A good place to start could be to download a Manual for one of the drum trigger units like the D4, D5 TD(roland), DTX(yamaha), DDrums etc

read a manual and a whole lot of things will make sense.

These units will output midi notes just like your keyboard.
Which can then be re-assigned to another module and different sounds.

There are also plugins like SoundReplacer then can acheive similar results just within the Audio domain.

There is a good discussion regarding drum triggering somewhere on this forum..but I can't find it because the search is down. When it's back up I'll post a link to it.

(Dead Link Removed)

Here are the basics. Drum triggering is mostly used as a way of replacing the recorded drum sounds with different, generally better sounds. It can also be used to correct timing.

In your case you have recorded drum tracks that you want to use to trigger new sounds. Hopefully your drum tracks are separated out Kick, snare, HiHat, etc. You can send the recorded audio to an audio-to-midi trigger device like the ones mentioned in the post above. What that does is convert the sound of say your kick drum to midi information. You'll get a midi note and a midi velocity for each time the drum is hit.

You then use this midi data to trigger a drum sample. The drum sample could be from one of the devices or a drum machine or sampler or whatever.

Now regarding your question about velocity...Many drum programs today use multisampled drums and can recieve midi velocity data. The multisampled sounds are sampled at different velocities and you can set which sample plays back for a specific midi velocity or velocity range. This can give you a much more realistic sound.

If you want to use your own drum sounds, you'll want more than just hard, medium and soft versions of each drum. Get a range of like 6-10 samples from each drum. It's not easy getting good samples but with some practice you can do it relatively well.

ok .. another dumb question

how much in total am i looking at $$$$$ when it comes to getting a whole drum triggering rig.. ie triggers and the dm5 or 4 or whatever..

less than a 1000 or over

DTXexpress could be the cheapest single kit
from Yamaha

many of use have a variety of trigger pads from various companies and some are even DIY

A SPD20 ... percussion Pad (octa pad thing) from Roland is an alternative
it hihat inputs and a couple of others for kick and snare
... then use the onboard for the other sounds
could be a start

I still use the D4 from Alesis and a collection of Roland V and Roland Perc (dual trig)Cymbals and DIY pads

If you have enough microphones to mic each drum in the kit, then you don't need to buy triggers or trigger pads or anything like that. All you need are XLR to 1/2" cables to plug the mics into the trigger device.

The D4 and DM5 can use audio for the triggers.

If you plan on using sounds out of the device, I would recommend the DM5 or DM5 Pro as it has more sounds. New, they go for around $350. If you are just looking to get Midi data, you can probably find the D4 or one of the other units cheap on Ebay.

If you really want to go the trigger route and you only plan on doing this for recording, don't waste money on the expensive triggers. If you were doing this live, I would recommend the more expensive ones.

Ddrum makes some nice triggers but I just use cheapo piezo type triggers. A bunch of companies make them. I've used Pintech in the past and they worked well.

You can also make them yourself if you were so inclined. Lots of tutorials on the webernet.

cheers... thanks again

webtroy, i appologize for hijacking your thread, but my questions are still on the topic.

Does Soundreplacer work with PT LE or is it just TDM? Drummagog doesn't work with OSX, right? I recorded a really crappy kit last week and re-recording isn't an option and I know very little about drumming, so I need to replace all of the kit.