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Chapter 11
PROGRAMMING TIPS
11:1 Building the kit
Choose the right kit-pieces
Choosing the right Kit-pieces is paramount to getting the right sound. If you want a tight kick sound, start with the tightest-sound-
ing kick you can find!
Pay close attention to the composition of your kit and be creative – BFD2 allows you a lot of freedom by allowing you to mix and
match toms and to load any type of Kit-piece into any type of slot - it’s very easy to use a floor tom as a kick, for example.
Mix and match
There is absolutely no reason to stick to pre-defined manufacturer-based kits. Most drummers regularly mix and match parts of
the kit for different musical needs, and it takes a matter of seconds in BFD2. Having said that, there is absolutely nothing wrong
with finding a kit that works for you and sticking to it. There are infinite ways in which to shape a single kit to sound good in any
type of context.
Likewise, there is no need to stick to the same library when building a kit. Although the various expansion packs are recorded in
different rooms to the original library, there is no reason why they can’t sound good in the mix together.
11:2 Using Velocity layers
The importance of utilising BFD2’s velocity layers
A very easy mistake to make with BFD2 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 in real life. As a consequence, the drum part
sounds 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 BFD2 library has up to 96 velocity layers. What this means is that the drums are recorded being struck by up to 96 levels of
intensity. It’s vital to make good use of these velocity layers in order to achieve realistic drumming.
Deploying velocity layers effectively
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.
Try making a straight closed hihat pattern quantized to 1/16th notes, with each note at a velocity of 100. When this pattern is
played back it sounds pretty rigid and robotic.
Now select every off-beat 16th note and reduce its velocity to around 50. When this pattern is played, it offers a much more inter-
esting sense of groove, without any timing changes having been appliled.
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 BFD2 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 BFD2, such as processing and articulation velocity control,
the creative possibilities are immense. Try applying heavy compression to these low velocity hits, while adding a liberal amount of
Vel to Damp (velocity to damping) in the kit-piece inspector for further dimensions.
Dynamics controls
The Dynamics controls are valuable tools to get the most out of BFD2’s high detail levels. Don’t confuse these with dynamics
processing (such as compression or gating). The BFD2 Dynamics controls scale incoming note velocities up or down. This allows
you to change the dynamics of the ‘playing’ in real time.
The Master Dynamics control is particularly useful, especially if you assign a MIDI controller to it for realtime automation. Pro-
gram a drum track as normal, then record yourself ‘riding’ the Master Dynamics control over its duration with a MIDI controller.
Pull it down slightly for the verses, and perhaps towards the end of the bar leading up to each chorus, start to pull it up to give the
drums more intensity.
Each Kit-Piece slot has a Dynamics control too, so you can adjust the intensity of each part of the kit independently. You may be
surprised how many different permutations of drum sounds you can achieve with a single pattern and the Dynamics controls.
