Mixing Audio, 3rd Edition

26Drum triggering

A short story. A band goes into a studio to record a song. The producer and the engineer spend some time miking up the drum kit. They try different microphones in different positions and mic each drum with two microphones. They experiment with different snares of different sizes and woods, go through the process of tuning the toms as they wish, build the famous kick tunnel, and dampen all the drums. After perhaps seven hours of preparation, they cut the first drum take. Two weeks later, the track reaches the mixing engineer, who, in his own studio, at night, replaces all the drum recordings with samples— perhaps 20 minutes of work. None of the original drum tracks are left in the mix. He also filters some ambiance from the overheads ...