FXpansion BFD Premium Acoustic Drum Module Mixing with BFD - Manual (Page 9)

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Mixing with BFD www.fxpansion.com
• Hihats
These have the most possible articulations of any Kit-Piece type. BFD contains closed
and
1 / -open tip and shank, fully-open tip and pedal (‘foot-chick’) sounds. The expansion
packs also include additional 1 /
4
-open and 3 /
4
-open tip and shank sounds, which makes
more varied and expressive hihat patterns possible.
In case you’re wondering, ‘tip’ is used to describe the tip of the stick hitting the top of the
hat, while a shank represents the body of the stick hitting the edge of the hat.
For most applications where you need a classic ‘open’ hat sound, you should aim to use
the
1 / -open Hit types. The open tip sound is more like a ‘hihat bell’ - the top cymbal in
a hihat actually sounds more like a ride than a hihat when it is not vibrating against the
bottom cymbal.
It’s also good to remember that a drummer generally chokes an open hihat by moving
the pedal down, which results in a foot-chick while stopping the two hihat surfaces from
vibrating against each other by bringing them to a closed position. Therefore, you should
use low velocity pedal hits in the appropriate place after an open position for choking.
For a snappy choking feel, reduce the hihat choke fade settings in the BFD Options panel
to minimal values. Setting ‘Hihat fade (base)’ to 0.010 and ‘Hihat fade (range)’ to 0.040 will
give a very snappy hihat choking response.
• Cymbals
Cymbals have possible Hit types available. Two of BFD’s rides have a bell Hit type
(these need to be downloaded from the user area), while most expansion pack rides are
supplied with bells. Some crash cymbals in the expansion packs also feature an ‘edge’
sound mapped to the bell hit.
You can increase the choke fade times for cymbals to make a previous hit ring out for
longer after a new hit is played. For faster tempos you may want to reduce the choke fade
settings to get a cleaner mix. You should be aware that with longer choke fade settings,
there will be more disk-streaming taking place during busy cymbal parts. This is because
more individual voices will play at the same time, due to previous hits having a longer
decay.
2:4. Damping
The damping controls in the Kit-Piece Inspector act as an envelope to control the length
of a sound’s decay. Increasing the damping amount shortens the decay time. Snares
and kicks can become more powerful and cutting, while you can dramatically reduce the
duration of toms to stop them dominating the mix. The damping function in BFD emulates
real-world damping methods, such as using a damping ring on snares and toms, or filling
kick drums with duvets, blankets or pillows.