Drum augmentation

I alluded yesterday to the fact that I use Trigger, and I wanted to expand on that a bit.

Trigger is drum trigger software. This genre of software is also commonly known as “drum replacement” software, which I think does a disservice to the product category, because it implies that you would use it to get rid of a bad sound and replace it with something better.

Which you can for sure do! But I think it’s limiting to think of it only in that way. I prefer to think of it as drum augmentation software.

Because, can I tell you? I use it all of the time. I mean, like, constantly. I use it on pretty much every song, and on a lot of the drum instruments in any given song. But very rarely for wholesale replacement.

Instead, most of the time, I’m using it to add a different dimension or flavor or type of impact, alongside the sound that’s already there. Just shading it in.

A big use of this for me is that I’ll use it instead of reverb, to add space or ambience around a snare or a kick or toms. I’ve made myself a fairly large library of custom snare samples, and I’ll often take one (or more!) of them, trigger it off the main snare, and soften the attack so the attack that you hear is from the main snare but the decay and ambience are the sample(s).

Related: I’ve made a library of snares in room mics. And I might trigger just the room sample, to place a snare in a different space.

If a snare doesn’t have the weight or punch that I’m craving, I might layer it with a sample to help that issue out. But not just a snare sample! Tom samples and kick samples can layer excellently under snares for this purpose.

And even when I’m using Trigger as a strict “drum replacer” — i.e., fixing a suboptimal sound — I’ll still typically put Trigger’s mix knob somewhere in the 40-70% range. This lets just enough of the original performance through to completely fool your ear into thinking that all you’re hearing is EQ and compression and reverb — when actually what you’re mostly hearing is the sample(s). It’s a great way to get an ideal combination of great sound and live feel.

Augmentedly — jamie