Snare drum triggering?

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theslumlord
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Snare drum triggering?

Post by theslumlord » Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:25 pm

Hey Everybody!

OK, I'm not even sure if something like this exists, but I'll give it a shot anyhow. Here's the poop:

I have a 24 channel, soundcraft, analog board. It's an older model made sometime during the 80's. My media is a 24 track, hard-disk recording system. I don't have any computer based programs involved in my recording system (except for cool edit). I'm recording a full-length album right now with real drums. the drums are finished, but I have an idea for one of the songs.

Here's the question:

Is it possible to take the track that has the snare drum on it and have it trigger a drum machine snare drum, and then record that drum machine snare onto another track is perfect sync?

Given the above info, is this something that can be done with something simple, or is it going to be expensive & difficult?

thanks for the time.

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by brian beattie » Sun Jun 22, 2003 12:39 pm

sorry, someone will answer your question in a minute. I can only offer the dumbass solution; why don't you overdub a snare? you won't need anymore gear, just get a good snare and mic it well, and double all of the hits. go back and carefully learn all of the snare fills, flams, etc. from the performance and double it. tried and true, and enchantingly low tech.
brian

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leigh
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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by leigh » Sun Jun 22, 2003 1:00 pm

Yes, I concur with the overdub suggestion. See REM's "Radio Free Europe" for an example of this working well.

However, if you're determined to use a sample, get a drum machine with trigger inputs (like one of those Alesis rackmount jobbies) and feed it your snare track. Then either use a built-in snare sound, or route MIDI out of the drum machine and trigger a different sampler with the MIDI. Record the audio back into your DAW, and you'll probably have to shift the sample track 'back' a few milliseconds to compensate for MIDI triggering delays.

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by Osumosan » Sun Jun 22, 2003 4:00 pm

If you know somebody with Emagic Logic, it has a very nice function called "audio to score" that creates a midi track from your audio track and it's spot on. I love it!

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by housepig » Sun Jun 22, 2003 4:07 pm

if your drum machine doesn't have trigger inputs, look around for a trigger-to-midi convertor (Akai used to make one, I found two of 'em new in the box for $75 a couple years ago).

the nice thing about them is you can use them to control any midi device - sampler, keyboard, whatever you want - not just a drum machine.

- housepig

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by @?,*???&? » Sun Jun 22, 2003 8:50 pm

That's always the last step of a mix- printing the samples back to tape. In making records, the AMS 1580 and the Roland One-shot were used prevalently for sampling. Neither offered any sort of dynamic of drum hit and thus was created that 80's sampled sound. Add a non-linear reverb to the equation and it's that sound we all love to hate! At that time, you had to take a feed off the sync head, send it to a gate then send that into a digital delay and then send that into the sampler to trigger the new sound. Getting the advance track off the sync head and mixing off the repro head allowed you get the original drum before you heard the signal off the repro head for the mix. You then nudged the sample with the digital delay and put it in time with the original sound off the repro head. Sometimes, sample and original snare would be bussed into their own compressor to meld them together. If you didn't have a sync out, your sample was always going to be late. Even then, printing the sound back to tape required the whole machine to be in-sync which means you lose the advanced sound to gate and delay. All you were doing when you printed the samples back to tape was preserving the sample for the next guy (if the song got remixed) so that they'd have a copy of the eq'd original. What a pain in the buttcheeks. Sound replacer is a dream to work with, although requires beat-by-beat editing. Before you'd just run with samples as is and alleviate as many of the flams as you could.

One other icky point of note, many of those guys that used these types of samples, used the same ones for every song. The result was, all their records sounded the same. Go figure.

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by joel hamilton » Sun Jun 22, 2003 10:27 pm

I would say it depends on what you are hoping to achieve...

Soundreplacer does rule for this sort of thing, but on tape I have used a DM5 and found a sound that layered in well with the attack of the original, or actually had someone play the pad on a drum machine for synthetic claps.

If you squish the hell out of the sample with a really fast comp, you can knock down the leading edge of the transient just enough to hide the flam.

Another GREAT trick is to run the snare sound out to a small amp, or small speaker (auratone) and put it about one inch from a snare on its side on the floor. Put a mic on that snare, adjust to taste, and re-track the snare in perfect synch!!! you would be surprised how well this works. I have had this work, even with brushed snare parts and subtle performances. You pick up the sound of the new bottom snare head being "played" by the old one via the little speaker. experiment with levels/gating/distortion/ whatever to acheive your own "sample" snare sound.

The old school "sound replacer"...

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by brian beattie » Mon Jun 23, 2003 5:37 am

joel
very cool idea. Does it cause much of a phase challenge?
brian

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by mrhawkinson » Mon Jun 23, 2003 6:10 am

Joel Hamilton wrote:Another GREAT trick is to run the snare sound out to a small amp, or small speaker (auratone) and put it about one inch from a snare on its side on the floor. Put a mic on that snare, adjust to taste, and re-track the snare in perfect synch!!!
The version of this trick I heard was to put the speaker on the floor facing up, then lay the snare upside down on top of that and mic the bottom.

I don't know who originated this trick but I am willing to bet it was 'discovered' by someone who was transporting drums in a car. I moved my drum set the other day and the snare rolled up against one of the speakers in the back of my van... it greatly improved the already excellent Scorps tape I was playing.

-p

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by The Rancher » Mon Jun 23, 2003 11:17 am

I saw this post and had to respond, as I just finished a mix where I used a new ebay toy that does just what you are looking for. It is an old Simmons machine called the Trixer, and cost me about $75. It looks like a mixer with 5 channels, each assigned to a specific drum, with a trigger built into each one. You can run your drum tracks off of tape into it and it will trigger a digital sound from its own banks or it will convert to midi which you could then send out to trigger anything you want. Each track offers a digital pitch and a mix control, as well as having 30 early 80's digital reverbs built in! It seems to work fine with no noticable delay from the original sound so you just plug it in like any outboard gear at mix time. I used it on a kik and snare in a mix yesterday and it really gave the drums a lot of power. To me it is an interesting alternative to a compressed kik and snare track mixed back in with the original, it takes care of quiet hits on the drums and adds a lot of snap and power to the whole track, plus it is a lot cheaper than an 1176.

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by @?,*???&? » Mon Jun 23, 2003 11:54 am

Jack Joseph Puig busses the snare from tape out to an Auratone speaker placed face down on a snare drum in a booth. He mics the bottom of the drum and blends that in with the original. Makes for his 'patented' rattling snare sound. Anybody like that?

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Re: Snare drum triggering?

Post by theslumlord » Mon Jun 23, 2003 12:33 pm

I just wanted to say thanks to everybody who posted on this subject.

There's a lot of cool ideas and suggestions here.

I'm definitely going to try them out.

thanks again.

the slumlord

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