Hi i am wondering how some of you producers using BFD3 or other start off your songwriting and production process.
I am wondering whether its better to write the guitar part first then use BFD3 over or lay drum tracks first then play guitar over.
My method would be get a nice simple solid drum track with BFD3 then put down guitar parts and after tweak BFD3 the way you want.
I might go the way i record bands and have a scratch take of the song then lay finished RAW drums and record guitar parts and rest of tracks vocals over that. Same as a full band in a studio.
Pick your favorite kit you have. Find some grooves you like. Before you add any FX, really spend time getting a good mix of the raw kit first. I’ll put the grooves in loop and choose beats that are based on what part of the kit I’m focusing on. After I get my kick, snare and tom direct mics balanced, I will solo each ambient channel and get those balanced the way I want with the amb sends on kit pieces. Then I’ll make sure all of the amb channel fader levels sit well with the direct mics. I’ll blend the cymbal direct mics in afterwards, as those you really don’t need much, or at all sometimes.
From there, I’ll start tweaking other things like dampening, cymbal swells, ADSR, bleed, tom resonance, etc. Tuning also. I find myself lowering the pitch of kicks just a bit most of the time. Just find the sweet spot with the low end of it.
By this point, I should be pretty happy with the mix and sound of the kit and I will then start adding processing to channels. It’s probably best to add FX to the drums in the context of a full mix, but I just do it with drums only. The BFD FX are just for fun whilst creating and I will use my plugins in the DAW for an actual track instead. Be sure to save it as a preset as you go along. When you have one kit that is balanced, tweaked and mixed right, it really gives you extra inspiration as you start jamming/writing tunes.
Then you pick another kit and do the same process. Before you know it, you’ve got a handful of kits that are ready to go for your sessions.
I’ll normally write scratch guitar tracks, so I have some reference for programing the drums. I’ll program some bass in as well as I’m putting the sections together. Once the song structure with drums is there, I’ll re-record any guitars I need to. Sorry for the long rant.
Thanks for the information ill go through those steps and work on some kits of my own.
Ill start with scratch takes on guitar as well.
Much appreciated.
I have some multi velocity kits from Drum drops.
Have you tried building your own kit in BFD3 with multi velocities of each kit piece.
I have a few really nice Drumdrop kits.
Unless i can go in later and overlay kick and snares with my drumdrop samples.
BFD3 sounds great ill do what you said there.
thanks for the help.
I’m a guitarist/singer/songwriter so 95% of the time the song will have been written already before I start recording sot I usually work out some simplified drum tracks to get the tempo and structure of the song down then I can record the guitar and bass.
I much prefer that method to just recording along to a click track.
I rarely using midi loops or presets because I can spend far too much time looking for approximations of what I think I want and then editing them to make them fit the song so it’s actually quicker to just write them myself.
The process will often vary depending on what type of music you’re recording too.
I have been inspired to write a couple of things that were born entirely around a drum preset that I’d messed around with. I usually have a rough idea of which kits I think would work best having been through them all.
I have a template in cakewalks bandlab with BFD3 routed and bass, guitar and other tracks included so I can use those as a quick start.
One thing I’d like to do (but would take days) would be to get a load of midi parts in various rhythms and time signatures that I most commonly use just so I can chuck them in and tweak them.
I’d get those together and then go through my bazillion midi loops and choose ones that would compliment my own creations and probably get rid of all the ones I don’t, and probably never will use.