FXpansion BFD Premium Acoustic Drum Module Mixing with BFD - Manual (Page 7)

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Mixing with BFD www.fxpansion.com
You can adjust ambience levels for each Kit-piece, using the Kit-piece Trim controls (as
opposed to the Direct Trim). Therefore, if you need a tight kick but a huge snare, turn
down the Kit-piece Trim on the kick and leave it up on the snare. These controls act like
reverb sends, while the OH, Room and PZM faders are effectively like return levels for 3
different reverb algorithms.
See the section below entitled ‘Mic channels and controlling ambience levels’ for more
information on this subject.
2:2. Velocity layers and Dynamics controls
• The importance of using BFD’s velocity layers properly
A very easy mistake to make with BFD is to use maximum velocities all the time. When
you do this, in effect the drummer is playing with maximum force all the time - something
that does not happen often. As a consequence, the drum part will sound robotic and
machinegun-like. A drum kit is a massively expressive instrument: it sounds very different
when played with soft hits (low velocities) than when it is played with brutal force (high
velocities).
The basic BFD library has up to 46 velocity layers. What this means is that the drums are
recorded being struck by up to 46 levels of intensity. It’s vital to make good use of these
velocity layers in order to achieve realistic drumming. The expansion packs feature higher
levels of detail, with BFD XFL possessing up to 93 layers, while Deluxe Collection has
up to 18 layers - in other words, some articulations feature a discrete sample for every
incoming velocity level.
Soft velocities are good for anything gentle and acoustic, such as mellow jazz, soul,
country and blues, while high velocities are great for really rocking out. The level of
velocity layer detail in BFD gives you a lot of room for variation and accenting hits,
allowing deep complexity and dynamic expression. When combined with all the other
functions in BFD, as well as external processing, the creative possibilities are immense.
Try applying heavy compression to these low velocity hits, for example. Add a liberal
amount of VD (velocity to damping) in the Advanced tab of the Hit Options panel for
further dimensions.
It is vitally important to remember that intelligent use of different velocities and accenting
is an important element of ‘groove’, and can contribute to swing-like effects even with
tightly quantized patterns.
• Dynamics controls
The Dynamics controls are valuable tools to get the most out of BFD’s high detail levels.
Don’t confuse these with external dynamics processing (compression/gating/expansion).
The BFD Dynamics controls scale incoming note velocities up or down. This allows you to
change the dynamics of the ‘playing’ in real time.