CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 3 CREDITS 3 2. WHAT IS BFD? 4 The BFD concept: 4 Multiple microphone positions 5 Hyper-realistic kits 6 Easy compilation of new kits 6 Flexible play modes: introducing the Groove Librarian 6 Endless variety of sound and feel 7 Potential uses for BFD 7 A note about the manual 7 Technical Support and Updates 8 3.
LOADING KITS AND KIT-PIECES 33 MIXER SECTION 37 GROOVE LIBRARIAN 43 QUANTIZATION PANEL 47 HUMANIZATION PANELS 48 PLAY OPTIONS PANEL 50 AUTO GROOVE REPEAT BUTTONS 53 OPTIONS PANEL 54 TRIGGER KEYS PANEL 56 TEMPO DISPLAY 56 LOADING AND SAVING PRESETS 57 OTHER FILE TYPES USED IN BFD 58 MISCELLANEOUS FUNCTIONS 59 DRUM RECORDING NOTES 60 BFD's LIBRARY OF GROOVES 62 6. APPENDIX 63 Host-specific issues 63 Troubleshooting 63 7.
1. INTRODUCTION Thank you for choosing FXpansion's BFD! We hope you will agree that the painstaking effort of putting it together has resulted in the most realistic acoustic drum machine ever. CREDITS Lead Programmer: SKoT McDonald (www.vellocet.com) Audio Engineering: Steve Duda Additional Programming: Angus Hewlett Design and Graphics: Adam Ferns (www.raresense.co.
2. WHAT IS BFD? BFD is a high-quality acoustic drum module. It concentrates on impeccablyrecorded multi-velocity acoustic drumkits, with some crucial differences to using a general-purpose sampler with sample-CDs, or using pre-recorded acoustic drum loops.
Multiple microphone positions Each drum component in BFD is sampled with a number of microphone placements simultaneously: Direct: a clean, close-mic'd signal. A variety of microphone types were used for this, including Sennheiser MD421, Neumann KM81 and M49, ElectroVoice Re20, AKG 451 and Shure SM57. They were recorded through custom modified API preamps. Overhead: a lush set of overhead mics - namely AKG C-12's (which, incidentally, cost around $15,000 each), recorded through Summit MPC-100A tube preamps.
integrated, intuitive preset system, facilitating the ability to save your favourite mixer configurations and flick through them with ease. Hyper-realistic kits As well as the flexibility offered by the multiple microphone positions, BFD's high quality drum sample library has an unparalleled degree of realism.
mented using standard MIDI files, so it is incredibly easy to create and import your own, or use commercial MIDI-file libraries, such as the Kenton and Twiddly Bits products. BFD conforms to the General MIDI (GM) standard, making it very easy to import standard MIDI drum parts as Grooves. Endless variety of sound and feel BFD's intelligent humanization techniques inject that elusive 'soul' into your drum parts.
way, so that you can make sure you understand all the concepts crucial to the way it works. It is also highly useful to be aware of the Appendix, which contains notes on a number of technical issues regarding performance and troubleshooting. We also hope that you don't find the size of this manual intimidating, as there are several sections (for example, the host-specific Quickstart guides) which you may not need to concern yourself with, depending upon your level of experience.
3. INSTALLATION AND GETTING STARTED System Requirements BFD requires a substantial amount of computing power.
Installation BFD comes on two DVD’s which are installed separately. The first DVD contains the stand alone program, plugins, and several drum kits. The second DVD contains only drum kits. Windows installation Insert the first DVD labelled “BFD Install DVD 1” and run the “BFD Windows Setup 1” program. The default options will allow you to access multiple outputs from BFD in most hosts.
To install the remaining kits insert the second DVD labelled “BFD Install DVD 2” and follow the prompts. ReWire installation If you choose to install the ‘BFD ReWire’ during the installation process you will be prompted to set your ReWire options. The main reason to use ReWire is to support BFD’s multiple outputs so you will probably want to choose ‘All outputs’ or ‘Group outputs’.
Using BFD in Emagic Logic Audio As long as the installation went smoothly, you should now have three new plugins available to you: BFD Stereo, BFD Groups, and BFD All. During the first launch of Logic after installing BFD, it should detect the plugins, after which they will be available in the VST plugins list. To use BFD, please do the following after launching Logic: 1. Bring up the Audio environment (the mixer). 2.
Using BFD in Digidesign Pro Tools As long as the installation went smoothly, you should now have a new RTAS plugin available to you: BFD Stereo. At this time, Pro Tools does not support multiple outputs from instrument plugins. The term 'multi-channel plugins' in Pro Tools refers to stereo-output plugins. If you need to use multiple output versions of BFD, please see the section below entitled "Using BFD with ReWire". To use BFD, please do the following after launching Pro Tools: 1.
6. If you are using a multiple-output version of BFD, enable the multiple outputs (using the down-arrow menu, just underneath the red plugin icon in the topleft corner of the plugin window). The additional outputs will occupy the FX tracks after the FX track you specified. For example, when using BFD Groups, assigning the main FX track to track 4 will lead to the other three stereo outputs to tracks 5-7. Using BFD in Sonic Foundry Acid 4.
To use BFD in Project 5, simply click the Insert Track button and select one of the BFD plugins which should be visible on the menu. Using BFD in Cakewalk Sonar As long as the installation went smoothly, you should now have three DXi entries available to you: BFD Stereo, BFD Groups, and BFD All. Because BFD installs a set of DXi plugins, you do not need to run any extra utility such as Cakewalk VST Adapter in order to wrap the VST versions into DXi format.
Using BFD with ReWire You should have already setup ReWire during the installation process. You can change your settings at any time by running the BFD ReWire Configuration Applet (BfdRewireApplet) at any time. You have three options for output configuration: ‘Stereo outputs’, ‘Group outputs’, and ‘All outputs’. You will probably want to select ‘All outputs’ to allow for individual processing of every drum sound through your host.
4. USING BFD If you're not familiar with using plugin instruments in your host, please make sure to read the Host Quickstart guides in the previous chapter. During the tutorial, there are references to opening various panels, which should be fairly intuitive. If you are in any doubt at any stage during the tutorial, please consult the Reference section later in the manual.
light will turn green. When the entire kit (i.e. all the Kit-Pieces contained within it) is fully loaded, the indicator disappears, and all of the kit indicator lights [fig.1] will have turned green. In order to make sure all Kit-Pieces are loaded, the currently-loaded kit layout can be viewed by clicking on the main drumkit graphic, upon which the Kit Display [fig.2] appears: an overhead view of the kit, with a box for each individually-loadable Kit-Piece. fig.1 fig.
panel with which to select from the numerous included kicks, snares, hihats, toms and cymbals. For example, to replace the snare, firstly click the snare icon : you will be presented with a panel similar in appearance to the Kit Selector panel, except that it contains different types of snares instead of whole drumkits. When you move the mouse over each snare type, the information display is updated with useful data regarding each one.
assigned to which keys by initiating the Trigger Keys panel, brought up by clicking the icon. It is recommended that you spend a little time at this point in getting acquainted with how BFD sounds and how it reacts to velocity.
We recommend dragging all the ambient bus faders down, leaving only the Direct signal. Then, begin to move each ambient fader up one by one: you will see how easy it is to dial in varying levels of room ambience. The Distance control allows to 'virtually shift' the microphone placements further back. The Width parameter, meanwhile, varies the stereo field of each bus from the default natural stereo towards mono (turn the control to the left) or extended stereo (turn it to the right).
. The finer points of mixing… BFD also allows much more in-depth mixing possibilities than those detailed above. The 'Kit-Piece' and 'Direct' mixer areas allow detailed control over levels of individual Kit-Pieces. Let's say, for instance, that you wanted to reduce the amount of ambience on the kick drum, to get a tighter, more focused bottom-end. Firstly, you can tighten the kick with the Kick In/Out control.
It might be a good idea to cover some of the special mixing functions. The Kick In/ Out control was explained earlier. Meanwhile, the Snare Bot/Top parameter works in a similar principle: it blends between a mic placed on the top of the snare drum, and another on the bottom. Like the Kick In/Out, it applies only to the Direct bus. Each Kit-Piece has a Tune parameter. This changes the pitch for each component globally, through the Direct and ambient buses.
Part Three: INTRODUCING THE GROOVE LIBRARIAN… To initiate the Groove Librarian, start by clicking the pull-down bar at the top of BFD's interface. You will see three 'Banks' of Grooves, flanked by a tree-view 'browser' on either side. The Groove browser on the left is for what we call 'Grooves': essentially MIDI drumloops. Meanwhile, the right-hand side browser is the Fill browser. Fills are exactly the same format as Grooves: they are just regarded as 'Fills' for convenience.
octave numbering from C-2, rather than C0 on Sonar and FL Studio, for example. You will have noticed that there are key numbers displayed on each Bank slot. BFD attempts to detect the sequencer used and changes its naming convention automatically. This can be over-ridden with the -2 Octave Numbering toggle in the Options panel.
When you have finished compiling your Bundle, you can save it. Simply click on the button underneath the Bank you wish to save as a Bundle, and specify a location and filename. If you save it into the BFD/Grooves or BFD/Fills folder, it will instantly appear in the respective browser. You can also clear any Bank by clicking the icon underneath it.
beat of a bar, it will play from the 2nd beat - so that if there is a kick on the 1st beat, and a snare on the 2nd, it will start playing with the snare. Sync Groove Phase This method of synchronization makes subsequent Grooves play in phase with the first Groove played. Press play on your sequencer, and trigger a Groove via MIDI on, say, the 4th beat. Now, when you trigger another Groove, it will synchronize to the original Groove you played.
Song Start option results in a definable Groove (specified with the Default Groove parameter) being played when the sequencer is started, something which is extremely useful when using BFD as an auto-accompaniment module. If this option is enabled along with Auto Groove Repeat, you will not have to enter any MIDI notes in order to make BFD start playing continuously! Respond to Song Stop option stops all Grooves which may be playing when the sequencer is stopped.
sequencers such as Cubase or Logic, which apply a quantization template to MIDI sequences. BFD 's Swing Templates operate by applying a timing template (chosen via the Template drop-down) over the Groove, which is varied by the Swing slider. It is applied after the Hard Quantize function, so that the central point of the Swing slider - i.e. when none of the Swing Template is applied - is the end result of the Hard Quantize function.
Move the mouse over the graph to see how it reacts. You will find that the curve changes shape according to mouse movements, while clicking the mouse button 'sets' the shape. With a graphical shape similar to that shown in here, the randomization is quite extreme. Effectively, the graph is showing you that there is the highest probability of large timing displacements.
• important note : The Humanize Velocity panel is unique among BFD's humanization functions in that it not only applies to the Groove Librarian, but also when using the plugin as a sound module: in other words, using the host's sequencing functions to trigger BFD's sounds as single hits. Part Four : USING YOUR HOST'S MIXING CAPABILITIES As mentioned at the beginning of the tutorial, there are three different versions of the BFD plugin: BFD Stereo: Stereo Master output only.
Save your kit changes if you have made any modifications you would like to use again, and load the BFD All plugin in place of the BFD Stereo you have been using, and reload a kit. This version of the BFD plugin offers the most versatility over the final mix. Please refer to the Host-specific Quickstarts if you don't know how to use your host's multi-output facilities, or if you are not sure if it supports them.
5. REFERENCE INTRODUCTION TO BFD's INTERFACE LOADING KITS AND KIT-PIECES Click the drumkit panel icons (the column of icons on the left side of the plugin window) in order to bring up their respective panels. These are used for loading either a full kit, or for compiling one from the components, or 'Kit-Pieces' of the various included kits, or a number of extra drums and cymbals which are not part of any one particular kit.
Exit each panel without making any changes by clicking its icon again, or by clicking the icon in the top-right corner, or bring up a new panel instead by clicking another panel icon. Kit Selector panel Clicking on this icon brings up the Kit Selector panel. Here, you can load one of the full drumkits supplied. Moving the mouse over each kit brings up information about the kit on the right of the panel. Click on any kit in order to load it.
Snare Each Snare Kit-Piece contains five hits: Hit: D1 (a standard snare drum hit) Drag: D#1 Flam: F1 Rim: E1 Side-stick: C#1 There are some exceptions: the DW Snare 1, DW Snare 2, Extras Snare 3, Extras Snare 7, Lucite and Radio King Kit-Pieces do not have a Side-stick hit. These are all redirected to a Rim hit. Additionally, the Ayotte Snare has a Sizzle hit instead of a Side-stick.
DW Tom Kit-Piece does not have a Mid Tom, so the High Tom is substituted for it. BFD does not tune this substitution automatically: it is recommended that you retune the substituted Tom as desired with the Tune parameter in the mixer section. Cymbals Each Cymbal Kit-Piece has two hits: a standard hit and a control to choke the cymbal (i.e. damping it).
• Reset kit: Clears the whole kit layout. • Save kit: Saves a customized kit layout. If you save it into the BFD/Kits folder, then it appears in the main Kit Selector panel. It is important to note that only the kit layout is saved: any mixer settings and key assignments are not saved with this function! For that, please use the relevant buttons in the mixer section and Trigger Keys panel, or save a global program preset.
1. The Kit-Piece area • Kit-Piece labels: The name labels for each Kit-Piece have a handy preview functionality. Clicking on the name previews the sound with the left to right position mapping to increased velocity. • Solo and Mute buttons: These lit buttons allow you to solo or mute any KitPiece(s). When one or more parts are soloed, the Mute buttons light up for all non-soloed parts, giving an easily-visible indication of the mute/solo status.
• Trim: This control allows you to trim the ambient level of each drumkit component, between +6 and -inf dB. Effectively, it functions as a 'reverb send' for the natural ambience in BFD's mic buses. • Tune: Using this control, the pitch of each drumkit component can be tuned up or down an octave (+/- 1200 cents). This control acts globally for all mic buses. • Dyn (Dynamics): This control scales the velocity sensitivity of each drumkit component.
• Pan: Here, you can control the position in the stereo field of each Kit-Piece, in the Direct Master stereo bus. They are only functional when using BFD Stereo or BFD Groups, and are greyed out when using the BFD All version of the plugin, as the individual mono Direct outputs do not need to be panned. The kick and snare Kit-Pieces each have some special controls for the Direct bus. • Kick in/out: This control adjusts the blend between the mic placed inside the kick drum, and that outside.
• Width: This control adjusts the stereo width of each ambient mic bus. It ranges from mono (hard-left) through stereo (centre position) to enhanced stereo (hard-right). Extreme settings of enhanced stereo should be used carefully as they can add an out of phase component to your mix. The Distance and Width parameters for each ambient mic bus are illustrated by a moving set of mics which can be seen in the Main Kit Display.
• Load Mixer Preset Brings up a standard file browser, allowing you to load a mixer setup file from any location. • Quick-access Preset Browsers If you save your mixer setups into the BFD/Mixers folder, you can use these quick access buttons in order to quickly flick between the various setups stored in the folder. • Reset Mixer Section Resets the mixer section to default settings.
GROOVE LIBRARIAN To open the Groove Librarian, click the top bar of BFD's plugin window. To close it again, click on the bottom or top bars of the Groove Librarian drop-down panel. When using the Groove Librarian, it is important to remember some of the terms used in BFD in order to properly understand its functionality. • Groove: A MIDI drum sequence used in BFD 's Groove Librarian. BFD can import any General MIDI (GM) MIDI file (type 0 and type 1).
• Bundle: A group of up to twelve Grooves. Bundles are small files which point to any Grooves or Fills. BFD comes supplied with a comprehensive library of Grooves and Fills sorted into Bundles. When you access the Groove Librarian, you will be presented by a couple of distinct areas. • Browsers: There are two tree-view browsers in BFD's Groove Librarian, which are used to select Groove and Fill bundles, located within the BFD/Grooves and BFD/Fills folders, and the individual Grooves within them.
slot is empty, the Groove is copied, whereas if the destination slot contains another Groove, they are swapped between the slots. After a Bundle has been compiled in one of the Banks, it can be saved for future use by clicking the Save button under each Bank. It is best to save it in the BFD/Grooves folder, or in BFD/Fills if it is a Fill Bundle, so that it appears in the Browsers. Auditioning Grooves Grooves or Fills within any Bank can be auditioned just by clicking on them.
Creating your own Grooves and Fills BFD's Grooves and Fills use the standard MIDI file format. This makes it incredibly easy to create and import your own Grooves. Please follow these guidelines if you would like to create your own Grooves. • You can use any MIDI sequencer which allows the export of MIDI files. • Load BFD into the sequencer and program or record the sequences you want to convert into Grooves.
QUANTIZATION PANEL BFD's humanization system is comprised of the Quantization panel, and the Humanize Velocity and Humanize Timing panels. All of these functions take effect when BFD is playing Grooves, with the exception of the Humanize Velocity panel, which also affects BFD's output when using standard MIDI input (in other words, when triggering BFD's sounds using the MIDI functions of your sequencer, rather than the built-in Groove Librarian).
swung time to achieve different feels. Currently, BFD comes with the common 8th and 16th note swings. Template selector This drop-down menu allows the selection of one of a number of Swing Templates supplied with BFD. Swing slider This control gradually varies the timing of the playing Groove between the setting specified with the Hard Quantize slider, and the currently selected Template. The funky opposing 'Groove Dudes' are a graphical representation of the two swing parameters.
every repetition. Timing randomizations are not applied to notes from your sequencer or MIDI controller – only to Grooves. Humanize Velocity panel: This panel graph works in exactly the same way as the Humanize Timing panel, except that the x-axis represents changes in velocity from the original. Therefore, it is possible to emulate the slight variations in force used by a real drummer when hitting the drums.
When the graph looks like that shown in this picture, there will be no randomization of timing: the graph is showing that there is an equal probability of no timing deviations occurring. The principle is exactly the same for the Humanize Velocity panel. PLAY OPTIONS PANEL This panel lets you change a number of different aspects of the Groove Librarian's behaviour.
the new Groove will start playing from its third beat as well. Note that Polyphonic Mode (see below) must be enabled for this to have any effect. Transition Mode This drop-down sets how transitions between Grooves are handled. 'Immediate' When in this mode, a newly triggered Groove will start playing immediately.
Auto Fill period (Bars) Here, you set the period, in bars, between every Fill played when in Auto Fill mode. For example, setting it to 16 will result in a Fill being played every 16 bars. Latching Mode When this mode is enabled, Grooves are tuned off not by a note-off message, but by another note-on message of the same note number. Therefore, you hit a key once to start the Groove, and hit it again to stop it.
AUTO GROOVE REPEAT BUTTONS The two columns of three buttons on the right of the BFD interface are used for auto-accompaniment purposes. Each column represents one of the Groove Banks: the column on the left represents Bank A, while the one on the right represents Bank B. Auto Groove Repeat When this option is checked, any triggered Groove will repeat until it is stopped by a note-off (or by another note-on if in Latching Mode).
Auto Fill A ON/OFF: A4 or A6*, note no. 105 Auto Fill B ON/OFF: A#4 or A#6*, note no. 106 * depends on the state of the -2 Octave Numbering option in the Options panel. OPTIONS PANEL This icon activates the Options panel. Here, you can toggle various options within BFD, which affect how it performs. Exit the panel without making any changes by clicking its icon again, or by clicking the icon in the top-right corner, or bring up a new panel instead by clicking another panel icon.
Loops. When it launches, BFD attempts to detect the sequencer used and adjusts the naming convention used in the Trigger Keys panel and Groove Librarian Banks. You can override this by manually setting this option in order to use whatever convention you prefer. Direct Mic Bleed (BFD All only) By default, each Kit-Piece Direct output in the BFD All plugin contains only that Kit-Piece's signal. In general, this is the setting which most people will use.
TRIGGER KEYS PANEL The Trigger Keys panel allows you to adjust the key assignments for the different hits in each Kit-Piece of the drumkit. Exit the panel without making any changes by clicking its icon again, or by clicking the icon in the top-right corner, or bring up a new panel instead by clicking another panel icon.
Beat LED This light flashes on every beat when the song is playing. Tempo display Shows the current tempo in your sequencer. Time Signature display Shows the current time signature in your sequencer. LOADING AND SAVING PRESETS BFD has 3 different types of presets: Kit Combo Preset: .bfk Location: BFD/Kits This preset type contains information about the loaded kit components. You load and save these presets via the buttons just under the Kit Display. Mixer Setup preset: .
You can save preferred layouts of key assignments as defined in the Trigger Keys panel. Global Preset: .bfp (BFD programs) Location: BFD/Programs This type of preset file is a global setting: it contains both kit and mixer and key assignment setups and, as such, can be regarded as a combination of .bfk, .bfm and .bfp files. To load and save a global preset, use the buttons on the top-right of the BFD interface. Your host should save the state of the plugin when you save a song.
MISCELLANEOUS FUNCTIONS BFD and multiple outputs There are three versions of the BFD plugin, which give different permutations of outputs into the host. We made this decision because of some hosts' inability to properly change the output configuration. • BFD Stereo: Stereo Master output only. This version mixes all microphone buses together with the Direct Master stereo mix inside the plugin, outputting a single stereo pair. The Master output fader controls the overall output volume of the plugin.
3+4 Room bus Room bus 5+6 PZM bus PZM bus 7 Direct Kick In Direct Kick In 8 Direct Kick Out Direct Kick Out 9 Direct Snare Bottom Direct Snare Bottom 10 Direct Snare Top Direct Snare Top 11 Direct Hihat Direct Hihat 12 Direct Floor Tom Direct Floor Tom 13 Direct Mid Tom Direct Mid Tom 14 Direct High Tom Direct High Tom 15 Direct Cymbal 1 Direct Cymbal 1 16 Direct Cymbal 2 Direct Cymbal 2+3 17 Direct Cymbal 3 - DRUM RECORDING NOTES BFD's high-quality drum content was pr
Hihats: Neumann KM81 Toms: Sennheiser MD421 Cymbals: AKG 451 All the above microphones were recorded through custom modified API preamps. Please note that the Sennheiser MD421 used to record the toms is actually two mics, one placed on the top and one on the bottom of the drum. Each part was fed into custom API preamps, and then summed on an SSL desk. • Overhead set: AKG C-12's recorded through Summit MPC-100A tube preamps. These were placed 5 ft.
BFD's LIBRARY OF GROOVES Most of the Grooves supplied with BFD are performed on Roland V-Drums by Chris Dagley, a renowned UK session drummer. As well as playing with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra for several years, Chris has played with such diverse luminaries of the international music scene as Lalo Schifrin, Des'ree, Gary Barlow, All Saints, Rosie Gaines, Jamiroquai, Tom Scott, Gloria Gaynor, Chaka Khan, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Ella Fitzgerald, George Michael and countless others.
6. APPENDIX Host-specific issues Some hosts do not support multiple outputs from plugin instruments. At this time, we are aware that Sonic Foundry Acid 4.0 and Digidesign ProTools fall into this category. To get around this limitation, we suggest you use the ReWire application in these hosts. Emagic's Logic Audio has a limitation of 16 outputs from plugin instruments.
• I'm getting clicks and pops! First of all, please verify if you are only getting this behaviour with BFD. Clicks and pops are usually a result of interruptions to the computer, caused by conflicting IRQs and substandard motherboards (such as those with a VIA chipset). These symptoms are also very common when using very low latencies on a computer which cannot handle them.
enough to deliver the required amount of data in time. To give you an idea of the transfer rate required, a particularly heavy scenario when using BFD would need around 15 mB/sec. This means that a firewire or USB 2.0 drive which typically delivers 30 mB/sec would be perfectly adequate. • Triggering of grooves isn’t working as expected. Check the settings in Play Options panel and see that the latch mode and sync modes are what you need to trigger the grooves how you would like.
NOTES 67
