Our drummer came today in the mail. He arrived quickly from the warehouse and was easy to open. He took longer than expected to set up, but that is typical of a drummer, especially one who has lots of drums. He has like a 90-piece kit (or about 10 full kits depending on the room, the mood, and things that go crash in the night). That is pretty extreme, but I love Rush so, technically speaking, it’s awesome! He has 16 snare drums alone! Each one made from a different wood or metal. I am actually writing this column as he sets up. Occasionally, I have to prod him by clicking something and feeding him donuts. And by donuts, I mean DVDs, for my drummer’s name is BFD2, and he comes from the British company FXpansion. Not 100 percent certain, but I think BFD stands for Big Fucking Drums.  

I asked for a replacement drummer and I got a drummer replacement instead. This may not be such a bad thing. Live, I still need someone waving around thin pieces of wood. But when working at home—well, where would you set up 10 drum kits?

Drum replacement technology is like a Faustian wish come true, in some respects. The kinetic intercourse between the guy sitting down at the back of the stage and the ones standing at the front doing all the work is essential to my view of rock ‘n’ roll. But after intercourse with a drummer, one feels unclean. Then there’s all the Neil Peart and Stewart Copeland stories you have to listen to, and the bar tabs, and the stupid cymbal stands that get in the way and catch your cord when you try to move about. Next thing you know, it’s 4am and you’re at an Urgent Care Center or the dingy office of a bail bondsman named Lou or Mr. Carlos. In both cases, the drummer is locked in a small room somewhere with a fresh set of stitches. And just a few hours ago, I had opened up to him, giving my best stuff while he sat there grimacing, sweating, and straining in between large gulps of ale.  

Hang on… I gotta change my drummer replacement’s DVD. We’re up to disc five—the last one not counting the Expansion Pack, which has an additional bunch of things every good drummer should have, like tympanis and sheep hooves.

Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, explaining to Mr. Carlos about how our drummer didn’t mean to bleed all over the drive-thru speaker, and he had no idea it was a bank, he was just hungry and had lost a lot of blood so…

In the studio, where drummers are usually on their best behavior, or heavily sedated (I’m not sure which), they add an enormous cost to your recording project. And with the many factors that can affect how good or bad the drum recording will sound, you really are trusting your fate to the gods of whim and fancy. (For example, many Keith Moons ago, I wrote about how you could hear the kick pedal squeaking on many Led Zeppelin recordings.)

Most studios start the clock when the drummer walks in with his first piece of gear. Two hours later, the drummer agrees to let them mic his kit. Only that mic can’t go there, nor that one there and so on. Then, one more hour later, the drummer is forced to hit a single drum in steady, boring, quarter notes for many long minutes, occasionally having to stop to let some poor second engineer crawl beneath his legs to adjust a mic. Because of this, the really nice studios have a rule that drummers must wear long pants at all times. This pattern continues across the whole kit until we are all so very tired and don’t really feel like playing anymore. I have come to believe that engineers really do this just to pad the clock and torture the drummer. I’m okay with the last bit. The next day, we record our songs—assuming all went well drummer-wise the day before and he didn’t bump anything while extricating himself from his kit.

It is the expense and art form of properly recording a drummer and his kit that makes drum replacement technology an important music production tool, and probably why you hardly ever hear crap drums on recordings these days. When you record drums, the room acoustics become a part of the drum sound—like it or not—which is why the best studios have at least one amazing-sounding live room. The drums in BFD2 were recorded at AIR Studios, a beautiful, acoustically rich former church converted to a recording studio by Sir George Martin. It sounds far better than my garage, trust me. 

Technically, BFD2 is a drum and percussion workstation, and unlike a real drummer, it will never sleep with your girlfriend or sell your Ibanez Tube Screamer for what appears to be drugs but turns out later to be vitamins. BFD2’s kits are done to perfection thanks to its many velocity layers per drum and the impeccable recording. No doubt, you’ve already heard it somewhere in your iTunes library. You can play it in standalone mode on your computer (it behaves like an instrument and not software), or use it inside your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) where it behaves better than any drummer I’ve ever known. 

Using BFD2 for drum replacement requires another software tool such as Drumagog. It works like this. Step One: Record your drummer (in Exercise Two, you will learn how to bypass this painful and costly step). Step Two: Open your drum replacement software inside your DAW, and then map the recorded drum tracks to the killer sounds in BFD2. Step Three: Let the drummer think he actually sounds that good. One of BFD2’s strengths is that it works simply and easily with auto-replacers like Drumagog and mapping it to your MIDI controller is a breeze. The amount of tone sculpting you can do per drum and its effects-rich mixer all but guarantees a great drum sound and mix on your project. Replacing the entire drum sound is optional, sometimes just adding a little beef and pepper from BFD2 to your drummer’s original kit sound is all you need.

Drum replacement technology dates back to Steely Dan’s Gaucho album (1980), and was pioneered by their brilliant engineer, Roger Nichols (I could fill a column just naming the songs he’s properly recorded). The technology was once only available in the top studios (and BFD2’s UI feels very high-end), but like most things these days, it has been packaged for us rabble. BFD2 sells for about 400 bucks and gives you 55 gigs of drums, from rare Gretsch’s to modern, boutique DW’s. When you think of the studio time you’ll save, the great mics used in recording all that percussion, the recording engineers, AIR Studios’ Lyndhurst Hall, and the djembe, it seems almost too cheap. Imagine, a drummer so valuable he comes with copy protection! And the best part—I can play his kit as often as I want.

Tags: BFD2, FXpansion, digital drum replacement, recording 

Read past installments of Riot Gear!: 

St. Paul the Electric

Drummerless

Part II: King Crimson’s Adrian Belew