Two things I wanted to see what other people think when asked about are using triggers and the morals behind sampling a drum.
A while back I had mentioned to some musician friends that I wanted to sample a friend's snare drum. They immediately became the moral police and bombarded me with questions. In the end of the "conversation" I realized they thought I meant something different, but they did raise some questions that I thought had some validity.
The mis-understanding was that they thought I was going to sample the friend's snare and use that on another project, but not to blend, but rather completely replace the original snare. I never completely replace anything except the kick, and if that can be avoided I try to. My argument was that even though it is my friend's snare, by the time I was done with it in any particular project, it won't sound like his snare anymore. I use samples for a particular reason, each drum has it's own qualities, and if a particular original source doesn't have these qualities then I will turn to samples to blend in with it to give me those qualities. I totally understand where they are coming from if I was using 100% replacement on the snare. Their argument was "why should that band get that snare sound when they don't own that snare?", to which I replied "then maybe we should trash the last recording I did for you guys, because that isn't his kick drum, toms, or snare drum." Which is true, I used Sneap's snare sample, a Decapitated kick sample, and the Chimaira tom samples. All with 50% or more (never 100%) blending. But, at the time, they obviously didn't care because it sounded killer.
I was curious if anyone else has ever thought about and moral issues with using samples, or more specifically taking samples of drums. Do you think it is wrong to sample something to blend in with another drum on another project? It is pretty funny that during their project they were more than happy to go through my library of kick samples to find the perfect one to use, yet when I wanted to sample a friend's snare to have in my library, it was "wrong".
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The other half of this post is regarding triggers. The friend in the above story that owns the snare that I would like to sample made this argument when we recorded the last time. He preferred not to use a trigger on any of his drums because he felt it altered the sound too much. I argued that it was a very insignificant amount and wouldn't make an audible difference, to be honest. The point of using triggers on this particular project was for editing purposes only, we weren't going to be replacing the toms or snare, however the option would obviously be there if needed. He used moongels and duct tape as examples of something touching the drum head and altering the sound. I explained that those methods are very drastic and used for a specific purpose, to eliminate ringing, whereas the triggers are designed to touch the heads very lightly and not alter the sound but rather come in contact just enough for the piezos to pickup the hits.
I was wondering if anyone else has run into this problem with drummers, and what you said to make them shut up. Lol. Basically, what can *I* say next time to make them just relax about the triggers?
~e.a
A while back I had mentioned to some musician friends that I wanted to sample a friend's snare drum. They immediately became the moral police and bombarded me with questions. In the end of the "conversation" I realized they thought I meant something different, but they did raise some questions that I thought had some validity.
The mis-understanding was that they thought I was going to sample the friend's snare and use that on another project, but not to blend, but rather completely replace the original snare. I never completely replace anything except the kick, and if that can be avoided I try to. My argument was that even though it is my friend's snare, by the time I was done with it in any particular project, it won't sound like his snare anymore. I use samples for a particular reason, each drum has it's own qualities, and if a particular original source doesn't have these qualities then I will turn to samples to blend in with it to give me those qualities. I totally understand where they are coming from if I was using 100% replacement on the snare. Their argument was "why should that band get that snare sound when they don't own that snare?", to which I replied "then maybe we should trash the last recording I did for you guys, because that isn't his kick drum, toms, or snare drum." Which is true, I used Sneap's snare sample, a Decapitated kick sample, and the Chimaira tom samples. All with 50% or more (never 100%) blending. But, at the time, they obviously didn't care because it sounded killer.
I was curious if anyone else has ever thought about and moral issues with using samples, or more specifically taking samples of drums. Do you think it is wrong to sample something to blend in with another drum on another project? It is pretty funny that during their project they were more than happy to go through my library of kick samples to find the perfect one to use, yet when I wanted to sample a friend's snare to have in my library, it was "wrong".
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The other half of this post is regarding triggers. The friend in the above story that owns the snare that I would like to sample made this argument when we recorded the last time. He preferred not to use a trigger on any of his drums because he felt it altered the sound too much. I argued that it was a very insignificant amount and wouldn't make an audible difference, to be honest. The point of using triggers on this particular project was for editing purposes only, we weren't going to be replacing the toms or snare, however the option would obviously be there if needed. He used moongels and duct tape as examples of something touching the drum head and altering the sound. I explained that those methods are very drastic and used for a specific purpose, to eliminate ringing, whereas the triggers are designed to touch the heads very lightly and not alter the sound but rather come in contact just enough for the piezos to pickup the hits.
I was wondering if anyone else has run into this problem with drummers, and what you said to make them shut up. Lol. Basically, what can *I* say next time to make them just relax about the triggers?
~e.a