yeap, that´s the ideal situation. But knowing you´re leaving Spain next year I don´t have any trustable tech left...

I shall test it in my rehearsal room to see everything works fine...
Thanks to all.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

Yeap, that´s the ideal situation. But knowing you´re leaving Spain next year I don´t have any trustable tech left...

I shall test it in my rehearsal room to see everything works fine...
Thanks to all.

Test it on some small venues, like El Lago or something similar, and don't advertise too much the gig. If something fails, there won't be anyone to remember it; if everything works great (i wouldn't be that sure...) then you know how to do it!