A few ideas
Right, I’m not a drummer but I can just about play drums. My son has a lovely acoustic kit an d plays well but we all know that recording a real kit is not a trivial exercise. I thought I’d share some recent experiences regarding triggered drums incase anyone is interested.
For my own songs I’ve always tended to use programmed drums but a while back I bought myself a mesh-head electronic kit. I thought that that would be the answer. However I found it really hard to play - especially the cymbals; big chunks of plastic. My son did better but he said it was hard work and he really had to squeeze a tune out of it. So I sold it and with the money (actually a small fraction of the money) I bought an Arbiter Flats kit.
The Flats kits, if you’ve not seen them, are as the name suggests, real drums but “flat”. It takes up very little space, is not quite as loud as a real kit, but feels like a real kit to play. The acoustic sound isn’t too bad - not great - but not bad. Mine has slightly better cymbals it seems so that helps I guess, but I’m not sure I’d want to record it with mics.
So I dragged out my old Alesis D4 drum module (Ebay, ebay, ebay) and set about making some triggers in an attempt at a DIY trigger conversion. Triggers are easy to make. A trip to Maplin. A tenner on a handful of Piezo sensors some cable and some jack plugs. A hour later I had 5 triggers. For each trigger I made a small, (approx 2" square), “wallet” out of some soft flat foam/rubber; Stuck the sensor end of the trigger into a wallet and super-glued it in. Now my triggers have a little bit of protection.
Next up, armed with gaffer tape, I taped a trigger to each tom (3 off), the snare and the kick. I put them on the bottom of the heads (Flats are single headed drums) so as they don’t get in the way when I play - exact position doesn’t seem to matter too much and the gaffer tape and foam nuke the acoustics of the kit which is helpful. Plugged the triggers into the D4 and made sure each one triggered the right drum sound. Tweaked the various triggering parameters. All pretty easy.
So now I have a DIY e-kit without e-cymbals.
Next I tried some recording. A couple of condensor mikes - one to get the crash/ride on the right of the kit and one to get the hi-hat and crash on the lft of the kit. The MIDI out from the D4 goes inot my soundcard. Hit record and I get real cymbals on two tracks (ok, with some spill) and a MIDI track of the toms, snare, kick. Tweak/quantise etc the MIDI and throw at your drum sampler of choice. Pan the cymbal tracks left/right and voila! Decent drums sounds but with the life of played rather than recorded drums. (Now I just need to learn to play better). I’m having fun playing with gates, EQ and side-band compression to minimise hearing the spill in the cymbal tracks.
Anyway, for
£100 for a second had Flats kit, and beer money for the triggers I made a DIY triggered kit. Sure, it ain’t silent but it plays like a real kit IMO.
OK, I had the Alesis D4 but I’ve also noted that FrettedSynth have released a plugin that lets you plug triggers into your soundcard (no module required) and trigger a drum sampler. That sounds like something I shall be having a go at.
Also, if you don’t fancy making triggers they are always coming up on ebay.
So, there you go. My contribution to making the world a noisier place.
X
Hi XonXoff:
That’s a nice report on producing drum tracks…
I’ve worked at making E-Drum shells… I had some success but when I asked a drummer to give them a try …
He looked at them for a moment and hit a few of the shells with a drum stick and he response was…
If he had to play them for any length of time he would tear his wrists off his fore-arms…
I think after getting his reply I figured out the the heads of the shells have to give back the same pressure as the player that hits the heads with the stick…
I think that’s what I gathered from his reply, after playing them…
Maybe, there’s another way to describe the stick/hit action…?
Anyway, the shells produced the signal to trigger the samples…
but they lacked player response/action…
As I understand, there’s a lot of drummers working the local Bar Scene that uses those D-4 drum units with triggers around here…
The only parts of their kits that is “Real” so-to-speak are the Hats and cymbals… The rest of their kits are done with triggers-and-samples…
Bill…
Hi there !
I’ve been wondering about a ‘hybrid’ kit for a long time as well.
Only micing up cymbals is easier than micing a whole kit.
(And even the top end electronic cymbals doesn’t give you a good feal/sound for anything other than just ‘crashing’ them…
Hmmmmmm. Makes me think.
Thanks for posting !
W.
Hi Wihan Stemmet:
You’ve been away for a while… I often wondered if you’d be back posting…
Time to get that bike out and get that chrome polished up…
Bill…
Hey, Bill !
Somehow you always seem to notice when the ‘prodigal son’ returns !
Yeah - been busy with a couple of things. Life waaaay too hectic at the moment.
Starting a new job in 2 weeks.
My studio is at the moment more of a store than a studio 
Hopefully I will have more time when the new job comes and then I’ll pick up ties with everyone again…
Take care !
Wihan
Quote: (Wihan Stemmet @ Sep. 14 2007, 9:33 AM)
Hi there !
I've been wondering about a 'hybrid' kit for a long time as well.
Only micing up cymbals is easier than micing a whole kit.
(And even the top end electronic cymbals doesn't give you a good feal/sound for anything other than just 'crashing' them...
Hmmmmmm. Makes me think.
Thanks for posting !
W.
Yeah, I have to say I'm really pleased with the way this is turning out. I still need to learn to play a bit better but with the toms, snare and kick as a MIDI track I can tweak things a bit and use different sounds where appropriate. It's soooo much easier to put together a drum track with a bit of feeling like this.
I've played around with mic placement a bit and even with a couple of non-matching condensors things sound pretty nice.
Give it a go Wihan....when job, life and motorbike allow :-)
Quote: (Wihan Stemmet @ Sep. 14 2007, 5:49 AM)
Hey, Bill !
Somehow you always seem to notice when the 'prodigal son' returns !
Yeah - been busy with a couple of things. Life waaaay too hectic at the moment.
Starting a new job in 2 weeks.
My studio is at the moment more of a store than a studio
Hopefully I will have more time when the new job comes and then I'll pick up ties with everyone again...
Take care !
Wihan
HI Wihan!
Been missing you bud. I hope everything is OK with you and yours and the new job works out well for you. Good to "see" you back!
Is your home-brew electronic drum thread still on Audiominds.com? There was some swell tips and ideas in that thread...
Nevermind it's HERE!
D
Hi Again Wihan:
After this weekend it’ll be all uphill for you southerners…
It’ll be all downhill for us way up here…
I hate it when the daytime hours are shorter than the night time hours…
AND
The temperature begins to drop, as well…
Anyway, we can’t do much about it…
I’ve got a couple of eight-track Simmons acoustic-to-MIDI note converters in the studio… They were the fore-runners of the Electronic drum triggers to sample that are big in the market place today…
I’ve had them for years…
I never did much with them…
But I should get them out this winter and see if I can get them set up to work and see if I can make them productive…
Bill…
Hi Tim !
Yeah, it looks like things will work out… Holding thumbs.
Wox, Winter is a good time to be inside, exploring gadgets (new and forgotten)
Here the days are really brightening up…
Hi Wihan:
I have no idea where our summer went…
We normally get a dry spell and the grass burns off…
This year??
NO…
it was green right through the summer.
We got plenty of rain…
No brush fires…
There’s two - three weeks at the start of fall that we have perfect weather…
We are having it now… It rains-and-blows on the weekends
and fine through the week…
We have clear skies at night…
The lakes are loosing
their heat…
Big-Time…
Lots of vapor in the mornings…
When all the heat is gone from the lakes…
Look out…
One thing I have to do… in the next few weeks…
Tune up the snow blower engine…
and take the battery outta the ride-on mower…
I need to try to get this LAN working… properly… and to see if I can get some kind of drum triggering hardware working
AND…
AND…
Bill…
Quote: (woxnerw @ Sep. 18 2007, 10:08 PM)
I've got a couple of eight-track Simmons acoustic-to-MIDI note converters in the studio.. They were the fore-runners of the Electronic drum triggers to sample that are big in the market place today.. I've had them for years.. I never did much with them.. But I should get them out this winter and see if I can get them set up to work and see if I can make them productive..
Go for it Bill. Drum trigering is great fun and very versatile.