FXpansion BFD Premium Acoustic Drum Module Mixing with BFD - Manual (Page 28)

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Mixing with BFD www.fxpansion.com
6. Creative processing
6:1. Other dynamics processors
Gates are a good way of recreating older drum sounds, such as those used in soul and
funk records. You can achieve different results to using the built-in damping in BFD, so
feel free to experiment!
Transient modification processors like SPL Transient Designer or Sony Transient
Modulator can be very useful in shaping the attack and release of parts of the kit. They
have a slightly different approach to conventional compressors, and can be very useful
for adding extra punch or for taming ambience. It’s incredibly easy to overdo it with
processors like this: tread carefully.
Dynamic EQ’s can also give you new ways of shaping the dynamics of your mix. Again,
proceed with caution - always keep a perspective on what you want to achieve.
6:2. Artificial reverb
Don’t be afraid to use an artificial reverb, especially on the snares and toms. Getting rid of
the natural room and using a fake space can open up a new world of sounds - engineers
often do this with real multitracked drums too! Extremely short, bright plate reverbs can
completely change the nature of the drums. You can also use larger rooms and add bus
compression to achieve huge drum sounds, just like you would do with BFD’s built-in
ambience.
If the drums are sounding too ‘reverby’ for the mix, try to find a reverb program with a very
strong early reflection element, and use more of this than the main reverb tail itself. This is
also great for achieving ‘slapback’ room effects, especially when combined with pre-delay.
Also, don’t go crazy on the ‘room size’ and ‘reverb time’ parameters - be sensible! Reverbs
that are too long will just clutter up the mix and sound messy.
Pre-delay can be very useful - it can help to seperate the drums from the reverb and
keep the mix sounding more defined, instead of ‘distancing’ the drums to the back of the
mix. Pre-delay is the time between the beginning of the dry sound and the beginning
of the reverb. A setting of between 10 and 5 ms can work very well. Extreme settings
can produce slapback effects, like when using the Distance controls for the ambience in
BFD’s mixing interface.
Using mono reverbs can really pin the drums to the centre of the mix and, as described
earlier, is a very common production technique for getting big drum sounds.
Algorithmic and convolution reverbs both have their own strengths and weaknesses -
experiment with both!