Glad you got it working the way you wanted. I think most users, including myself use the custom outputs to route into audio tracks in a DAW to process and mix there. If you’re working solely in BFD3, then it still can be useful to route certain things to an aux bus that isn’t automatically created, like the toms for instance. Cymbals are also something I would route to a bus, just to have more control.
I find a lot of the BFD3+expansion presets to be kind of meh tbh. They tend to have most of the faders at unity gain and that really sounds terrible across the whole kit, especially having the ambient channels jacked up. But even the direct mics for kick and snare shouldn’t all be at unity. They need to be balanced to get the optimal tone of the kit piece. Like, there’s no logical reason you’d want the kick sub mic as loud as the in and out mics imo. Generally, the direct mics should be the loudest overall and the ambient mics much lower and blended in to taste.
Good points, all – I’ve often found myself feeling that BFD is rather more complex than either of my DAWs!
As a fader-pusher at The Record Plant once told me many centuries ago, “You do know that drums are the single most important element in any track, right? Cause if those aren’t good…”
Now, whether he was saying that simply to flatter a drummer, or because he meant to instill a certain sense of responsibility in one and felt impelled to impart that precious knowledge, I’ll never know for sure.
But I did take his point that getting them right, right from the start, is “how we do.” (And that any need to “fix them later”… should be… avoided if at all possible, let’s say). Thus it is that, encountering the complexities of BFD, I just shrug and say “Yup… the shoe sure fits, all right.”
FWIW, I have many times made great sport of BFD’s room & ambient mics, occasionally even mixing them louder than the direct channels for that “baked garbage” quality I’m so fond of.
he was right, even more important, you can have good drums but a crap drummer and the track will suck all over again no matrer how good everything else is lol
The drums are like the bricks in the foundations of a house and the bass is like the mortar, if the foundations aren’t right then your house is likely to fall over.
Just out of curiosity, is there any projected date or timeframe when BFD4 is scheduled for release as this thread is over three years old and contains many good suggestions that would greatly improve the instrument?
I’d love to see a completely overhauled GUI with scaleable components and a much clearer menu structure.
Hello all,
+100 on the intelligent drummer option. (not like Logic’s drummer… please ^^')
Something like what Jamstix did was fantastic.
Choose a drummer and a music style, define a song structure (for example IVVCVCBCO, 4/4, 4 bars per section, 150BPM) adjust (a lot) of parameters which are drummer-specific and style-specific, and generate the grooves in the grid that can be then locked or edited (this was waaaaaay before the whole GenAI buzz).
Jamstix also had some smart things, like defining which limb plays which sound (so no need to be an octopus to play the grooves), and would also take into account the latency between the brain and the limbs to humanize the grooves and give them a realistic feel, especially when composing on the fly. Intensity could be adjusted in real time or automated.
The UI was horrible, but the concept was outstanding
Something that I think would be hugely helpful to those with a lot of expansion kits, would be for the contents page to differentiate between kits and grooves.
Maybe have a split section with a kits and grooves heading or have them coloured, or shaded differently.
It gets quite confusing when they both share the same name and are mixed in together.
Oh yeah, and while I’m at it. the page would also be a lot better if kits could be listed alphabetically and if there was an option to list by date.
I want a Multi outputs to my DAW particularly Cubase so i can compress and eq my BFD drums with proffessional tools for each Drum and each cymbals
I’ve been running multiple outs from BFD into my DAW (Digital Performer) for years – since BFD2 in fact, and now into 3.4.
Now, I don’t know what DAW you’re using, so I can’t promise you that this will work for everything.
And some DAWS (like Ableton Live, which I also use) will only “see” a limited number of BFD’s total possible outputs. So you might have to make certain compromises depending upon how many of BFD’s outs are recognized.
And as always, a bit of dedicated time and effort is needed in order to get it all set up and contoured to the environment you’ve got.
So that’s the downside.
The upside is, after you get things sorted out you should be able to template the configuration you develop and recall it pretty easily.
Then you’ve got BFD addressing individual channels in your DAW just as if you’d mic’d a kit that way.
