No drummer sits and plays eight-bar patterns robotically over and over again, and that’s why your virtual drum tracks may be sounding lifeless and unrealistic.
Enter FXpansion’s BFD2
BFD2 is an acoustic drum production environment for your computer with unprecedented power and flexibility. It provides extreme realism and sound quality, fast and easy set up, with total plug-in integration to your favorite digital audio workstation all in one software solution.
Now, it’s easier than ever to create expressive, complex drum parts using 55GB of rare, vintage, boutique and classic drum kits that were recorded at the famous AIR Studios in London. Mix your drums with flexible routing, submixing and built-in EQ, compressors and other effects. Additionally, BFD2′s Groove Engine offers advanced editing, performance and humanization functions for creating realistic drum parts. You can even lay out a full song’s drum track entirely within BFD2!
The Sounds
Customized 10, 18 or 32 piece kits are at your fingertips, with full control over tuning, damping, ambiance levels, velocity response and more. You can layer parts of the kit for powerful hybrid sounds which is perfect for modern productions or flick through preset kit-piece profiles for quick access to dry, damped and other useful settings. BFD2 lets you configure your sounds like a real drum kit instead of pushing buttons on a sampler.
The hyper-detailed 55GB library features sounds with multiple articulations recorded with up to 96 velocity layers to open up new worlds of rhythmic expression. BFD2 makes it possible to program or play convincing nuances and ghost notes, intricately varied and dynamic hihat parts, elaborate cymbal workouts and visceral kick and snare lines.
The refined tone and definition of the space at London’s legendary AIR Lyndhurst studios is captured with two pairs of room mics, including a mid/side set. Meanwhile, the kit is mic’d with stereo overheads and mono close directs. All audio is routed through the magic of a custom Neve desk with Air Montserrat preamps into Prism A/D converters, sealing the foundations of a killer drum sound. Just check out these samples:
The Mix
BFD2′s flexible, comprehensive mixing console lets you blend, route, submix and process the mic channels just like a real-world drum recording. Tweak bleed levels, play with ambient mic width, create aux sends and patch sidechain effects to shape your drums into infinite variations that sound convincing and powerful. The built-in processors include circuit-modelled dynamics, filters and distortion to deliver fat and floor-shaking sounds, while the flanger, bitcrusher, ring mod, delay and other effects allow subtle to extreme timbral variety.
In fact, the depth and scope of BFD2′s mixer rivals that of many fully-fledged sequencing hosts, meaning that you don’t have to worry about setting up multiple outputs in your host for mixing your drums. If you want to take advantage of external reverbs and other plug-ins or outboard you can route channels freely to any of the 32 available outputs. However, if you’re more of a musician than an engineer, you may prefer to browse through the supplied presets from experienced studio veterans, suitable for a variety of musical styles.
The Grooves
BFD2′s Groove Engine provides the perfect environment for editing patterns, setting up performance modes and applying humanization effects for added realism. Although you can create and record your own grooves, over 5000 stylistically diverse patterns are ready for you to slot straight into your productions or edit and combine with elements of each other to make new, customized parts. You can even lay out a sequence of grooves to form a full drum track entirely within BFD2.
If you’re a previous user of BFD, you’ll love the new time-saving and powerful functional enhancements in the Groove Engine like the advanced editor, synced audition previews, individual start and end actions for each groove and improved sorting, searching and management of your groove library.
Whether you’re a drummer wanting to input your latest groove into MIDI, or a guitarist that simply can’t play drums and needs a human-sounding drum track, BFD2 is the software for you! Find BFD2 and other great quality music gear at www.macsales.com/music today!
