ddrum pro triggers false triggering...

[broken81]

When i use my ddrum pro triggers recording they usually like claim 2 or 3 hits every time the drummer hits the drum. This is just the drum skin vibrating after the hit. Now i know if you really make the skin dead it fixes the problem but then the drum sounds like crap.

How do you guys go about solving this with triggers?

 

[006]

Are you going to be replacing the kick 100% later or are you trying to blend the trigger/sample in with a mic'ed kick?

If you are going to replace 100% I don't see a problem with just getting the skin to be more desirable for getting proper triggers. If you are trying to mic it too...maybe take a few samples of the drum how you want it and then deaden it for the trigger? You could then blend the sampled original drum in with whatever samples you planned on using. Just an idea...

I usually either have the drummer dampen the drum to what I need for proper triggering, and I deal with the sound for the mic afterwards...in other words I make the mic'ed sound work. I have, a few times in the past, just had to borrow a kick drum from somebody, for the same reason you stated. Sometimes the dude's kick sounds like shit if it's dampened too much or if the skin is tuned a certain way. Just gotta go over the options you have, sometimes you have to deal with it as best as possible...sometimes replace 100%, sometimes take a sample of the mic'ed drum and replace 100% with the mic'ed sample, and then blend in the other sample. Plenty of options.

~006

 

[Metaltastic]

Now, when "making the skin dead," does that mean tightening it like crazy? Cuz I would think loosening it would make it flop around/mistrigger even more...

 

[broken81]

How do you dampen the drums?

Yea i think i will just take samples of the kit then dampen the replace after but I'm just wondering some good methods to dampen the drum.

 

[MetallyGuitarded]

My last drummer had issues with his DDrum triggers false-triggering too. He never really figured a way around it. He had a nice custom DW kit and it sounded great but a lot of the shows we played had no/minimal PA so he used the trigger thru whatever PA there was cause you gotta have kick drum in metal, right? As I recall it was really only an issue when he was doing blast beats and Gene Hoglan style double-bass madness but it might have also done it with his floor tom on real hard hits. He used his DDrum trigger thru an Alesis DM5 and he played with it for months trying to nail it down. I think it comes down to choosing between great natural kick sound OR triggers. Maybe Sneap and the like know some tricks? As for deadening, Most guys I've seen live use egg crate foam or pillows in the kick to deaden it some. Proper tuning helps a lot too.

 

[paladin shredder]

these moongells work really well, and the drums still sound good.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/RTOM-Moongel-Dampening-Gels?sku=443323

just make sure you put the trigger close to where you have the dampener.

 

[Potshot]

Also look out where the bass amp and guitar amp's are facing in a live situation, had a horrid experience with DDrum triggers the first gig I did in my current band at a shitty little club with a small stage, bass amp was making the kicks trigger like crazy as it was semi-pointing at the left bass drum.

 

[broken81]

My last drummer had issues with his DDrum triggers false-triggering too. He never really figured a way around it. He had a nice custom DW kit and it sounded great but a lot of the shows we played had no/minimal PA so he used the trigger thru whatever PA there was cause you gotta have kick drum in metal, right? As I recall it was really only an issue when he was doing blast beats and Gene Hoglan style double-bass madness but it might have also done it with his floor tom on real hard hits. He used his DDrum trigger thru an Alesis DM5 and he played with it for months trying to nail it down. I think it comes down to choosing between great natural kick sound OR triggers. Maybe Sneap and the like know some tricks? As for deadening, Most guys I've seen live use egg crate foam or pillows in the kick to deaden it some. Proper tuning helps a lot too.

Yea our drummer stuffed his drums with foam to solve the problem of mis triggers with dm5 but then his drums sounded like he was hitting cardboard when the Pa was off. I would still like to get a good sound in the overheads and room Mic's if possible from toms and snare.

I wondered about the moon gel but seemed like it just would no be enough. Guess i need to try it out.....

 

[alexrookie]

When i use my ddrum pro triggers recording they usually like claim 2 or 3 hits every time the drummer hits the drum. This is just the drum skin vibrating after the hit. Now i know if you really make the skin dead it fixes the problem but then the drum sounds like crap.

How do you guys go about solving this with triggers?

never had any issues using my ddrum pro triggers on kick and snare.
i just record the triggersignal with a micpre - no drumbrain, so i don't know about that.
some drummers tend to let the beater fall back to the skin after their hit, so that might mistrigger.
can you set some kind of threshold in a drumbrain, maybe that solves the problem.

do you use a tension watch for the drums? - how loose is your beater skin?
i have proper triggering from 50-60 and the sound of the kick is really good.


best,

alex

 

[nwright]

In the limited time I've used Ddrum Pro triggers, I've never had a problem either. One thing I did notice is how you mount them on the drum can have an effect. Our drummer was initially putting them on where the blue foam part was just resting on the drum head. This gave us mistriggers galore. We messed with it more and found that if you mount it so the foam is squished a bit, it keeps the piezo contact firmly against the drum head.

Our theory was that since it wasn't "forced" (albeit lightly) against the head and was just "resting" on it, the vibrations was in a way constantly hitting the piezo (making and then breaking contact) therefore causing the mistriggers. Don't know if that was the case, but squishing down the foam a bit solved our problem.

Also, this was for kick, snare and 4 toms. Worked for all of them. We also used 1 moongel per drum, but that was more a tonal preference to kill ring, not for better triggering. Although, their presence may have helped.

 

[beyond dead]

same deal with roland triggers. I like to have 0 (or limited ) muffling on the bass drum, but no matter how i set the sensitivity on my dm5 and how close the trigger was to the skin, still had misfiring. when muffled, the acoustic sound is terrible, and i find the beater bounces back too quick. I will just convert recorded bass drum to midi when doing my bands recordings. live, i smash the fucker so hard that it don`t need a mic in most smaller venues. fuck tap dancing behind a kit with heavily muffled bass drums and those metal pad things where the beater hits.

 

[Keessi]

1. Pillow in the bassdrum touching both heads
2. Play with the "decay" adjustment on the drumbrain. that defines the time the module allows the next hit to be triggered.

 

[broken81]

Yea I'm looking for recording tips. I do not own a dm5 personally and I am just running the trigger right to mic preamp. I have all kinds of mis triggers on the snare drum when doing this. The kicks have not been to bad and i never really have used tom triggers yet. I just figured if the snare was messing up and i was worried about toms also doing this.

 

[alexrookie]

Yea I'm looking for recording tips. I do not own a dm5 personally and I am just running the trigger right to mic preamp. I have all kinds of mis triggers on the snare drum when doing this. The kicks have not been to bad and i never really have used tom triggers yet. I just figured if the snare was messing up and i was worried about toms also doing this.

so snare is your main problem?
if i remember right, the snare trigger is some kind of different for recognizing rim shots or something.
there was something about it that scared me about this trigger, so i chose a tom trigger for my snare, that means that i have never used an original ddrum snare trigger.
can someone confirm, that the snare trigger is different from a tom or kick trigger?, that might be broken81's prob.

just an idea

 

[Keessi]

With what are you triggering it with? you have to play with the decay(or similar) knob to avoid falsetriggering

 

[nwright]

With what are you triggering it with? you have to play with the decay(or similar) knob to avoid falsetriggering

He is not using a module or brain, therefore adjustment parameters are not there.

For me, it was a matter of securing the triggers in a certain way (as I posted above).

As for the snare trigger, yes it is different. It's dual zone, so it senses rimshots and such. Try a tom trigger on the snare and see if that helps.

personally, after using the triggers vs. mics, for snare I found that the mic works better for me. Less adjustment, more accurate, etc. Since my initial trial with triggers, I've never gone back to a snare trigger, and I rarely have to ever edit the snare track...Just set the threshold on Drumagog to where it needs to be (depending on the drummer) and it works.

 

[broken81]

Yea i will give the tom trigger a try on the snare. I think the drummer i tracked may have been hitting the rim or something and making it false trigger like that. Kinda got me wondering about that now.

 

[wishtheend]

I bought a 2nd trigger set just to have two kick triggers and to get a tom trigger on the snare. A gravity blast being triggered with the dual zone trigger sounding like a mess. uke:

 

[beyond dead]

gravity blasts uke: step it up and actually hit the drum lol

 

[everybody's x]

I rarely have mistriggers with them, but I really crank them down. Press the foam in till it is tight against the head