serious question...

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Tuesday Jun 22, 2004

im in a fight with a dude over this...triggers, make you sound faster, or just change your tone, or both? fill me in drummers...i know what ive seen....

facingwest · Post by **facingwest** » Tuesday Jun 22, 2004

The right person to ask about this is Redawg, my brother. He's used both pads and triggers.

lonewolf · Post by **lonewolf** » Tuesday Jun 22, 2004

Triggers shouldn't make you sound faster...there is actually a slight tracking delay. I suppose with some tapped delay you could make it sound like you were an octopus....

Triggers allow you to assign different sounds to your kit using drum synthesizers. You might want a tight sound on one song and pick a room kit and then cover Phil Collins and pick an electro-reverse-gate set. On a box with custom preset slots, you can pick your favorite snare, bass, toms, etc from hundreds of sounds and arrange them into "your" kit.

Generally, the synth drums are evenly mixed at the source and this allows you to run them thru the house mix a lot cleaner and easier than miking your whole set. It will also make a bad set of drums seem to sound good.

Pure Evil · Post by **Pure Evil** » Tuesday Jun 22, 2004

I never liked triggers, we had way to many problems with them. Double triggering mainly. It seemed like the sensitivity changed in every bar we played depending on what the stage was made of. Crowbar was probably the worst place with triggers. Floor tom loved to activate the kick trigger. Just go acoustic and get someone who knows how to mic them properly. Cutting a little feedback out is easy to take care of back at the board. Double triggering or not hitting at all is a pain in the ass to fix if it happens in the middle of a set. Looks very unprofessional if you have to stop and single hit toms for 5 mins in the middle of a gig just to adjust sensitivity.
That's my 2 cents on triggers anyway.

str8h8 · Post by **str8h8** » Tuesday Jun 22, 2004

It takes a lot of work to use triggers effectively. However, they do not make you any faster or better, they can just give you a pulverizing sound if you're using them effectively.

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Tuesday Jun 22, 2004

thats funny though, i know a drummer who at best can play 16th notes at about 150 bpm acoustic...when he triggers it, its like sextuplets at 170 bpm....

facingwest · Post by **facingwest** » Wednesday Jun 23, 2004

I personally look at triggers of being a drummer's nightmare and a soundman's dream. A drummer has to get used to playing a little different because of them, yet the soundman is getting a controlled sample/sound that sounds great to begin with. It's almost like a guitar player using a Roland GR-33. I love the sounds that I get out of mine, however you have to be very critical with every note you play and how consistant you play those notes.

lonewolf · Post by **lonewolf** » Wednesday Jun 23, 2004

Punkinhead wrote:thats funny though, i know a drummer who at best can play 16th notes at about 150 bpm acoustic...when he triggers it, its like sextuplets at 170 bpm....

Check to see if he is using effects like delay or tapped delay (multiple echo) on the drum synth. You could also have a multiple sample (i.e. 3 quick snare hits) on one assigned note if the drum box is a sampler. That's unlikely and would be unusable for most situations. It's probably multiple triggers per hit, where the trigger goes off a few times each time the drum is hit--the sensitivity probably needs adjusted.

Using acoustic drums with triggers can be a lesson in futility. If you want to use a drum synth, it works better with electronic pads like Roland's. Most drummers I know would rather puke their guts out with dry heaves for a week rather than switch.

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Wednesday Jun 23, 2004

I used to use triggers back in the day to fatten up my accoustic drum sound. I've seen other drummers do it, including Harry Rainey, the original drummer for Bad Daze, and it can work really well.

All I did was make sure that each drum had a hard gate on it for the sound mix, and I got no sympathetic triggers from the natural vibration of the kit. I just had samples of each tom and the kick and snare set for each trigger. Made everything fuller and fatter, and really gave the kick drum a serious wallop. Of course, this was when the band I was in was playing huge rooms, anywhere from 2500-5000 seaters back in the early 90s.

RobTheDrummer · Post by **RobTheDrummer** » Wednesday Jun 23, 2004

Don't tell me Punkinhead, but is someone telling you that Raymond Herrera uses triggers to make him play that fast?

The fact is that triggers are triggers. You can program certain things on certain ones, but that will never make you any faster. Playing fast is all about ablility and how much you work on it, just like anything else. Triggers do change your sound, that's why they are made. They can give you a lot of different sound options for a regular kit, but they come with a cost and are a pain in the ass to tweak sometimes. I don't particularly care for them because you can't get the feel and sensitivity out of them like you can a regular kit. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing like the good old acoustic set.

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Wednesday Jun 23, 2004

no, this dude is from a regional band...he is slow, like molasses in january but, his sound is raymond herrera fast and its like hes jogging on them...trust me, they make him faster.....

plus i lost all respect for fear factory till they replaced dino....at a show one time in florida, he was doing this little solo thing and his strap broke, his guitar hit the floor but, ALAS, the notes kept on coming, true to the album...they got booed off stage....

but he's gone, so it's all good, and the songs he did where good but, man, that was really lame....

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Thursday Jun 24, 2004

what up punkinhead, triggers make u sound faster, because u don't need to use as much energy to get the desired volume of a beat. you can graze the head on the drum and it sounds like you hit it with a ten ton hammer. so this benefits drummers because the don't have to strike so hard, they just run little taps on the bass head, like a roll almost. So yes, you will sound faster.

wake up drumming · Post by **wake up drumming** » Thursday Jun 24, 2004

I tried triggers a few times and absolutely hated them. Don't get me wrong they would add some balls to my acoustic drum tones but I always had sensitivity problems. Big rooms like the Crowbar would be a nightmare, just the vibrations out of the drum monitor would set my kick trigger off and I was constantly adjusting the sensitivity level for each and every show. Just a big pain in the ass. If you have a good soundman you can make a good acoustic kick sound like thunder!

I never heard of triggers being used to create speed though, is that even possible?? If it is, it's pretty lame! Just practice!

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Thursday Jun 24, 2004

Jimmy,

Yeah, triggers can technically be used to speed you up. Say you are running kick triggers into a sampler for a song with a double kick pattern at a tempo of 200bpm. All you have to do is sample your kick drum and set the sample to play the kick back twice per shot, and you'll only have to play your kick at 100bpm to get the 200bpm effect.

As stated before, you can also use a light sensitivity to shave off a few thousandths of a second between kick beats, but you'd run into trouble with sympathetic vibration and false triggers.

But man, I agree with you...just f-in practice! BTW, I was bummed to hear about the demise of WUS. Hope to see you in another project soon!

wake up drumming · Post by **wake up drumming** » Friday Jun 25, 2004

Thanks Toona and congrats on your gig! Don't worry bro, I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet! Actually I play a little guitar too, so I'm gonna use my time wisely and write some of my own tunes and record a cd. In the meantime I'll be waiting for the right drumming situation.

BTW, it's pretty sad when more and more musicians are relying on technology to make up for thier lack of talent. I've always found that to be completely bogus! PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!!