New Zealand Heavy Metal Forum & Discussion

[Obzen]

[Therapist]

[Obzen]

My friend keeps telling me that Chris adler triggers his snare.

Kick triggering is obviously very popular in death metal, core, tech metal, some prog, but how common is triggering the snare? and is it something to be desired or frowned upon as treachery?

[Death]

I wouldnt be surprised that even if they didnt use a hardware trigger on the snares that they might replace the sounds once in logic or pro tools. I think as long as you are hitting the snare that fast whats the harm in triggering, we all know that once u get to a certain speed the actual bounce in the skin starts to muffle/mumble the hits. So now its not about personal skill but how good the kit is.

[Doomatron]

Triggerd snare isn't to bad for a small handfull of bands cos once you have your kicks triggerd and coming through nice and clear you want to be able to hear the snare just as clear.When i was talking with Immortals drum tech this is 1 of the reasons he said they trigg kicks and snare.Not very good if you want subtle ghost notes etc.

[Torturor]

What type of trigger did Immortal use? Full pad or one of these doohickeys?

[Doomatron]

^ One of those.Ive thought about triggering snare live but when everyone can hear your mistakes on your kicks why let them hear more! haha

[soundstorm]

Not a fan. In the studio, sure. If you're using a trigger for accurate replacement with comparable dynamics and feel, then by all means, I'm cool with that. I often sample drums first thing in the studio and will later use a trigger track to trigger the samples I've made, to allow for cleaner and more controlled processing.

In a live situation it can be cool. Never on its own but blended with mics can be cool. Especially when set up in a creative way - eg, triggering just when hit hard as fuck, to give those solid hits a little more oomph. With Mayhem we had a trigger on the snare as well as top and bottom mics; I generally ran the mix perhaps 70% mic, 30% trigger? Sounded pretty cool.

That being said, I cannot stand people triggering snare and using it to falsely represent dynamics, especially in metal. Nothing is gayer than some cunt blasting full speed and making everyone go 'FUCK THAT GUY IS GOOD' and then you find they are a pussy, barely tapping the drum and triggering a big chunky snare sample. Pretty uncool.

[bloodnutt]

I played one at a gig couple years back and found it very unresponsive to dynamics , no idea what brand, but id say a nice tuned and miked snare is all you need.
i guess they would be good for keeping the dynamics at a consistent volume, but isnt that what compressors are for.

[Rob]

depends on the skin. a molnar skin wont have the velocity impact as great as a mesh head.
yet the xlr redshots are way better than the 1/4" jack ones which can be game over with one bad hit that severs the 2 wires.