Mike my drums or tigger them?

[atruepretense]

Hello everyone, wanna start of by saying how helpful this forum is. Top notch honestly. Now on to business.

I've been doing home recording for 2-3 years or so. I started out with mostly Trance and such genres on Reason and on various DAWs with plug ins. I've always been a guitarist, drummer, bassist, pianist, etc.. So I always loved playing them, but I never had the cash for equipment to actually start with that. Now that I have a bit of a budget to work with, my biggest concern is recording drums. It is so god DAMN annoying to layout a drum track with MIDI or just arrangement, it's so time consuming. I also never get the drums exactly how I wanted them. So:

I have my drumset, a Tama Swingstar with some extra cymbals. Here is the what i've learned of both worlds so far.

Miked drums:
- More natural sound
- I'll need decent acoustics in the room
- I'll have to buy decent mics to get decent sound.
- Placement and tuning matter basically 100%

Triggering
- Not natural like miking, but can have more or less same acoustics (Depending on triggers, placement and plug ins used)
- Allow me to not have to fine tune drums
- Array of drum sounds available at any moment with a click of a button
- All i need is triggers, drum module, and MIDI in/out

I do not have a really big budget, and my studio is in my room, so I don't think acoustics are very good. I feel like miking would be expensive. I already have a mixer, but when you factor in mikes, such as 1 or 2 snare, 1 per tom, 1 or 2 overheads, bass drum mic, etc...plus cables and stands, I feel like i'm going to get into the 500-600 dollar range easy, unless I go with crap equipment.

With triggers, I can get the Ddrum triggers for 200$, a Roland trigger to MIDI converter for like another 200 or so, less used. And I can just use some radioshack piezos on the cymbals.

What do you think? For a semi pro to pro sound. What do you use? Setup you'd recommend? Any info is helpful. Sorry for the long ass post but thank you again!

[paul999]

I use drumagog. Buy any old mic for close micing because drumagog uses the wave form as a trigger. Buy good overheads because that is the giveaway to sampled drums. I recommend sm-81's. It will cost a bit more but it is the best of both worlds.

[fingerace]

Bringing this thread back to life. What do you think about triggers?

If you 're going to use SSD anyway, why not trigger them physically?

[Can of worms]

Real drums can impart loads of character even if you're just pretty average at tracking them (as I am).

Cheap mikes sound OK on my drums.

D112...... £100
SM 57.....£60 or £70

Behringer condensors.....£70 (pair).

That gets me anything from Ringo to a synthetic Dance sound,depending on how I mess about with it.

[String7th]

Originally Posted by Can of worms

That gets me anything from Ringo to a synthetic Dance sound,depending on how I mess about with it.

Steven Slate Drum samples will probably not be used for this style of playing.

Really the option of either using mic or just triggers is up to the user. It's cheaper to use ONLY triggers, if you don;t own a multi-track interface this would obviously be the easiest way to go. But if you own a Firepod/studio and have the ability to multitrack already, I find having the drums there to give an idea of what the performance should sound like. MIDI is a series of 1 and 0s. 8 mics on a kit, even $20 behringers, you are way closer to really hear the performance and feel what the drummer is doing. That way you can manually create a MIDI track close to what the drummer intended to play.

[fingerace]

Originally Posted by String7th

That way you can manually create a MIDI track close to what the drummer intended to play.

"manually create"? You mean trigger samples by audio? The way most people use samples?

What I was thinking is whether it's much easier to use ddrum triggers for your triggering instead of using the audio you recorded. It doesn't mean that you cannot use mics WITH the triggers on the drums. Besides that you will have to use at least the overheads and maybe a hi hat mic for the cymbals.

[TonyB]

Originally Posted by paul999

I use drumagog. Buy any old mic for close micing because drumagog uses the wave form as a trigger. Buy good overheads because that is the giveaway to sampled drums. I recommend sm-81's. It will cost a bit more but it is the best of both worlds.

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What he said!
Absolutely

Triggers won't replace the overheads, well technically they can, but not artistically as Paul stated.