The BFD2 thread and MIDI Map

[UC]

I've communicated with Angus from FXPansion, and they are keen to see how things pan out with 2box too...

...We were talking at one point about building a dedicated \"mixdown\" mode in to BFD2 allowing people to product custom rendered kits for 2box (and Yamaha DTXtreme 4) brains, however that feature was shelved for now.

You can legally import BFD (1+2+expansions) samples from your own BFD2 in to your own 2box brain - however you cannot legally distribute them, even to others that own BFD2  and a 2box brain. If you or somebody else does make some 2box kits from BFD2 samples, would be good if you can send them to us - we can then redistribute them to other 2box + BFD2 owners on request.

...To be honest I think you'll find it much more useful to go through the tutorials below, because you'll learn more about BFD2 than if you just use someone else's map. The other thing is, because everyone needs to tweak their kits to their own taste, you might find that someone else's keymaps / presets actually sound terrible because of sensitivity and volume differences.

The other thing you'll probably find is that calibrating the hi-hat with BFD2 won't be 100% satisfactory just yet...I'm hopeful though that the forthcoming tweaks that Deve Loper is making to the hi-hat settings will help, and also I've put Bengt at 2box back in touch with the FXPansion crew, so maybe they can work something out *fingers crossed*

NeilC has found that using the Sabian hats in BFD2 have got him the best results.

Anyway, on with the tutorials...

Midi Mapping:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLmFt1uQ54g[/youtube]

Hi hats:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uu45pQT5DY[/youtube]

Kit Inspector - parts 1 & 2
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzgA6HVtu10[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=314oJZptAB0[/youtube]

Mixing Drums:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0oEN3P73pk[/youtube]

Hope this helps - post your own BFD2 hints and tips here 

[Alex]

UC this is brilliant, thanks very much. I'll have fun working this out over the weekend 

[UC]

My pleasure Alex


Edit: don't know if you saw the presets links I posted but ignore them, they were set up for use only with the DD4 hats and there were all sorts of clashes.

Just rebuilt a basic preset from scratch and I think I've figured out how to get the HH to work - I just read in the fxpansion forum that someone having trouble with a megadrum controller needed to set the HH to CC4 - so I tried that on my 2box brain (it was set to CC1) and things started to take shape...mucked around with tip, shank and pedal as per the youtube clip, and bingo!

(of course, it's too late at night for me to test it out )

Grab this file and stick it in your presets folder (makes it easier to find believe it or not)
C:\Documents and Settings\COMPUTERNAME\My Documents\FXpansion\BFD2\Presets

http://www.2box-forum.com/BFD2-presets/uc-2box-drumit-5-bfd2-preset.bfd2

Firefox on Windows XP seems to open this as a text file, so right-click and select "save as" or whatever you crazy Mac people have

Zoom over to BFD2 and click the "Load" button in the top right corner and select "Load BFD2 Preset"...

Just next to the search box in the pop up window there's a dark grey folder icon with an arrow in it (totally missed that before!)...

That pops up a regular file explorer, which by default should be looking in your Presets folder. You can select the downloaded *.bfd2 file  from there.

It's up to you if you import the file into the database - have a play with it first maybe. I guess you could always delete it later.

That should get you up and running - I'd be glad to know if this works for other poeple.

Good luck!
Tom

[NeilC]

Tom, I'm gonna have a play with this this weekend! Glad you managed to sort the HH after we last spoke. Looking forward to trying this.

As you prob read previously I have messed with my MIDI notes on my .dkit file, is this map configured for the default .dkit file (apart from the continous controller alteration?)

Cheers dude.

[UC]

There you've got me - I've not yet hooked up my brain to my PC - haven't got a USB cable long enough (it would mean completely reshuffling my studio)....

So yeah, other than the CC change on the hihat, and the many tiny tinkerings with the threshold and gain settings etc, I'm pretty sure all the pads should be sending out the default MIDI signals.

Cheers
Tom

[Alex]

So I finally got around to trying out BFD2 yesterday afternoon, the .bfd2 map you provided was pretty much unusable as it seemed only the bass drum and snare worked correctly - probably my fault for not loading the map properly or something.

I decided to start it all again and discovered that creating your own map is actually very easy, the hardest part was finding the right screen in the first place. After some tinkering I finished the map, though I think the hi-hat still needs a bit of work.

After playing for a bit I realised that the bass drum was triggering randomly when playing either cymbal, this isn't a case of the bouncing pad though as my feet were well away from the pedals. I played 5 hits on the ride cymbal at a fairly low velocity, 2 of the strokes played a cymbal and a bass drum at the same time. Looking at the midi log in BFD2 though it only showed midi notes for the cymbals being played, I guess this rules out any cross-talk and any accidental bass drum hits.

Has anyone else seen this happen before? What could/would be the cause of something like this? If I get a chance tonight i'll do some more investigating.

[NeilC]

Check that the MIDI note from the cymbal isn't also mapped to the kick, before creating your own map I would Clear all other assigns (i don't know if you did this)

[Alex]

Yeah I started out by clearing all the settings first. I would have thought though that if the midi note was assigned to both the cymbal and bass drum then it would sound every time - not just 2 of the 5 notes when I was trying to replicate the issue.

[westerlu77]

Everyone who has midimapping, in which order do you have changed? In 2box or in BFD?
I compared with Toontrack and they not use same midimapping, toontrack use D1 for bassdrum when BFD use C3 and so on.. I also don't find which note rimshot use in 2Box?

[UC]

Hi Westerlu
I changed BFD2 - my PC is fairly close to my kit, so i did the "hit the drum and assign the sound" method, on bfd'S midi mapping screen. The only change I made to the 2box was to reassign the HH to CC4.

[westerlu77]

Strange! because on my mac the most of the drums is wrong midimapped from the start. Is there any way to setup just once for all kits or do I have to do this for every setup?   

[UC]

You should be able to do it (the drum mapping) just the once in BFD2, and save it as a keymap, which you can then load into the other kits as you go along ...don't forget to save down your "preset" for each one, and that should combine all your mic settings, automation, tunings, and keymap etc.

[westerlu77]

So you just save it as keymap? Not automation?

[fishmonkey]

hey there, has anyone managed to get their 2Box hihat working well with BFD2???

it's driving me crazy!

the one thing i can't get working well is the "hitting the hihat while it's closed and then quickly lifting the pedal" thing, which unfortunately is one of my favourite hihat techniques. i can sort of get it working, but only by sacrificing the 1/4 and 1/2 open hihat positions.

this is because the Drumit 5 brain stops sending pedal height messages very quickly after the hihat is hit. i'm wondering if this is the same for all 2Box hihats/brains or if i maybe have a problem with mine...

[NeilC]

Did you try UC's file above, does that work?