DRUM TRIGGERS ARE CHEATING - PROVE ME WRONG 

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Trigger warning...

You hit the nail on the cav, daddy

Wait till these people learn there are whole electronic drum kits.

Or imagine when the kick pedal was introduced... "That's cheating! You aren't even kicking the drum!!"

As someone with an electronic kit, the tiniest error is noticeable, especially on snare work. It’s a kit with triggers, but no acoustics to help.

It cracks me up when a top-notch technique drummer says, "Use them because if you suck, you'll suck even more."

Thanks for the mention 💪🏻

Shitting on triggers would be like guitarists shitting on compressor pedals.

This reminds me of Herman Lee of DragonForce responding to people who said that using click tracks live is cheating: "It's not cheating. If you can't play to a click track, then you can't play in time. It's as simple as that."

Drummers supporting drummers is a beautiful thing. ❤

What most critics don't understand is that even in the studio, most producers/engineers use note replacement (aka samples) for kick drum sounds. As with triggers, it is much easier and quicker to take a proven sample of a good kick sound, replace the subpar original, and immediately make something better. It doesn't take away the performance of the drummer- it isn't "cheating"; it's just taking what you did, and making it sound like you wanted it to. Many years ago, I was with Hellhammer (Mayhem) during a rehearsal with him using triggered kicks. Every hit was clean and audible. A few days later, I was with Frost (Satyricon) at a rehearsal. No triggers. Similar speed... it was more of a rumble instead of individual strokes. I've used triggered kicks for over 20 years (actually 60/40 in the mix), and as Jorge says, with triggers, you hear everything- if you make a mistake, triggers will make DAMN sure it is heard, whereas with just mic'ed kicks, you can get away with cheating because strokes don't sound as defined; a minor screw-up can be missed. In the end, technique and execution create the notes- production delivers it to your ears.

This is like the moronic discution about bass players: "if he uses his fingers and not a pick is a better player"

Same thing happened when digital art became a thing. Painters considered it cheating until they tried it for themselves and realizes how much time is saves even though you still have to be a good artist to use the tool properly.

I love this. The perfectly pitched wet-blanket on a surprisingly heated non-debate. To explain both sides and then implore people to be more nuanced and considerate in their criticisms. Perfect. Thank you.

When I first started using triggers, it actually highlighted how sloppy my kicks actually were (since I could hear each hit clearly) so it greatly increased my accuracy, then came the speed

Bro has achieved drum Jesus status. From being a part of us; to legit saying that we should love one another. Stay strong!

"When you do tuc, it does puc". best explanation I've ever heard. I used to think triggers were cheating, I got that mentality from my old drummer. But once triggers were explained to me properly, I get it. I played electric guitar and love played drums now too. The comparison to electric guitar and changing its sounds is a good comparison. However, with a lot of distortion on your electric guitar, you can hide some mistakes, as well as magnify them. But whatever instrument you play, I use the advice I got from Paul Gilbert, one of the best guitarists ever - imagine your playing is like driving. Your accuracy in playing is your steering, and the speed is the gas pedal. Don't press the gas if you can't steer properly. Nice to see you touch on that as well

one benefit of triggers are that you don’t need the most expensive drums to sound great. i work in a venue with a capacity of 1000. 95% of the time the drums are just mic‘ed up and like 85% of the time the drums just sound bad because drummers try to replicate these „typical“ fat modern drum sounds where they end up failing and the drums sound shit. a few days ago there was a pop act playing and the drummer had a cheaper kit (under 1000€) but he just got some really nice drum samples and the drums sounded great. so triggers arent only for metal drummers but in general a great buy for anyone who wants to sound great for a low price.

The fact that anyone thinks there is "cheating" in music is a testament to how stupid people can be. Music has never been a competition and never will be, its as simple as that. Music is an art, meant to be expressed in any way that the artist chooses. Its not a sport, and people need to stop treating it like one.

I've never understood how anyone could "cheat" at something that's not a game/sport/competition. It's like saying digital art is cheating - the intended result is enjoyment or conveying a thought/idea/message, not who can use paint and bristles best.

Well said my friend. Never underestimate the stupidity of people that don't have a f***ing clue what their taking about.

Very well stated, a simple way of looking at those who complain like that is just like I learned in sales, those who cannot do better to elevate themselves attack others to tear them down to their level. Their home life sucks so they project their miserable existence on others. The only thing you can do is pray for them and then 'dust your feet and move on'. Well put and very well explained on Triggers, now even I better understand their function and totally agree, they won't help you drum better, just sound better! Good stuff!! Thanks for the informative video!!!

Lol what? People like "if my drumset sounded different, I'd have high skill"

Eloy made Slipknot, well played.

Great video!! So glad someone at you level addressed this. And I love how you are trying to bring us drummers together!!

I'm just a casual drummer so I have no professional opinion here, but I'm a guitarist but I look at this drum trigger thing the same way I view digital tuners and pedals for guitar. As you said, it won't make you be able to play something you have not developed the technique for, but it can open up completely new sounds, options, and even genres. I have no problem with any of that as music is music and these things open up the creativity of the musician. I also like not having to have a full pedal board and amp rig just for practicing in my living room or just playing with ideas.

Its about the music at the end of the day. Debates about, "Who had to work harder for it," is a waste of time. Great video!

same logic for guitarists who say distortion and effects mask poor playing, it's exactly opposite

Thank you for putting this up. I laughed through a lot of it. I currently have a Roland VAD kit so it looks like a real kit. There's people that don't believe that they're electric and when they find out I've gotten the hate and had to explain this very things to them

Vocalist: i need autotune✔️ Guitarist: i need to add effect✔️ Drummer: i need to use triggers "Oh hell naw!!!!"

Awesome video! Especially when you talked about the Drum Community supporting one another. We need MORE of that! Thank you...

What a load of bollocks. So when every top drummer in the 80's like Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, Neal peart and many more started using Simmons pads and modules they were cheating. Wow, you couldn't make up how ridiculous this sounds.

I can not wait to take your course in Drumeo! So freakin stoked on this! Thank you for everything you do!

Thank you for explaining triggers for me! I've been playing since 94, I started playing (trying to play) convers of nu metal songs and started hearing about triggers. It has taken to THIS DAY for me to actually know what they are. Well done!!!!

It’s rare to have someone negate their own argument in their own examples.

Well said! The issue is solely quantization and post editing of performances.

Using triggers has absolutely nothing to do with skill and only if you've used them you know. Hating on triggers Is like hating on e-drums.

I can't wait to kick off with you on May 7th. just alone the Q-n-A with you will be so amazing to listen to in real time. You call it, you are objective in your perspective and you work in overdrive to unite us drummers. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.

Well put!👍🏻👍🏻 Two big thumbs up on the explination! Clears up so much for everyone!

On one hand, triggers expose terrible timing, on the other hand they mask your crappy dynamic control

Been triggering kick since the 80's. The man speaks the truth! Love what you do bro, keep on keeping on!

Amen! Triggers only cheat sound and do not cheat stroke. Now, if you are a drummer who is keen on nuances of natural hits and want playing dynamics, then do not use triggers.

Mejor explicado de ahí no se puede... Excelente hermano!!! 💪💪💪

I agree with 99% of this. We should all be supportive no matter how you get the sound and I say use any tool at your disposal it's music after all. The only caveat I feel is important to mention is with electronic / triggered drums you potentially lose the dynamic voice of the drummer and if you're a beginner you don't develop that voice because you never truly hear it. I think with the advancement of triggers to detect velocity at higher increments it's less of a concern for professionals but I still feel if you don't develop that acoustic dynamic voice first then there's potential for bad dynamic development and you've only hindered your abilities and growth. love watching you teach and play, you inspire me to play more.

Once you get to certain bass drum speeds, you can’t even distinguish the strokes on a normal, untriggered bass drum. People hear it and think it’s just an easy way to sound fast regardless of technique. You can’t even hear the strokes individually 250 bpm and up on a normal kick, so triggers are there to create clarity. Like saying a guitarist using an amp is cheating

Most recording studios already replace all the kicks in songs to make sure they have the same waveform... this is the same thing... but a live version.

I love your channel, I love your drumming. I’m a guitarist, not a drummer. You will almost never see a guitarist walk on stage without a pedal board. Pedal boards augment the sounds that a Guitar can make. We are no longer limited to an acoustic guitar. We have wha wha, phasers,flangers, delay, echo, chorus… You name it. As long as you’re making music and you’re doing it live, I’m all for it. The sounds you make don’t matter as long as it’s a human making them or at least directing them.

It's kind of ironic that the same people who play V Kits at home would have an issue with triggers. I mean the tech has come so far. These people didn't grow up with those Cheesy ass Simmon Pads. The other irony, of course, being just how many records have either replaced the or embellished the drums with samples. ( How many albums have the same Steven Slate Kick and Snare samples on them? ) A cool aspect of those trigger is that Charlie Benante can go out and play those Panters shows with Vinnie's drum sounds actually going out to the audience,

As a sound engineer triggers are great for live, because sometimes the drummers kit might not translate well on a live venue stage, or there’s no time to tune the actual drums.

Well said! I was surprised to here the DJ callout because that's where my mind went. I was a drummer of a decade+ before I was a DJ circa late 90's/early 00's, when fully digital technology hit the scene. People railed against hot cueing & auto beat matching. It allowed a lot of people who didn't have strong fundamentals to do things they wouldn't normally be able to do, but in the hands of a master it uncorked paths to sophisticated live arrangement that were physically impossible before that tech showed up. Now I'm researching state of the industry to re-enter drumming as a proper geezer. I'm seeing the same opinions about triggers and electronic kits. Lowering the skill floor for beginners isn't a problem, deal with it. That's just ego talking. Nobody is taking your job as a skilled drummer because they use triggers. The important bit is it raises the skill ceiling and unlocks brand new approaches and sounds for advanced/master musicians.

"Be a grown man. Don't be a Bitch". I love it!!!😂😂😂

I used triggers. The best part about them was I had a plethora of percussive sounds to choose from, without having to spend a billion dollars and find a place to store them. It opened up the floodgates of ideas. I could incorporate some tribal beats with congos and bongos. I could add screeches, and anvils, and explosions, and even rap bass drops. Something I could replicate in my live performances as well, without having 300 different drums on the stage. It was an absolute game changer. Not to mention my kick drum was so powerful and clean and easy to amplify. It's not cheating in any way.

I've always associated Drum Triggers to be kind of like Delay and Reverb with Guitar pedals. Just a tool to accentuate sounds.

comment section swallowed the clickbait 😅😂

As a novice keyboardist, I hook up to my Mpc one and I can make some pretty good beats (drum parts, solos and I don’t know how to play drums), songs, or other miscellaneous music. It just makes life easier PERIOD. Life is hard enough, use anything at your disposal it’s not cheating.

One big reason bands use triggers live is because it makes the live mixing so much easier. The lower frequencies are the hardest to control when it comes to the kick and especially when bands play different locations every time with different location shapes, acoustics, the audio engineer would have to reshape the sound every time they play. It also saves time on drum kick setups, especially bands who use 2 bass drums as you'd have to match the tuning or else it'll just sound very off.

One of the bigger staples in live sound is to sidechain the gates on the drums to triggers this way they are being opened by the vibration of the head and not the SPL of the kit and competing cymbals. It allows you to run the thresholds a lot lower.

Not to mention that most of the shit above 210 bpm sound like shit on PA. Too much air moving inside the kick to have a define and precise kick.

As a newly developing and aspiring drummer, I had no clue the extent of digital integration with an acoustic set. I only imagined the power of expensive microphones and the front of house making it sound as good as possible, didn't even think about the concept of a trigger. That being said, attending concerts and hearing the best quality musicianship and being entertained are a top priority and if triggers do that for our beloved drummers out there, then hell ya, I'm with El Estepario here. Stay groovy!

This immediately reminded me of the song Archangel by Kevin Sherwood. For that song he went out of his way to not use preprogramed/MIDI drums but instead reached out to death metal drummer Darren Cesca to write and play the drum part, and it's some of the fastest drumming I've heard. You can watch a video of the guy playing through the song and see the beaters are barely moving more than between like ten and fifteen centimetres. Without triggers or some amazing mixing for those bass drums, that song could not have sounded the way it did.

I'm loving your course Estepario! Challenging, but amazing! I'm already a member. I wish existing members got all of this SWAG, not just those who are joining to take the course. Oh well, the course is worth much more.

To anyone still complaining about triggers in 2024: - Set your click track above 220bpm. - Play 16th notes on the kick drum with the sound that modern metal music REQUIRES you to have. When you can do it, come back to the internet and reprise your complaining.

I think triggers aren't cheating because music isn't a competition, but it is an artform, and triggers are a tool to enhance one's drumming And I like this analogy There's digital drawing and then there's the classical drawing Some people prefer digital while some prefer the classical way, and there are some advantages to digital drawing, if you make a mistake, you can easily rectify it, but digital drawing doesn't make your art skills better, if you are a bad artist your drawings will be bad, similarly triggers are like that it solves the problem of going fast and keeping dynamics, but if you play bad everything will sound bad as estepario said

They do take away your dynamics, though. Triggers are great for metal, where every hit needs to be the same, and you're playing super fast.

I just wanted to say your English has gotten really good within the last year!

I'm glad distortion pedals for guitar didn't get hated on like drum triggers do.

So true.. and this video could be applied to so many endeavors...

From an engineers standpoint there are also a lot of really cool ways to use triggers. I have used them to play white noise samples on my snare to blend with the top mic. This gives an unreasonably huge bottom mic sound which brings sizzle to a low end heavy snare. This argument is like calling reverb or dynamics tools cheating, triggers aren’t cheating…if you think they are you are on pure copeum. You should go practice to learn better technique rather than trying to trophy smash someone who has learned to be a better drummer.

Thank you for this video. As a guitarist, of course I can appreciate a good drummer when I hear one, having played with a number of them. I hear a lot of modern drummers that I would consider talented. But then I see a lot of the same comments you do, that they're using triggers, it's cheating, they can't really play that fast and blah blah blah. I didn't really have an understanding of what exactly triggers were. This helped me in that regard. Now I'm convinced that the people making negative comments about triggers either don't have a clear understanding of what triggers really do, are not drummers themselves, are just jealous of what the drummer can do, or probably a combination of those.

I would rather argue that modern music production has become overall too optimized; lyrics are recorded in takes, same with guitar, bass and drums. There used to be a time where the band met in a studio, got all wired up and played the whole album as if it was a concert. Nowadays, you can produce the next number 1 track without any of the involved musicians ever entering the same room. I mean I like my bands, but they also overproduce; they have virtually no limits on the availability of their tools and it shows. But I also appreciate smaller artists who make the best out of scarcity. It's two entirely different flavors.

Triggers also allow the front of house to cure any tuning problems, volume issues, sympathetic buzz or resonance caused by other parts of the drums or instruments. If you are on tour and are forced to use a house kit, but have your own sound guy, you're able to achieve the same sound you're used to.

The problem I have with using triggers is that a lot of guys will use just the MIDI information and then quantize and speed up the track...but act like they are just adding depth to the kick and/or snare...just practice dynamics...if it's too fast then GET GUUD...just like AutoTune or punching in on tracks, it's cheating...these are all reasons why a lot of bands sound like crap live; they rely on studio "magic" when they should just practice

Agreed, it really doesn’t matter, does it? Music isn’t a competition, any tool that helps people make / play music is a good thing. Even if it magically corrected crappy playing, music should be about vibes. Use whatever you want.

THANK YOU! been trying to tell people myself for years the exact same thing..

triggers are also AMAZING for triggering gates, especially in live performance situations. instead of the gate depending on an audible threshold by a specific mic, which can also be triggered by mic bleed (ie. snare mic gate triggered by cymbal crash), the gate is now triggered by physical triggering only. drum triggers are a godsend for audio engineers! also great in studios, try it out!

Funnilly enough I used to only use triggers for my metal gigs, but now I use them for ALL my gigs because it's super consistent, makes mixing easy, always sounds great and there's never any feedback or gain issues: everyone's happy. Superb video! 👏🏻

The concept is "I can play one note, and the trigger outputs 5 notes", so naturally, it seems like cheating. Like if I was playing guitar, and I suck at gallop picking, I could activate a trigger that allows me to play one note, and It outputs a perfect gallop triple pick, then I just have to play 1 note in time with the song while the trigger does the rest. But what I am hearing here is "It's insanely hard to play [insert insane BPM for drummers] so we use triggers to supplement these extreme passages". Correct?

I have played drum for over 40 years and I have truly tied to give electric drums/triggers a chance. But they just a certain something that interferes with your skill, they make a mediocre drummer sound amazing, and they hold back amazing drummers from truly speaking thru the drums.

Also, want to mention that when you see drummer with triggers on RU-vid, you can’t be sure that they are not QUANTISING their performance to sound perfectly in time. So triggers can also hide a lot of mistakes in post production 0 claims to live performancers, that JUST HIDING their imperfect dynamics

In the 1832 the flute was invented by theobald boehm, this instrument was one of the first to use keys on a woodwind instrument. Other instruments had been made with keys, yes, but they weren’t effective or reliable enough to be used in concert. Boehm created a key system with such precise tone hole placement, that when modern day scientists tried to predict what the perfect placements would be, it was only slightly better than boehm’s design. It was incredible. Despite this, many stayed behind, continuing to use the predecessors to the modern day flute. We are seeing the same thing today, with actuated instruments such as the electric guitar, bass guitar, and now even drum kits. Whether we like it or not technology and time will do its work.

Man, I love a snare trigger! Beefs up the sound, especially on a big stage! Triggers help keep it consistent regardless of size of stage. TM-6 was a game changer for me!

Whoa. The spanish subtitles are super useful for improving my Spanish language comprehension. This is cool.

I must admit, I am not impressed with using "Gates", since it chops off the end of what I consider the actual Tone of the drum or instrument. I understand controlling the "ring", but there are other ways to do that and still keep the full tone of the drum.

I cant believe you actually had to make this video but then again im old and have been triggering ddrums for 30 years. Triggers have been a staple not only in the metal community but in alot of genre's for decades. As a former product specialist in the 90's for ddrum i can tell you everyone was using triggers (some didnt want you to know they were). sampling their albums drums and importing into a ddrum3 was often used, and many pros even had their own sounds available on ddrum sample packs. Everything you said is spot on. Also some of the other benefits - i can use any kit with my rig and get the same sound irregardless of the drum. If your head detunes (heavy hitting, humidity) , the house still hears that incredible perfect studio sample. No more fighting mics, head ringing blah blah blah - flip the switch, killer sounds. Done. They key is having a module that can track your playing well

Another good use of triggers especially in a live situation is to use them to trigger your gates at front of house... When you hit the accoustic drum and the sound is captured with a microphone there is a tiny delay as the sound wave travels to the mic. So you can loose a tiny bit of the attack. But the trigger triggers at the speed of light and therefore opens the gate before the sound wave reaches the mic capsule and so you miss none of the accoustic sound.

Because drummers, especially aged, mediocre ones, like myself, are analog kids in the digital age, and therefore resistant to change. But, in order to survive or even keep up, we are forced to embrace it. I completely agree with your analysis. I'm learning a lot from you. This old fart is subscriber to your show. Bravo, young man. I still love playing my kit.

Can only agree, I am using a full blown e-kit these days. When you are playing fast double bass drum lines you want a sound that can cut through anything. At least if your audience wants to hear it. With triggers your sound can be beautifully mastered out of the box for the whole audience with little effort.

As someone who's used e-kit and acoustic kits before, if you fuck up with triggers it sticks out like crazy. Prefering a natural sound is one thing but it has nothing to do with skill, several of my all time favorite drummers use triggers.

I've done sound for a lot of bands using triggers and or full live electronic groups, if you're a musician and can play, it comes through and good bands are just fun no matter what they use.

Bingo. It's not a competition. Men have a continual issue with trying to turn everything, including art, into a competition. It's nonsensical and a completely waste of time and effort. Cheers.

I've never played with triggers, but I've played on acoustic sets and full electronic sets, and I absolutely hate the feel of the electronic sets (even the expensive ones). It seems like triggers are the perfect blend between the two.

I mostly agree with this video. The thing I don't like about triggers is the fact that you can completely factor out human dynamics. I great drummer will want to control the dynamics himself...not have a computer do it for him.

the only thing I dont like is when I see a big ass drum kit and I'm like yeah man lets hear how *this* kit sounds and then is triggers so it sounds like the samples It's not cheating, it's different technic I just like to know the og sound as a personal preference

True dat Brother, loved ya on Drumeo

the issue a lot of people have with triggers is that triggers send MIDI data which can be edited to be much cleaner than the way the drummer originally played it, so it's not just about amplifying the sound of a hit. I think that's what people mean when they say triggers are cheating. of course that doesn't make sense during a live show, but it can be used to clean up the audio of a recording of a live performance in post production

V-drum player here... After playing an acoustic kit for 20 years, I went to v-drums, which for the version I have, is a small wooden shell with a mesh head and an electronic trigger system inside the shell. Once I went down this road, I can't imagine ever going back to acoustic drums. I can have 100 drum kits in one, and I can change my sound in an instant. I can also record with the push of a button. V-drums do not correct errors, they do not make you sound better. IMO, they tend to show more errors due to their sensitivity and strokes need to be more precise. BTW - An electric guitar is essentially an acoustic guitar with triggers (the pickups). And effects pedals are triggers too. Yikes...

The most apt comparison, which no one dares to make, would be with autotune. Drum triggers are the autotune for drummers. I'm not saying there's no legitimacy to autotune, but that's the most honest comparison to other major technical changes that affect an instrument. Electric guitars, foot pedals or even picks as a comparison are really ridiculous. What triggers and autotune have in common is that it actively corrects something that is essential for playing and mastering the instrument. A key element of drumming is being able to play both hands at the same volume or maintain a constant volume (if u want to). Like a singer who has to learn to hold a note for a certain amount of time. Autotune may correct a bit more for singers than trigger does for drummers, but this is the closest and most honest comparison because it actively corrects an important element of playing the instrument.

IMO it'd be more accurate to say "triggers alone are not inherently cheating." They can def help smooth over a drummer with inconsistent dynamics. For instance you can set the dynamics curve to output only a particular range. Let's say you set the velocity range at 90-120, even the most tiny miniscule hit will output a nice loud strike. This can make multi-strokes on something like a floor tom significantly easier. I think the bigger issue is quantization, both for triggered and mic'd drums. For triggers alone, you still have to hit the drum at the right time. But when you start locking notes to the grid or manually placing them in the right spot that's something else entirely.

Love my triggers, they make my tiny TAMA Club Jam sound like a fucking monster drumkit, perfect for playing metal and rock in a small venue, and less feedback issues than using mics, gamechanger, I explain to people its like an FX pedal for drums, like guitarists have been using for decades