Tonight while laying down further tracks in a song I started a while ago, I discovered a great way of using BFD that saves on processor use, lets you keep the actual program open for a lot longer before having to bounce, and it makes the bounce itself a lot less painful.

At issue: after I had laid down the demo guitar to a click track and hacked together a piano part, I used BFD Groups rather than BFD All to compose the drum part. My thinking being that I wasn’t sure how much I would need to edit the drums as I built the rest of the song around them, and the longer I could without having to bounce them down/freeze them the better off I would be.

BFD All, as comprehensive as it is, can be a lot to juggle if you’re just trying to quickly lay down tracks. Moreover, since fxpansion released the Mixing Guide for BFD, one sees there’s a lot that can be done in the actual program itself, using, velocity, envelopes and the mixing trims to achieve a really convincing working sound. And let’s face it, most studios don’t mic a drumset as extensively as BFD is. If I want a decent live sounding room I’m going to pull most of my cymbal/hat sound from the overhead and room mic; I keep the pzm if I want to try using it for extreme processing. Great, easier on the CPU, easier to manage, easier to just get a working mix and move on to other tasks.

The problem is of course mixing. Having only the full kit direct mics is going to kill your ability for EQing and processing individual pieces, namely the snare and kick (though this will work with any direct out, say the toms or cymbals). At first I was thinking that I would swap out BFD Groups for BFD All when I went to mix. Not a fun task but not unreasonable.

So I laid my crappy, baddly-timed bass part and prepared to use Sonar 6’s new Audio Quantize (this is the balls by the way – it really works!). I wanted to tighten my bass line to the kick drum part. So, without even really thinking about it, I soloed the kick on the BFD interface, soloed the BFD Direct Outs track, and bounced to a track. Hello! I now have kick direct mic track. Hmmmm. I turn again to the BFD interface and pull down the Kick Direct Trim; so I’m still getting the kick in all my other outs but I have a seperate track for my kick. Do the same for the snare.

That’s it. Bob’s your uncle! I can compress and EQ my kick & snare, effect them as I please, copy them and solo them, but I still have all the rest of the drums sounding great without having to hammer out all those tracks. If you’ve ever tried to freeze BFD All you know of what I speak. Moreover, one could use this as an alternative to BFD Ultra in this same way, filling whatever kit slots you want then relying on BFD for tracking, and just bouncing down those individual pieces that really need to be when you go to mix.

Seems to me I can get away without having to use anything but BFD Groups from here on out. Makes my life that much easier.