Frustrated in BFD

[cary chilton]

I am using BFD ALL.

How do I add more ambience or shimmer to the cymbals and louder? Should I better add one midi track for even kit piece so that when I bounce, I can use fades on cymbals ?- (would this save on cpu? Or is there another way?

What do you guys usually set you room, pzm nad OH mics at for your usual songs? Do ever pass --12 db on these 3 faders? I noticed that with using very modest amounts of these three adds lots of snare and kick volume. After setting the OH, PZM and ROOM mic faders, what levels are you setting your the snare tp and btm and kick in/out at?? I am getting frustrated with getting a nice drum sound that gels in my mix.

I usually send or bus to a compression aux for the bfd snare. I usually bus the audio output of the snare aux to the aux input, inserted compressor...,but I admit that when I bus the BFD snare aux tracks to an compress aux, I am not totally clear why I can still adjust the fader on the aux snare tracks?? If I bus them to the input of the compressor aux, shouldn't the compression aux's fader control of the snare aux's signal? help...

[cary chilton]

nice

[Herkimer]

When using BFD all, I tend not to bother with the settings inside BFD. I setup the midi to play what I want and then I bounce each drum to its own audio track along with a stereo track for the room and pz. I then fiddle with each drum and cymbal from there.

I compress and EQ until I'm happy with the sound of each individual drum and cymbal as well as the relative mix. When that's done, I bring up the room and piezo to see what they add. Usually it is just the ambiance and highs.

Good luck.

[Herkimer]

Ok - reread your post and have more to add...

I tend not to send audio to bus or aux tracks if I can avoid it. It just gets too cumbersome for me. I have a decent enough computer that I don't usually have to worry and CPU power.

A couple things I recommend to you:

If you're worried about CPU power, record and do most of your editing (ie, all the other instruments) with the BFD All on its indtrument track prior to bouncing to audio. You'll save tracks and CPU over adding 12-14 audio tracks with tons of plug-ins.

Secondly, don't forget about panning the cymbals and toms. That tends to add an incredible amount of ambiance and bigness to their sound.

As well, don't gate the kick and snare if you want to catch any of the ambiant cymbals and toms in their mics.

Good luck.

[cary chilton]

To save CPU, should I bounce seperate KIT PIECE tracks for more control on EQ'ing ?? If I want to bounce 12-13 seperate tracks, do I select " mulitple mono" on the bounce?

[spkguitar]

Why don't you just record it real time to separate tracks instead of bouncing? Much easier that way.

[spkguitar]

...using my example/template, use audio tracks instead of aux tracks (or bus the aux tracks to audio tracks).

[cary chilton]

Hey spkguitar, not time no see -thanks for your help man. I like how you bussed the kick and the snare. I guess I was pretty much doing everything as your template, except I thought that I had to bounce it to make my audio tracks. Can just simply set the tracks and transport to record in the session? Does it automatically make multple mono and stereo audio tracks below the other pre-existing tracks?

BTW, regarding bouncing BFD aux tracks to make audio, what do I select in the bounce menu to keep the tracks seperate? multiple mono? Because I just using a simple laptop, sometimes I fear with BFD, and one or two RTAS's running simultaneously is almost crashing my computer. So I thought that I may need to bounce the BFD tracks if I want to introduce some aux compression to some indidual tracks without the fear of crashing down.

Spkguitar when you program your drums, do program your all your bfd midi in the instr track or one midi track OR do you use seperate midi tracks for each hit ( I have read some prefer this). Also when you program, is it necessary to program the both kick and snare hits? I mean once I add a kick hit in midi, does BFD automatically trigger both bfd's kick aux's?

[spkguitar]

Is there a language barrier here? Are you even reading my posts? Is there something about what I just said that was unclear? Do I need to emphasize it for you? To repeat myself:

Why don't you just record it real time to separate tracks instead of bouncing?

...using my example/template, use audio tracks instead of aux tracks (or bus the aux tracks to audio tracks).

Seriously, what part of that was unclear? When you use audio tracks, you're not bouncing, you are recording directly to the tracks.



Also, when I do tracks with BFD, I use one instrument track to hold all of the MIDI. That is the way that I prefer to do it, but everyone is different.

[thenchel]

BTW, I am not anywhere near PT.

Just so I am clear, spkguitar.... you are setting up an instrument track to handle the midi notes. Then you assign the drums accordingly to audio tracks in PT... right?