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chapter 09
ELECTRONIC DRUMS AND BFD2
9:1 Intoduction to using electronic drumkits with BFD2
BFD2 supports the use of electronic drumkits for triggering sounds. Pre-made maps are provided for most kits. However, if you
want to customize the response, or if you need to map a kit that isn’t supported in the provided presets, this section explains how
to best use BFD2’s mapping system for working with electronic kits.
Most triggers/pads on electronic kits are fairly straightforward to map to BFD2’s sounds. However the hihat requires more atten-
tion, as does the snare if you want to utilize positional snare information for switching between the ‘hit’ and ‘half-edge’ hit. If your
kit supports ‘grabbing’ a cymbal trigger to choke it, BFD2 can support this too.
This chapter assumes that you are familiar with using the MIDI view in BFD2. Please make sure you read the previous chapter
fully before this one.
How electronic drumkits work
Electronic drumkits, or ‘e-drums’ usually consist of a number of pads which transmit trigger signals as control voltage over an
audio connection. Additionally, a pedal mechanism that transmits the variable state of the pedal between open and closed, again
using a control voltage over an audio connection.
The audio signals are routed to a converter box, commonly referred to as a ‘drum brain’, which translates audio signals received
from pads into MIDI messages. The brain often also has onboard sounds, which are rather limited due to memory constraints.
Common e-drum systems include D-Drums (formerly made by Clavia), Roland V-Drums, the Yamaha DT series and Alternate
Mode Drumkat. Note that some budget e-drum systems such as the Ion kit do not support variable hihat pedals, instead using a
switch type pedal that simply changes between open and closed states. You cannot utilize variable hihat control with such kits.
Cross-talk between triggers and zones
It s very common to experience cross-talk symptoms when using e-drum systems – when you strike one pad, the resulting vibra-
tions are picked up by other pads’ sensors. This is often made worse by the fact that most e-drum systems are supplied with a
single-frame mounting system, resulting in less isolation for each pad. In addition to cross-talk between individual pads, substan-
tial cross-talk also occurs between zones on multi-zone pads.
In practice, this is often not a major problem, as it reflects what would happen with real drumkit to some extent. However, when
using BFD2, it can cause problems:
• Excess disk streaming due to more voices are triggered at once
• Problems when using MIDI learn for note assignments due to multiple notes being sent when striking one pad or zone.
It can be more effective to use manual note assignment when assigning your e-drum system to BFD’s sounds. In order to do this,
you need to know which note is sent out by each pad, or by each part of the pad. Sometimes the brain itself has setup pages
which provide this information, while it can often also be found in the manual. There may be situations, however, when you may
have to examine he MIDI output from the drum brain. BFD2’s MIDI event log allows you to do this.
Double-triggering: setting the Retrigger threshold
Another symptom of cross-talk is ‘double-triggering’ and unwanted choking of sounds, especially when using dual-zone triggers.
Most drum brains have various configuration parameters to get around the cross-talk and double-triggering problem, while BFD2
also contains the Retrigger threshold setting, located in the BFD2 Engine preferences. It allows you to set a length of time after a
received note in which to ignore all notes.
However, it’s always a good idea to eradicate these problems at the source. Please consult your e-drum system documentation
for information on how to minimize the effects of cross-talk with your kit.
Latency
When you’re playing BFD2 with e-drums, it is important to be aware that BFD2 may not respond as quickly as any onboard
sounds in the drum brain. This is due to latency, which is an inherent problem in computer-based digital audio systems.
It is important to remember that latency is NOT caused by BFD2. The sources of latency issues lie elsewhere in your system.
Causes of latency when using BFD2
• Possible additional processing time required in the brain to create the MIDI output, as opposed to triggering the internal sounds.
• Any inherent latency and timing inaccuracies involved with connecting the brain’s MIDI output to the computer’s MIDI interface.
• Any latency involved in getting the data from the MIDI interface to BFD2. USB MIDI interfaces, for example, can have much
larger latency than PCI or serial interfaces).
• Audio interface latency/buffer size. Smaller buffer sizes result in lower latencies. However, they also require more CPU power
and well-engineered audio interface hardware and drivers.
