Steve Duda

BFD
Premium Acoustic Drum Module

So What's the BFD?

The Mastermind Behind BFD

Fxpansion BFD is a library of drum kits recorded with 11 different mics through racks of great gear in a superb room! Using a speedy disk-streaming engine, BFD puts a customizable drum kit directly into your DAW, using either stereo or multi-channel outputs. With a minimum of 46 velocities per hit, the sound is almost unbelievable. A selection of 1200 MIDI grooves are included to get the creative juices flowing fast – especially for non-drummers! Expansion libraries, XFL and Deluxe, are available with even more drum kit options, but the original BFD is an awesome place to start. Really Big @#$%^&* Drums!

Rocket Sounds caught up with Steve Duda, developer and engineer for BFD, at the 2006 NAMM show in Los Angeles. He was excited to talk about BFD, ways to implement it, and his part in the development.

So What's the BFD?

RS: Steve, what is your role in the BFD product?

SD: I'm the "lead sound developer" for BFD. I recorded the sounds in BFD and the BFD XFL libraries.

RS: How did BFD first come about?

SD: I've been running Pro Tools and engineering bands here in Los Angeles for a living. I kept getting bands who'd want to replace drum sounds, or create "real" drums in the home-studio environment, where often it isn't practical or even feasible to mic up a full drum kit. After checking out every drum sample library I could find, I decided I'd have to record my own samples as nothing was on par with what I hoped to hear.

RS: So you hand-crafted your own?

SD: I spent a couple days sampling drum kits in the studio with a lot of velocity detail. After a couple days of editing hits and exporting them to stereo files, I had a nice drum kit. I first used the samples with a band on a project when there wasn't time for drum recording. The drummer came in the next day and got irate when he heard the drum samples. He thought we had hired a drummer! This motivated me to re-export the recordings with control over the various microphones, so you could mix the drums just like you can mix real drums. However none of my softsamplers could handle so many parallel files, so I approached Fxpansion to create a disk-streaming playback engine that could interleave all the microphones into a single file.

RS: What other issues led you to go your own route?

SD: It just seemed like I needed a software solution. For example, if I wanted to swap out just the snare drum sound in a typical softsampler –what an incredible pain - I'd have to delete the keymaps for every "microphone-instrument" and put in the new snare drum samples manually. It would take 5 minutes and a lot of mouse-clicking just to audition another snare in the song.

RS: How did you originally intend for BFD to be used?

SD: I originally wanted the solution for myself! After I realized people felt it could be a product, I expected people like me would buy it - that is, composers and musicians that aren't drummers but want to have the control over creating the exact drum parts they like.

RS: Was BFD originally intended as a groove-based synth or simply a sampler?

SD: My desires were firmly anchored in the sample-playback side of things. I really thought of BFD as a "solution". From my point of view, I already have the sounds - I just need them to play back! Fxpansion had mentioned "why not have groove abilities?" I was fairly apathetic at the time, as I figured I'd usually want to play my own note data. I didn't know how cool it was going to be and how useful to a lot of people! Mostly I was anxious to be able to realize the "dream" of being able to press MIDI keys and see a bunch of channels "light up" on the computer, the signals from all of the various drum mics!

RS: How do you find most people are using BFD?

SD: I'm really surprised at the myriad of different ways. I knew that a lot of non-drummer "sequencer guys" like me would get it for programming original drum tracks. However, I've really been most surprised by the number of drummers who have gotten into BFD. I thought a product like BFD would anger drummers and make them feel obsolete, but I've gotten a lot of thank-you emails from drummers! "I can't play my real drums where I live, but now I don't mind!" It makes sense in retrospect!

Some producers use BFD to reinforce existing "real" drum tracks, by triggering BFD from mounted drum triggers or "audio to MIDI" inside the computer.

There's bands (big ones!) who will track drums with BFD on electronic pads, and also track the same part in a studio. I suppose you can't ask for much more flexibility than such an approach if you have the time!

RS: The grooves in BFD are awesome! Who was the drummer?

SD: Chris Dagley is his name.

RS: Who is the drummer on BFD Deluxe?

SD: Most of it is Jay Starmer, a friend of mine in Chicago who used to gig here a lot in Los Angeles. I guess it’s nice to know a hard-hitting drummer in every metropolitan area! Matt Walker from Smashing Pumpkins also came down and hit one kit!

RS: How was the recording for BFD different from BFD Deluxe?

SD: With BFD Deluxe and XFL (which has the same recording specs as the BFD kits) I recorded drums how I wanted to in terms of room, gear, etc. With BFD Deluxe, I wanted something that was outside of my thinking, so I decided that Steve Albini would probably be a great choice.

RS: What about gear differences on Deluxe?

SD: The microphone selection is vastly different, as well as the room! It's a less-ambient sound overall, and very easy to get a lot of tonality extremes simply by adjusting the faders. For instance the kick-in is a SM91 lav mic, the last thing I'd ever think to do, but it's cool. Your kickdrum will never get lost in a mix!

RS: BFD Deluxe is recorded with up to 127 velocities. How do you possibly record so many velocities?

SD: Sitting on a couch is pretty easy! It’s not very hard to record. The editing is a bit more tedious. I tell the drummer to go soft-to-hard and if they skip any dynamic ranges to just go right back and fill them in. This typically ends up with what looks like a stock-chart in terms of velocities, but not too hard to sort out.

RS: Will BFD work the same as an insert in all DAWs?

SD: Essentially it all works the same, yes. You have different output options from BFD. I tend to use "BFD All" because it allows for every microphone to come to its own fader in your DAW.

RS: So you can send separate BFD kit pieces to their own tracks?

SD: Yes, very much so. You have control over microphone bleed as well. There's the ability with BFD Ultra (included in the BFD 1.5 update) to even send ambient mics from particular kit-pieces to discrete outputs, which can be fun. For example, to compress or distort the room mics, but only on the kick and snare.

RS: It's an amazing product! I think you have to really hear it to believe it. Thanks for your time, Steve!

SD: My pleasure - thanks for reading!

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