A “trigger” solution where you can blend your own drum samples before the bfd kit samples.
Also, it would be awesome to be able to insert 3rd part plugins to the bfd mixer.
3 Likes
A couple of simple things
• I find myself always going back and forth between the Tech and Model pages to adjust settings. I think we can get that all on one page no?
• Is there a better way to implement the Bleed modeling? I’m not even sure it’s working the way it’s supposed to especially for toms, and it’s a bit convoluted overall.
• I would also like to 2nd the motion as Sigmund suggested for knowing what the kit piece was that you started with after testing out other options.
4 Likes
I’d like to second your Tech/Model page suggestion. These are always pages I use the most and would like to see the pages combined into one, it would make things a lot quicker, way less clicks 
There is a lot of screen real estate given to the drum kit graphic instead.
2 Likes
Probably impossible but would be nice to have some info on missing kit pieces when loading presets.
Yes, I know it’s usually presets that were made from a combination of libraries and expansion kits but it would still be useful to know what exactly they were if only for the purpose of trying to substitute missing pieces with a, like for like’ kit piece.
Steve
2 Likes
One way of getting both tech and model controls on one tab might be to have a row of small buttons along the top for each kit piece loaded. Kind of like the buttons on the drum tab for kick, snare, hats although you’d need individual buttons for toms and cymbals and the bigger the kit the more real estate would be needed but at least that way you could stay on the tech/model tab and not have to be going back and fourth and selecting kit pieces in the mixer.
Steve
1 Like
Consolidating Tech and Model into one page would suit me as well.
3 Likes
Firstly, can we pin this thread at the top?
Secondly, can we at least have the option (tick box or something) to just save presets with a standard save button so we can save on the fly? Maybe have an undo/redo if possible too.
I hate having to save a preset to a folder and being told it already exists and do I want to replace it.
How about a, save as copy too like in photoshop?
Steve
4 Likes
I’d really like to see some improvement to the whole Groove Browser/Editor/Palettes workflow. The filters in the browser are all well and good, but I rarely find enough individual grooves within any single preset palette from which I can start to build an entire song.
More often than not, I’ll find myself endlessly browsing through palettes, noting down individual grooves that catch my ear, dragging them over to the larger palette in the right-hand pane, and slowly building a song from all these disparate parts. It can take hours.
When a friend of mine showed me Superior Drummer 3, with the “Tap to find” function, groove suggestions based on current selections, and umpteen other song-building tools, I was blown away by how quickly he was able to put a rough drum track together.
BFD has always been top of the pile for me when it comes to sound. The flexibility and options available for building kits is amazing, and I love that the drums are raw and unprocessed. However, in terms of working with the grooves and the kind of tools that can really speed up the process of putting a track together, I really feel BFD has fallen a bit behind the competition in recent years.
3 Likes
- AI patterns, auto-fills, etc. in the Groove editor (like Logic Drummer or better yet the Lumbeat apps) would be awesome
- better GM mapping options (to make Lumbeat apps, etc. easier to use directly) would also be great
Thanks
1 Like
Another thing I am missing in BFD 3 (maybe it’s there but I don’t know how to do it)
When using the palette and autoplaying grooves, I’m missing a way to designate a groove as “Play once” or, “Exclude from Random Grooves/Fills”, so that I can start with a groove, play the next one with “Down”, next, next etc etc, but at some time it’ll settle on a number of main grooves, which I like to mix up with Random Grooves/Fills".
And then for the Fills. If I have a 4 bar groove and Auto Fill enabled, it will try to fill on measures 4, 8 etc etc. But if I use “Play Random Groove/Fill”, I can’t find a good way to use 2 or 4 bar grooves together with 1 bar fills without having the fills occur on the first or third measure. *In other words, when using 4 bar grooves I need a way for upcoming 1 bar fill to steal into the 4th measure of the groove and not play on the 5 measure, after the groove.
Gah, I hope it makes sense.
Edit: Or any snippet counting as a fill for that matter. It may be a beat’s worth of time. When using Play in Sync, I can easily sneak say a particular ride pattern into a groove, but when I leave it to Random Groove/Fill, I can’t have this functionality, and it would be awesome if I did!
2 Likes
Please start sampling for both left and right hands.
3 Likes
We’ve actually done extensive tests on this. In a scientific blind-test, no-one we tested could hear the difference between left and right hits, not even professional drummers! So given a studio session has a finite amount of time, we usually err on the side of more data across more drums, rather than more data for a single drum.
I’d be open to exploring it again. But it was pretty obvious when we did the tests a long time ago.
7 Likes
If I need left and right hand I tend to use the same drum in a different slot slightly de tuned or up tuned.
Something I’ve always done.
Not only that I’ve used left hand from bfd and right hand from superior. A bit of a long process but it works for me.
1 Like
Thanks for the reply.
It’s about avoiding potential phasing issues. I use BFD in a finger-drumming context and so have to use two keys for certain hits (Primarily for ghost-notes and played in flams/rolls). In BFD I have to double up the same hits which means that when flams and rolls start getting tighter it’s easy to suffer phasing from triggering the same samples.
I used NI’s Abbey Road Drums for years, without these issues. It seems that Superior also assumes two-handed drummers as standard
1 Like
Thanks!
I wonder if this deals with the issues I’m referring to. Would certainly be a pretty simple workaround, assuming it sounds legit.
I’m not a technical person - If the drum sounds musically right then it must be right.
Sadly - in my opinion - that’s what’s gone wrong with music. All styles. It now has to be 100% physically correct or else it’s wrong.
If it’s physically wrong but sounds right then it shouldn’t matter.
Don’t forget 99.9% of joe public are tone deaf and couldn’t care if it sounds right as long as the song is what they’ve heard before and they can “try” to sing to it.
As I say - I’m not technical. So I couldn’t say if it deals with it or not.
Just a suggestion on my part.
I do apologise if it didn’t help any.
I just know it works for me.
Neil
Ahhhh got you, got you. Sounds like that needs to go into the “reasons to improve our anti-machine gun algorithm” box. Cheers!
6 Likes
I want more drum samples!That’s the core thing of a sample library I think.
And I want easier way to layer drums(like SD3 or SSD),some electirc drum samples to layer with etc.
1 Like