Anyone use drum triggers live with there band? We just did some recordings and the drums triggered sound so much bigger and cleaner than acoustic drums. I see Roland now makes a trigger that has a built in mic and sends two outputs a mic and a trigger. I was thinking of adding this to our live sound run the trigger into a DI box then out to the FOH to be blended the the original drum sound. the trigger is Roland RT-MicS that I was looking at for snare and 2 toms, and I was going to add the Roland TM 2 with a trigger on the kick. Anyone have experience doing this, we are playing small to med size venues.
In small venues, using triggers on acoustic drums can be limited by how much the acoustic drums carry the room. If the SE already has all the drum faders pulled down because the drummer's heavy handed, adding a triggered sample on top of already loud drums isn't in the cards. If your drummer—and your music—are friendly to augmenting an acoustic kit with a standalone trigger or two, that can be a work-around for gigs where the SPL limits don't allow enough headroom above the ambient level of the acoustic drums.
Had a drummer that used a trigger on his kick. He never tuned it or replaced the head unless it was absolutely broken. Sounded terrible by itself, but I have to say, I liked the triggered sound. Lot easier to EQ, imo.
Did sound for a band who's drummer had a real acoustic kick drum shell with a front head but a Roland kick trigger instead of a batter head. So easy to get a killer, controlled kick sound. - John
We use Roland triggers on the bass drum and snare drum into a TM-2 and sometimes a TM-6 if we trigger the Toms. Much easier and more predictable than mics. The natural sound of the drums complimented by fat and clean triggered sounds sound amazing through our PA. The ultimate is to fly 2 overhead condenser mics but we don't bother with that every show.
Nice I just got the kick trigger today, I'll get it all set up for practice on the weekend. Our next show is about 3 weeks away super excited to get this all set up. I have a 4 input Radial rack DI unit that I will run the triggers into so the FOH can just grab a XLR feed from there.
You could use the triggers to side-chain gate so that there's less cymbal bleed when recording. Obv, you record both the full mic and the trigger. So if you don't want it gated, you just deactivate the trigger.
Just be sure if you're going to go that route to buy decent triggers. My old drummer saw a thing online "how to build your own triggers for $5 in parts" and he literally wasted dozens and dozens of hours of his (and my) time trying to get them to work.
With recording you get midi along with great sound from the drum brain. The midi can be used to replace a drum sound if needed. For live Triggers are best with mesh heads to get 100% pure drum brain sound through FOH. No bleed. Need a good eDrum brain, or trigger box and a sampler (PC, IOS, or otherwise) but overall the price is not much more than mics and channels on the FOH especially when you factor in all the setup time for mics. Yamaha also has the EAD10 which is not triggered but much better than trying to mic an acoustic kit.
We had one soundguy that used this; https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de..._prX_4TnAyIBtvnuiewaAr_oEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds Super easy to set up and the drums sounded awesome. We were in a smallish room too.
Bass players should be cautious about recommending triggers and/or Yamaha EAD10 to drummers - as they may recommend back amp sims. All this new tech sounds really good when applied right so everyone should keep an open mind.
hahahah true, I just use my darkglass DI I don't use a amp any more, both guitars are using Moore GE 300, no amps or stage noise it is great
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