My first home made kit was a large suit case and 3 or 4 large thick plastic water containers for camping.
The snare was my pride and joy, an upturned biscuit tin with a load of small nails and tacs on the top (bottom) and then a smaller water container gaffa taped to the top of the biscuit tin.
I’m in the US. I started at BFD 1. I still use it (and am hoping to keep using it… clunky on Logic/M1 right now, Rosetta or not). I mostly use BFD for putting together demos for TV/Film that will be eventually replaced by people hitting things with sticks. While the music is all over the map (mostly animation) I lean towards a more acoustic jazz/americana/folk/pop. BFD 1 wasn’t so great with the original sets, but once the Jazz/Funk expansion came out - it was on the money for me.
The better the demos sound, the less likely a producer/director who doesn’t understand the concept of a demo will approve the music…and I can get the drummer in the room and the job in the can.
While I do use midi loops, I do a whole lot of custom hits, grooves etc that lend itself to midi… especially if I’m converting it to written music for the above mentioned humans hitting things.
Anyway… being that BFD is the tool I’ve used for so long, it’s the tool I know. If there is better stuff out there, I almost don’t want to know. I hope BFD can keep growing their product so that I can keep supporting the tool I know best. Hopefully that will make for faster updates.
A lack of marketing can be the issue. People simply do not know that BFD exists. Those who heard about it at least once – do not care.
I think, that if community wants a fresh flow of newbies, then something should be done. As a possibility, people could use Influencer marketing for apps. Sometimes other people can advertise better than any technical tool.
Nope not just you mate, that’s one of the exact reasons i chose and stuck with BFD over the years.
Possibly i’m weird in that i actually enjoy mixing and processing a kit from ‘raw’ as it were, and i find the core sounds in BFD much less processed and much more usable in genres such as funk, soul, jazz, reggae etc. AD etc just don’t cut it in those genres imho.
Lol, i said ‘Nope not just you mate’, meaning that it’s not just you that feels that way, a comma after the ‘nope’ might have made a difference though.
We’re on the same page here mate…
Would i be right in guessing you’re ‘purtington’ (iirc) from the old fx forum? I remember your avatar. I did used to spend a lot of time in there back in the day, but things just seemed to die a slow death before the spammers dealt the final blow.
It was an honest question and I am sure it was not intended to offend anyone.
Occam’s razor:
So, when one is looking at searches we all know 80% of the searches will be done by newbie’s, who more than likely are also DAW newbie’s. They are not mix engineers. They are not drummers. They are looking for something that is easy to use. BFD3 is not it.
Ease of use (for an unfamiliar user)
Superior Drummer 3 / EZ Drummer 3.
SSD5
Note the above two are very forgiving, if one is playing a MIDI file that has 3rd rack tom event and there is not 3rd rack tom in the kit the 2nd rack tom will sound (no holes).
Also true for Cymbals (I think SD3 goes for a ‘nearest cymbal sound’ where SSD5 sounds the left crash). No Holes.
MODO Drums.
Any Kontak derived product,
Superior Drummer 3 is no doubt searched a lot due to the fact that it is pretty much ranked in the top 5 ‘Best Virtual Drum Plugins For 20XX’ blogs. I am sure newbie’s see the price and probably settle on EZ Drummer 3. It is quite simple to use.
SSD5 is also highly ‘ranked’, yes, no mixing effects.
BFD3 has issues, which would make newbie’s shy away::
The code base is very old (That is clear from the pictures of the interface on line).
The manual is available ton-line to all. Reading the manual will terrify a newbie.
EZ Drummer and those others came out targeting the Metal bunch, with some slappy-clicky kicks and blast beats, which made it popular with those types. I listened to samples from Superior and BFD - specifically fast double-kicks - and I heard hardware rattle in the Superior samples. I didn’t hear anything but drums in BFD, so I went with BFD 1. All my “friends” were raving about how Superior came loaded with all kinds of cliche` Metal patterns. I didn’t have much else. The Funk, Jazz, Fusion, and other samples were also utterly underwhelming.
But still, they were at the forefront of the target market, especially when they put out EZ Drummer (so guitarists didn’t have to think). They could load up a cliche` preset and just scribble all over the guitar and say they made something.
BFD 1 did what I needed it to do. BFD 2 did it better. BFD 3 does it best, when it works. It takes brains to run it right. It’s aimed at drummers and percussionists, or at least people who understand it (or want to). Those other programs offer instant gratification.
@DrNewcenstein With the BFD Player, it seems like they might be heading in a similar direction of making things simpler for that “instant gratification” as you said. So that will be able to compete with EZD. And with the Player, I’m going to assume that BFD4 will still retain the tweaking and FX capabilities, similar to BFD3.
Before it was known about the BFD Player, users were suggesting that BFD4 should have some type of “easy button mode” to giver users the option for a streamlined experience, but with the Player being a thing now, I don’t see that happening.
I wrote about 2 dozen songs using presets in an Alesis SR-16. Change the kit, change the tempo, it’s a new song. If BFD Player is that easy, I can see me finishing my 3rd album. Finally.
If the sound quality is there, I don’t mind as much the learning curve and headaches (BFD3). But I totally get how some musicians and producers just want to make music without having to dive deep. I hope the BFD Player really delivers for those folks.
I used a Boss DR-5 drum mach back in the late 90’s. It sounded like crap (as expected for the time) and was anything but easy to program, at least more intricate stuff. Though, I wish I still had the drum MIDI data from my songs that I stored on an Alesis Data Disk, so I could record them using BFD3. There’s an old song my really Mom likes, that I should probably re-record proper for her one of these days.
I started doing that with the SR16 a couple of years ago. At first I was trying to recreate the Songs, but then I just recreated the Patterns and Fills. I can load them as Grooves and tweak as needed. Didn’t get a lot of them done, though. I’m not a drummer so I don’t really understand how to do many of the little things I want to do. And depression takes a toll, so it sits for months/years without being touched. When I go back to it, half of my expansion don’t work because of the buyout and transfer. The ones I need don’t work. No other pack I have has a rain stick or the thunder sheets. So, back to playing video games.
And yeah, the SR16 was a pain to program. Stepping through the Pattern editor and miss your mark, you can’t just step back, you have to loop all the way around. Programming in Guitar Pro was somewhat easier, and use that to call the sounds from the SR16. Trying to get BFD3 to learn the MIDI patterns from it doesn’t quite come out right. So then I put each Pattern into a separate Song. It plays once, then stops. However, the Play button is finicky after so many years, so it double-taps the first note, messing up the Learned pattern, and it’s back to playing video games LOL