JUMPING DARKNESS PARADE: EYAL ON DRUM TRIGGERS
Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 4:00pm by Eyal Levi
This is a follow up to Vince’s blog on drum triggers. I’m with him.
There’s definitely a misconception out there that to trigger is to cheat. I’ll get this out of the way early: triggers are like any other tool. You can use them correctly, or not. Water can be used to give life or drown a person. Triggers can be used in a musical way for a style that demands them or they can be used to cover up a shitty drummer’s inability to hit consistently or like a man (no offense to all you female drummers out there).
There’s one thing we hate in DAATH. I’ve also noticed that a lot of bands I’m really into hate this as well. It’s a phenomenon among drummers we call “tappers.” The drumming equivalent of what Emil and I refer to as “Pussy Fingers” on guitar. These tappers, which seem to be a staple of the tech death or deathcore genres, seem to have traded in the art of hitting their drums properly, accurately, and hard for blinding speed. These guys typically look like they’re barely even hitting the drums. Barely even moving. It’s so fast you can’t even tell if it’s accurate. Lots of time’s these guys will trigger their entire kits or snare and kicks and the huge sound of the trigger makes up for the pussy sound of their drumming. So that’s one way to misuse the triggers.
But understand this: you can’t just sit down with a drum set and a trigger module and immediately have the triggered sounds come out the way you want them. If a dude sounds like a mechanical typewriter on crack, it’s because he decided to. You have to program these modules to do what you want. So when you hear a drummer that sounds that way ask yourself, is he into that sound like, say, Pete Sandoval from Morbid Angel, who is absolutely untouchable and triggers his whole kit, or is he just a chump that is using triggers because his hits are so undefined that he would sound like an complete mess without them?
Funny thing is, triggers pop through the mix so much that they actually will bring out how bad a drummer is. The truth will be revealed much more quickly with triggers on a kit. Shitty drummers of the world, DON’T TRIGGER!!!! We will all know you suck way easier than if you stick to plain old microphones.
Now about the proper uses. Here’s one I can think of. Let me illustrate a situation. DAATH is on tour right now in Europe. The financial realities of this tour did not allow us to afford a sound engineer. First time we’ve ever toured without one, but this tour in particular has been incredibly expensive. Anyways, no sound guy means that we are at the mercy of the house sound guys. Some of them are great, some of them are shit. It varies from night to night, and you never know what you’re going to get. We have a drummer who knows how to play double bass with or without triggers, but unfortunately there’s a PA, which needs to translate that to the audience. Do we have a guarantee that the sound guy knows how to properly EQ, compress, mic, and gate a kick drum for metal music? No, of course we don’t. Its luck of the draw. If they don’t know what they’re doing with kick drums, then they will get lost in the mix and just sound like a low rumble. Double bass is a big part of what we do (like most metal). Losing that is losing a big part of our sound. When you give a sound guy a pre-packaged kick sound, you at least know what you’re going to get on that end of things. Does it guarantee that he’ll get the rest of the mix right? No, of course not. But at least our kicks will sound like our kicks.
-EL
Use your pussy fingers to go visit Daath on MySpace.
Agreed. A lot of my drummer friends bitch about triggers, but I actually like the way they sound. I don’t know ANYTHING about drums, so I can’t comment any further, other than I like their sound.
i actually heard that on the next beneath the massacre cd, their drummer isnt going to trigger anything.
“Tappers”…I like that. I hate it when drummers look like they’re playing with a pair of chopsticks.
Triggering drums live isn’t a big deal to me.. especially if you’re a gigging, club band. We all know how professional and qualified most FOH guys are across this great land of ours (sarcasm intended). I agree 100% that when a drummer who can’t hang, is triggering, it totally shows how bad his technique is. I jammed with a guy that I thought was pretty good, then we heard him play with triggers I realized how off he was..
I agree, we played with this one band several times who’s drummer used triggers. He rushed the beat really, really bad and the forefront sound of his shitty bass drumming was the most noticeable thing. Shame too, the guitarist really ripped.
I like it when drummers sample their trigger sound from their actual kick drum. You get an authentic tone without sacrificing consistent volume. Then you can combine the trigger sound with the real performance and it doesn’t suffer from that artificial feel people complain about.
Exactly. That’s my biggest problem with triggering. That the drums don’t sound like real drums anymore. If you’re sampling real drum sounds and not using some electronic crap, then it’s just a different way of getting your drum sound into the PA.
Can anybody please explain what the fuck drum triggering is, for the uninformed?
A drum trigger is an electronic sensor placed near the bass drum head (or in some cases, other drums) that is set off by vibration, and send out a sampled drum sound. Think of it like the button on a drum machine is attached to an actual bass drum. No matter how hard or light the drum is hit, the sound is the same. Now, the sensitivity can be seriously adjusted, depending on the play style of the drummer.
actually 90 percent of drum triggers [modern ones] have senore tech in them, so if ya hit like a bitch, a weaker sound comes out. hit hard, louder sound.
oops, meant sensore….as in to sense…
I think drum triggering is getting a consistent sound off the base drum no matter how hard or soft you hit it? I could be totally wrong. I don’t think chris adler uses triggers, so listen to his double bass and then listen to anything by beneath the massacre
I’d estimate at least 90% of metal drummers use triggers in some capacity on their albums. Some are more subtle than others. There are also degrees of triggering. A lot of people will just trigger the kicks, but some albums feature the WHOLE KIT triggered. It’s a matter of taste.
Yet another great article Eyal. ‘Tappers’ is a great term for those who abuse triggers, and yet you make a very valid case for when they should be used.
Agreed. It’s alway better to hear a touring musician’s take on stuff…especially something most people wouldn’t know a thing about unless they read the two articles. Thank you to Eyal for the great explanation, as always.
Basically, if you give a sound engineer gold to work with, its hard to turn that into lead.
Hi there Eyal;
I’m intrigued…..what do you mean by “Pussy FIngers”?
Thanks!
Me too!
Ill be completely honest, i wouldnt know a “triggered” drum sound from a normal one so i dont have much reference hence i know nothing about drums.
But yknow what bothers the shit out of me as a guitar player?
Apparently there is a pedal out now that i guess you can place in a pedal train, and you can basically “autotune” your guitar E, eflat, D, dropped D, etc….. with the tap of a button. Apparently whatever the pedal is pitched to is how your guitar will sound. Now some may say how cool that is, but personaly i think its fucking lazy, and detracts from actually learning how to tune your guitar on your own
All the gizmos and bells and whistles cant make up for skill, heart, practice and time.
And a Badass Marshall JCM-800.
Sorry had to plug it.
This pedal sounds awesome! What’s the name of it?
I can tell you that with a tremolo system, it’s a royal pain to change the tuning of your guitar. It takes soooo long.
Not exactly sure but i know its in the last couple issues of Guitarworld. Alas i stand corrected, it IS a pain in the ass to change tunings on Floyd rosed guitars. I stand humbled.
Yeah, name that pedal. Guitars with Floyd-Rose are so hard (not really hard, but it takes 10-15 mins) for retuning in other tune.
I know the pedal you’re talking about but I can’t remember the name either. I don’t see any problem with it. All it is is a pitch shifter, basically. It’s a digitech whammy with a knob instead of an expression pedal. It’s not like it can be used to autotune individual notes. All it’s good for is lowering your tuning without actually doing so. And it’s not like it even does that perfectly. The tracking is still a bit off from what I’ve heard.
How about Despised Icon? Those sound triggered as hell, but he is fucking awesome. Anyone know more about that?
Call me low budget or what not, but I dont have/cant afford that capabilitiy. I recognize & agree what your saying (Eyal). Live-wize, especially in small dive-bar place, or any place for that matter, that doesn’t proved the drums with (at least) adequate sound-the drums sufer greatly due to the inability to hear the drums. Now, its does make a big difference invovling the skins, cymbals, equipment & of course the drummer you used- but for the most part, the drums get drowned out. My case, exactly. I dont own triggers, & dont mind that i dont. I play loud & hard & would not ” trade in the art of hitting their drums properly, accurately, and hard for blinding speed.”
depends on the drummer and how they use it… Kevin Talley vs. Darren Cesca if you know what I mean… they both use triggers, but one of them uses triggers properly.
I would enjoy triggering my butt through a PA for when I make bowel movements. My neighbors would be like WTF?!
Good read though, it’s true, drum-triggers can be great but not if they’re over done, just like auto-tune on vocals/ bowel movements.
You know when I used to play live, I never used a POD and just handed the sound guy a pair of XLR cables… but boy were there nights when I wish I did. There was a band that did play this way, ran almost everything direct that they could, and while they didn’t ever get that ‘ZOMG AMAZING’ sound live, they were certainly more consistent from night to night than we were.
im guessin Eyal is next gonna write up on protools which i hope he does
What do you wanna hear about protools?
2″ 24-TRACK EDITED WITH A RAZOR BLADE OR DETH
Since I personally have nothing knowledgeable or worthwhile to add to this discussion, I will instead take the opportunity to copy over these brilliant contributions to the We Fired Gary post [edited in the interest of (additional) brevity]:
Johnny says:
“MORE EYAL!”
AEnema175 says:
“+1”
Pure poetry. Keep up the good work, people!
Amen.
Triggers, like pedals, effects and such are tools, not crutches.
MetalRod says: “…just like auto-tune on vocals/ bowel movements”
This idea really scares me.
I’m really hoping that was a metaphor regarding how a lot of singers/vocalists these days (not in metal) can suck major D and still sell tons of albums. Kanye West anyone?
I perfectly agree with triggering the bass drum, at super metal speed acoustic sounds can turn a bit to mush, but you cant get dynamics and shit when you trigger the snare which is where i think that triggers shouldnt be used.
This is just my opinion, but complaining about triggers on drums is like complaining about distortion on guitar, for almost the same reasons. I’ve played metal guitar since I was 12, and I know from experience that power is the enemy of speed, in order to play fast, one must play efficiently, I don’t see why drums would be any different. “Tappers” play the way the do because it’s the most efficient way to get the speed they need. Pick up an acoustic guitar and play “Reign in Blood” I bet all of your pickstrokes won’t be even either (assuming you’re playing heavily) AND if they are even it’s because you’ve probably traded power (or strength of the pickstroke) for a more even feel.
Nowadays, what I look for in a drummer is timing and composition skills, IMO these are infinitely more important then how hard and fast they can play. Besides, as metal gets faster and the guitar hero generation grows up to advance to real drums, “tapping” will be an inevitable reality, and that ok, so long as drummers don’t forget to write cool parts.
You don’t get the right sound or feel out of the drums by tapping
And there’s plenty of dudes who can play fast as fuck and still hit like men
Unless if you’re getting into ridiculous speeds
At that point I guess it doesn’t matter anyways because its going to be impossible to understand what’s going on when the band plays live
Dave Lombardo is a prime example of playing fast and not hitting like a pussy in my eyes.
Sure he doesn’t play the ridiculous stupid deathcore shit, but the guy is incredible.
the way they’re used on after the burials rareform is SO wrong to my ears. it just sounds wrong, and too mechanic. i heard they changed the samples for their re-issue of the album, so i’m going to check it out, because the album itself is really good.
Bringing the triggers on tour IS the solution against all the cons a band could come across (shitty sound guy, shitty kit, etc.) No one can argue with that.
I can see drummers using them for the reasons mike portnoy explained on that video. Slipknot’s sound is different than radiohead’s. Also, some drummers might want to blend the sound of their kit with other samples that are available on some of these drum modules to create a custom sound of their own. Hey, that’s cool too.
But what is it with some bands using them on records like actual drum sounds are out of style??!?!?!
What is it with bands either recording with people that are completely unable to track a drum kit properly or just taking the whole drum tracking process for granted instead of saving a few bucks and taking the time to have a decent drummer use a decent kit to lay down the drum tracks at a decent studio where there’s a guy who knows how to do his job decently?!?!
Doesn’t it bother this bands that they all have the same dm5 sound!??!
stop abusing sound replacer you whack jobs!!!
It has more to do with most drummers not being able to play double bas properly
I don’t think that’s it. If a drummer can’t play a part you could always copy/paste his kicks right? You wouldn’t have to rely on triggers for that.
My beef is with bands having their drums on their records sound so sterile and generic.
properly to get the right tone out of the drum, not talking about consistency
Vinnie Paul has the best blend of Triggers mixed with Mic’d kicks…They cut right through but still have some balls to them!!!!!!!!
Awesome. Thank you for that.