To trigger drums or not?

[atruepretense]

Hello everyone again.

Well this is about my 3rd or 4th post and so far i'm falling in love with the forum haha.

Anyways, here is my situation and I was hoping someone could help me and give feedback.

So I have a Tama kit, really nice one too. Sounds great and is powerful just like the TAMA name brings. My only issue is noise level, unfortunately I live in an apartment and while i've generally just did drum samples, i'm sick of them and I want to rock out since I'm a drummer and guitarist. Recording and playing my drums is very loud. So I don't want to be an ass to my neighbors.

My three options are as follows:

1. Sell my current kit which I might get about 800$ or so and try to get an electronic kit. (No noise, Variety of sounds, more space available)

2. Keep my kit and get some drum triggers and put some drum mufflers on the heads. (Cut out a little corner for the triggers) and just mic my cymbals. (Lower noise, I keep my drums, If I one day move, I'll still have it)

3. Forget the neighbors and just mic the kit and play away.

I know some people shun away from triggers but for option two, I've been to a buddy of mine's studio where he triggered his and let me tell you, with 2 radioshack piezo triggers on each head, EZDrummer and a sound module, it sounded very, very close to the beautiful TD-9 kit (which I wish I could afford).

So what do you think? This is only a semi-pro studio really.

Help me out here? Much appreciated!

[magno]

I just recorded a band with double kick drums last week, triggers are now my new friend .
I just happen to have 2 kick drums here, so this led me to some experimenting yesterday.
What ended up working really well was taping some ear bud style headphones to the batter heads, Left ear bud to left kick, right bud to right kick. Now at this point I was kind of screwed because I did not have any kind of splitter, but plugging the headphones in to a balanced input on my mixer combined both kicks to mono.
I have not actually tried triggering anything yet as I was missing a piece for one of the kick pedals. I'll fix that today and continue the experiment.

[paul999]

I use drumagog all the time. This is far cheaper and better in my opinion. $300 and no triggers to screw around with. I did a whole rough recording with a few dynamic mic and a table. I usually sample the actual kit I am working with and layer it with my drum mic's but in your case if you are not going to dampen the overheads choose a good time of day when you can make some noise. Sample each drum at a few different volumes and then dampen them. Use the samples and a good pair of overheads.

[magno]

Originally Posted by paul999

I use drumagog all the time. This is far cheaper and better in my opinion. $300 and no triggers to screw around with. I did a whole rough recording with a few dynamic mic and a table. I usually sample the actual kit I am working with and layer it with my drum mic's but in your case if you are not going to dampen the overheads choose a good time of day when you can make some noise. Sample each drum at a few different volumes and then dampen them. Use the samples and a good pair of overheads.

I use Drumagog too, and it really is great.
Paul would you not agree that he dynamic mics you are using are indeed triggers?
How does the table come in to play here?
The nice thing about actual triggers is the lack of bleed from other drums.
As for damping your drums, my friends Dad took the top rims off the drums and used t-shirt material on top of the skin, then replaced the hoops, it worked great. Maybe you could put some of those iron on patches for jeans to help with longevity.

[brandondrury]

EZDrummer and a sound module, it sounded very, very close to the beautiful TD-9 kit

I'd rather get raped in prison before I took the TD-9 over a EZ Drummer. That's like comparing banging a girl to banging a dude in my opinion. I'll take EZ Drummer every day. No synthesis-based emulation has ever came close to good real drums in my personal opinion. The modern drum samples are too good.

3. Forget the neighbors and just mic the kit and play away.

You can forget the neighbors, but I'm sure they'll remember the cops. I never recommend pissing off your herd.

2. Keep my kit and get some drum triggers and put some drum mufflers on the heads. (Cut out a little corner for the triggers) and just mic my cymbals. (Lower noise, I keep my drums, If I one day move, I'll still have it)

The cymbals will still be robo loud. Sample replacement works extremely well these days and can sound bad ass. However, this is for tonal reasons and not necessarily to solve volume issues. In other words, I don't think this is good enough to keep the neighbors happy.

1. Sell my current kit which I might get about 800$ or so and try to get an electronic kit. (No noise, Variety of sounds, more space available)
I'd go this route. Edrums running to any of these Steven Slate / Superior Drummer 2.0 / Kitcore / DFHS is a dream come true for recording.

I love real drums, but this requires good heads, good tuning, a great room, a nice mic collection, plenty of inputs, bla bla bla. With this you plugin and play once you have it setup and you've got drums that sound like a $5k / day room.

Brandon

[atruepretense]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

I'd rather get raped in prison before I took the TD-9 over a EZ Drummer. That's like comparing banging a girl to banging a dude in my opinion. I'll take EZ Drummer every day. No synthesis-based emulation has ever came close to good real drums in my personal opinion. The modern drum samples are too good.

You can forget the neighbors, but I'm sure they'll remember the cops. I never recommend pissing off your herd.


The cymbals will still be robo loud. Sample replacement works extremely well these days and can sound bad ass. However, this is for tonal reasons and not necessarily to solve volume issues. In other words, I don't think this is good enough to keep the neighbors happy.

1. Sell my current kit which I might get about 800$ or so and try to get an electronic kit. (No noise, Variety of sounds, more space available)
I'd go this route. Edrums running to any of these Steven Slate / Superior Drummer 2.0 / Kitcore / DFHS is a dream come true for recording.

I love real drums, but this requires good heads, good tuning, a great room, a nice mic collection, plenty of inputs, bla bla bla. With this you plugin and play once you have it setup and you've got drums that sound like a $5k / day room.

Brandon

Thanks Brandon, You think exactly how I am thinking haha. And sorry I didn't mean the TD-9 (Was really tired), I meant the TD-20. But yeah I have mufflers for the cymbals which I can lay some triggers under. I mean i've done it at gigs before to help with the volume and it triggers really well honestly. And yes, EZdrummer is amazing. And yeah, I don't have enough for a nice room and mics and inputs when I can just blow 5 bucks on some piezo triggers, 300 on a Alesis DM-5 or similar unit, and EZdrummer and sound like an awesome set. So I think i'll do that.