I've known for a long time that I can use the pads on one drum synth to control the engine another via the magic of MIDI. This is especially handy when the pads are sensitive enough to cover the entire range of velocity values.
But it only just dawned on me that I don't have to pick one at a time. I can use both at the same time, and layer them. Yes, I'm slow. Look, the important thing is that I'm here now, OK?
Except I also have SurgeXT on my workstation, and the Drum3P sends note-off commands as well as note-on, so it'll control that perfectly well, too. And thanks to JACK, I can then forward those messages to the other drum synth via USB-MIDI, making for an even deeper stack. They can all have different velocity-response curves, as a treat - and this means that their relative levels can change according to how hard I hit the pads, as well as changing their tonalities.
Even better, if there's a tiny but slightly inconsistent delay in message propagation, that's potentially a feature in this setup!
That cheap old mixer I've been carrying around because I hate throwing out anything in working order?
David Wenham voice Now I know what it's for! Now I know what it's for!
Why is it important that it's cheap? This is a tip I picked up while following Spectre Sound studios (a channel focused on heavey metal production) on Youtube, a while back.
He was talking about running multi-tracked guitars through a cheap mixer, to pre-blend them on the way to the interface. He emphasised that this only works on cheap mixers, not on really good ones, and wasn't sure why.
I think I figured it out, thanks to something Warren Huart said on Produce like a Pro (an excellent Youtube channel about music production): it's about nonlinear handling of high-frequency transients. In the same way that the LM308's terrible performance as an audio op-amp is why the original Rat sounded so damn good, it works because there's a kind of mutual compression going on with those transients; it's basically acting as a glue compressor.
I don't see why this wouldn't work just as well for drum synths as it does for guitars.