Triggering

[JayKeeley]

Can someone please explain briefly what is meant by "drum triggering". I read an interview with Sasha Paeth and he explained that they needed to use triggers for the first Rhapsody album - meaning none of the drums were real.

So what is triggering then? Is it like MIDI drums?

Thanks.

 

[AjDeath]

When you run your drums through a triggering system you run them through I think an equalizer and a PA, I might be wrong I am not a drummer, but when you do this you have a "prepackaged" sound for each of you drums, so every time you hit it you always get the same sound, I call this cheating because it doesn't matter how hard you hit the drum you are going to get the same sound every time, Flo Mournier of Cryptopsy said he used it for their last album. So didn't Pete Sandoval of Morbid Angel on their last effort. You can tell because the drum sound isn't as natural, Listen to Pete and then Listen to Christy and you will here the difference.

 

[The Wanderer]

thats pretty much it. its a unit that attaches to a drum head and when the drum is hit it sends a single to a brain (trigger unit) and it sends whatever sound you set to the PA or to the tape or whatever. its not cheating because the drummer is still playing what you hear, its just a more a consistant sound. and you set them so they are velocity sensitive as well and it will vary with how hard you hit it. flo mounier still plays everythign you hear, triggered or not. doesn't mean they are bad drummers becuase they trigger.

and for the record, richard christy has one of the worst sounding snares i've ever heard.

 

[AjDeath]

OOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCH!

Richard Christy IS the best, have you heard his work on Burning Insides Apparition? friggin great, I call it cheating because you can set the triggers for any type of hit if you want, I mean would Pete get that fast on Gateways without them? and Flo plays live without the triggers, he uses them in the studio for a consistent sound, and actually he says that is cheating as well, but I am not a drummer, I do play drums but I don't want to play drums in a band, our drummer is ten times better than me anyways, and his doubles wrek mine.

 

[The Wanderer]

last time i saw cryptopsy, most of his kit was triggered. and i didn't say richard christy was a band drummer, quite the contrary, i just hate the way his snare snounds. no crack and all body. i've had apparition for some time. nothing amazing as far as i'm concerned, beyond the drumming anyway. triggering doens't let you play faster, the feet still have to move and tbe hands still have to move, it just helps with consistancy. anyway. i've had this argument too many times. i dont think its cheating and you aren't going to change my mind. i dont even think studio 'tricks' are really cheating, so. use what you can to make the sounds you want. its all instrumentation.

 

[Dakuroth]

Its no more cheating than using an EQ pedal on you ax, in my opinion.

Anyway, music aint a fucking competition. If if helps get the sound you want, cool

 

[TheShattered]

Agreed. Triggers can definitely be useful in terms of live sound. If you want to call them cheating, you might as well call a compressor for vocals cheating.

 

[Dead Moon Rising]

I use triggers on my kick drums. Triggering my snare and toms sounds like crap though because you don't get the dynamic of the drum head vibrating. If you do a snare roll you just hear one sound played really fast and it sounds aweful.

One thing I found out is the triggers are forceing me to hit my kick drums cleaner. If I don't get good rebound it double triggers and I get drum hits when I don't want them. Same thing when I'm playing slow. I have to make sure the pedal stroke is clean and I get good rebound when the beater hits, otherwise I get false hits before and or after the beat.

The coolest thing I like is that whenever I record demos in my living room, my bass drums sound killer. Without the triggers I would need at least 2 good kick drum mics, a 2 chanel mic preamp, 2 channel compressor/gate, and 2 channel EQ to get good sounds. not to mention figureing out how to run all that stuff. Then I'd have to make sure both bass drums are perfectly in tune with each other, which I can't accomplish because mine look the same but are from two diffent years and sound different.

The best reason I can think of for triggers is this : Every gig I've ever seen or played, The sound guy is a friggin' Idoit, the mix sucked and the drums sounded like crap. They just throw a mic in the bass drum and go with it. Mic-ing the snare and toms is differnt and usually is ok. The triggers vastly improve my live drum sound.

 

[epicous]

The coolest thing I like is that whenever I record demos in my living room, my bass drums sound killer. Without the triggers I would need at least 2 good kick drum mics, a 2 chanel mic preamp, 2 channel compressor/gate, and 2 channel EQ to get good sounds.

Is it not better an electric set of drums?

 

[-Gavin-]

Imagine the low sound of bassdrums going fuicking fast amongst distorted guitars, its gonna sound muddy as fuck.
Triggering just focuses the sound to help the drums cut through the mix.

Is using distortion on a guitar cheating?
No.

so why is "colouring" your drum sound considered cheating?

 

[NAD]

Imagine the low sound of bassdrums going fuicking fast amongst distorted guitars, its gonna sound muddy as fuck.
Triggering just focuses the sound to help the drums cut through the mix.

Is using distortion on a guitar cheating?
No.

so why is "colouring" your drum sound considered cheating?

Well put. And Danger Mouse fucking owns.

 

[Cimmerian]

This has been a far more intelligent threwad on the subject than I thought I would encounter, but I have to add one thing. Being a drummer, I can make the argument that triggering can indeed enable one to alter technique. You do indeed do not need to hit the drum as hard to produece the same volume if you choose to trigger. The catch is this: At a certain point in death metal drumming, it becomes an irrelevant argument: you simply cannot play at certain speeds and play with any force, unless you can somehow sunder the rules of physics...if you do so without triggers, as one poster said, it will sound like a meaningless rumble.