Newbie here and I’m digging the basic library install, and now am looking to buy an expansion.
Ok first off. I’m not a song writer/maker/whatever, hell, I’m not even a musician. My money comes from other skills that I possess.
So for me, it’s playing along with my favorite live bands when I drum. Pretty much all of my sessions contain Grateful Dead, then some other band, and vice versa. The other bands are wide variety such as Buffett, Black Sabbath, Lynard Skynyrd, Allman Bros, Journey, Living Colour, and the such. I like changing the drum sounds to kind of match the bands.
So what should be my first expansion pack? Since I’m not a musician, I’m not really up on the differences between equipment, so I want to give you guys a shot on what you think is best for my next purchase.
Firstly, wait until there is a sale on expansions… never pay the normal retail price. Keep an eye out next month, there may be sales again like last year. Check the retailers in this sales thread. Generally they will have lower prices than the BFD store.
Secondly, you decide for yourself by going through this FXpansion Soundcloud link and listening to the audio examples from the BFD expansions.
You may also be interested in some of these Sonic Reality expansions for BFD. There are some good ones and they are currently still on sale.
These are some of my favorites that I own, but they’re geared more towards rock and metal and may not be the vibe you’re looking for.
Sorry mate. Just trying to help. They don’t have the BFD examples separated, so it’s mixed in with all their other software, but you will find the most audio examples for BFD stuff there. They were just uploaded back in the day when FXpansion owned BFD, but have nothing to do with the inMusic version.
In my opinion, dark farm sounds fantástic.
The only thing that sounds weird to me about dark farm is that there’s no china cymbal samples in that library.
London Sessions, Dark Farm, Modern Retro, most ofthe ones that come with BFD3 Core Library and perfectly good for this too, I’d explore the rock and fFunk and Metal kits before even going for expansions, I am sure you’ll find they are all great, you can tweak them into anything you want.
I play in a electronic drum kit and my experiencie with other libraries is that th demos sound awesome but they dont sound the same when i play them in my kit. I wonder why is that? Maybe because i listen to the demos with bose headphones and in my kit i use some kz zs10 pro in ear monitors?
Dark farm was recorded at middle farm studios, the same place as getgooddrums modern and massive. The difference between them, in my opinion, are the cymbals. Modern and massive cymbals, specially the hi hats, are really bad. I never liked them.
Anyways, dark farm sounds better for me. It’s really punchy and agressive. That’s the reason why i bought bfd3.
I have never used an Electronic kit through BFD3, it’s possible with the headphone/in ears being the reason you are hearing things differently. I listen to BFD3 through 4 or 5 different headphones depending on where I am working, AKG’s, Bose, EarBuds etc, the packs all sound the same, no big difference in the sound besides the obviousness of the different headsets.
When I didn’t have a lot of expansions in the beginning, I tried to pick ones that had the most kit pieces in order to expand my library that way, so that I’d have more choice of drums.
I don’t think I’m ever going to have lots of expansions, though.
I did used to own the Jazz expansion that’s offered. Couldn’t play with it too much, as I was suffering huge computer issues at the time. I remember not liking it as much as I expected, on account of the sound being duller than I was interested in. Of course, with more time (And now a computer that actually works for more than an hour without crashing), perhaps I could massage the sound a little, to bring out some more detail. Or maybe it was never intended for what i would want to use it for.
This is exactly why I grabbed Modern Retro early on. You get two different kits (shells) and two sets of cymbals. The only thing missing are snare drag articulations, but other than that, it’s a pretty large expansion with great sounds. And they didn’t skimp on the direct and amb channels.
Hey All. Thanks for all the advice. Man, there is/was alot to look at. I think at this point, after everybody’s opinions, this will be my current shopping list (when sales happen)
Horsepower (mainly because my last acoustic kit was the Gretch Custom and omg I miss that set, but the volume for the wife and kids were unbearable, hence the purchase of electric kit.)
London Sessions/Modern Retro - Still undecided which one next Leaning toward Sessions just for the amount of kits.
Can’t go wrong with those expansions. I’ve seen London and Modern Retro go for as low as $20, so don’t bite too quickly on those, unless you really need them. Horsepower and Oblivion seem to have consistent sales prices, so anytime for those.
SABBATH RULES:metal:t2: lol