Pro Tools and Triggering

[AfterimageMetal]

Hey guys, I've been coming to this board a lot lately to read up on all the helpful tips. My band has been recording our EP ourselves for the past few months and we're getting down to the final few weeks. We're recording using my MacBook Pro with Pro Tools 7.1 using a Digi 002 rack. We got our mix sounding pretty good, but I recently decided to make the investment and buy a plugin called Drumagog. If you're not familiar with it, it's a plugin that can replace recorded drum sounds with a sample. So we applied it to our kick and snare, and it's given us an even higher level of professionalism on our EP. However, we will be recording other bands real soon, and with Drumagog, I believe there's a midi in option. I was wondering if you guys could recommend the best way to set up a trigger on an acoustical drum, bring it into the pro tools system, and have it go through drumagog? Do I need a triggering module, or is there a way I can directly plug the trigger into the pro tools module? I want to do this because i've heard you have so much more control with midi, because you can snap to grid and all sorts of other great things like that. The setup doesn't necessarily need to go through drumagog live, though there is a no-latency mode. Most of the drummers i've worked with don't need to hear their own kick in their ears. So if we could somehow get that incoming trigger from the kick to become a midi note in our pro tools session, that'd be incredible.

By the way, let me introduce myself...
My name is Eric and I play guitar in a band called Afterimage. We also record a bunch of local bands, and I am really interested in going into recording as a profession.

Any way you guys could help is appreciated, your posts have helped us immensely so far!

 

[broken81]

welcome ....

Yea most people know about drumagog around here, probably everyone to be honest. But i take drumagog on a recorded audio track lets say the snare and use midi output function and put on channel 1 then I send midi output to a midi track I setup as channel 1. You click play and record on the midi track and if you got drumagog triggering the hits right it will give you midi data for all the snare hits

You can go through all the toms and whatever drums you want and do this. You must have drumagog as a rtas plug in though and not using through a vst wrapper thing. What your gonna have to watch though is if your putting all the drums into time in midi cause the drummer cant play to a click right, REMEMBER you can't change your overheads so this can become a problem. What is a safer bet is to use beat detective in protools. That can be used to snap all the tracks to grid and put things in time and you can do the overheads to match the snare or whatever your fixing to put back into time!

Hope this somewhat helps its very early here and i probably should not even be trying to explain things I'm barley awake ......

 

[AfterimageMetal]

Yeah man, thanks! It helps a ton! Oh, and sorry for having this in the wrong forum.

 

[broken81]

No prob bro.......

good luck with recording and yea this forum is loaded with great people and sweet info on everything

 

[C_F_H_13]

Do I need a triggering module, or is there a way I can directly plug the trigger into the pro tools module?

Any way you guys could help is appreciated, your posts have helped us immensely so far!

Hey man welcome!

One thing that I now do after reading about andy doing it, is I run my Ddrum triggers right into mic pres and record them like they were mics.This allows me to have just transients recorded for every drum hit. Not only does this make replacement easier (I do it manually in PT which I will explain in a second), but it makes editing with Beat Detective alot easier too!

Drumagog is great for replacement, but here's a quick way to do it if you don't have it, especially if you've tracked the triggers.

Create a track under the track you want to replace/enhance. Copy a sample that you want to use. Use protools turn on AZ mode and Tab to transient mode.

Now repeat this key command about 500 times.... " ';vp "

What this does is A) tabs to the next transient B)moves down to the empty track C) pastes the sample D) moves back up to the track you want to replace....and then repeat.....once you get good at it you can do a whole song in under 15 minutes no problem.

Hope this helped!

 

[broken81]

mmmmmmmm would it be smarter to have like a few samples at different velocity's when you replace like that to get a more real feel like on snare?

I'm gonna have to try this out though

 

[AfterimageMetal]

Hey man welcome!

One thing that I now do after reading about andy doing it, is I run my Ddrum triggers right into mic pres and record them like they were mics.This allows me to have just transients recorded for every drum hit. Not only does this make replacement easier (I do it manually in PT which I will explain in a second), but it makes editing with Beat Detective alot easier too!

Drumagog is great for replacement, but here's a quick way to do it if you don't have it, especially if you've tracked the triggers.

Create a track under the track you want to replace/enhance. Copy a sample that you want to use. Use protools turn on AZ mode and Tab to transient mode.

Now repeat this key command about 500 times.... " ';vp "

What this does is A) tabs to the next transient B)moves down to the empty track C) pastes the sample D) moves back up to the track you want to replace....and then repeat.....once you get good at it you can do a whole song in under 15 minutes no problem.

Hope this helped!

Yeah, I saw a video on how to do that on YouTube. It kinda upset me because I saw it after I had already bought Drumagog . Haha, it's all good though.

So, if I plug those triggers straight into a mic pre, and then into PT, it will come in as a noise? And if so, can i take those and snap to grid (quantize)?

 

[Sm57]

Yep

 

[kaomao]

Hey man welcome!

One thing that I now do after reading about andy doing it, is I run my Ddrum triggers right into mic pres and record them like they were mics.This allows me to have just transients recorded for every drum hit. Not only does this make replacement easier (I do it manually in PT which I will explain in a second), but it makes editing with Beat Detective alot easier too!

etc etc etc

That's great man, I have to check this shit out.
Thank you again!!!

 

[kaomao]

Yeah, I saw a video on how to do that on YouTube. It kinda upset me because I saw it after I had already bought Drumagog . Haha, it's all good though.

So, if I plug those triggers straight into a mic pre, and then into PT, it will come in as a noise? And if so, can i take those and snap to grid (quantize)?

I think you're talking about this video, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DSe2IwAGy0


Well that guy is faster than hell zooming and scrolling throught the project ahahah.
Great fucking tips!

 

[C_F_H_13]

mmmmmmmm would it be smarter to have like a few samples at different velocity's when you replace like that to get a more real feel like on snare?

I'm gonna have to try this out though

TOTALLY! However, I rarely do any kind of replacement...it's more...enhancement. I like to have 1 sample to add consistency. Then if there's alot of ghost notes or subtler work, I'll multisample with drumagog!

 

[C_F_H_13]

I think you're talking about this video, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DSe2IwAGy0


Well that guy is faster than hell zooming and scrolling throught the project ahahah.
Great fucking tips!

Yeah man...Kenny is the shit. People should check out his whole series of protools tutorials....they are the best.

http://womb.mixerman.net/showthread.php?t=1491