In Summary

Familiar to some, the BFD virtual drum instrument is a bit of a VI legend. Back with new expandable sounds, BFD Player brings multisampled drums, lots of MIDI, its own mixer, and perhaps best of all, it’s free! Hear it in our first look video.

Going Deeper

The Big Bang

In The Beginning, there were drums. Then, several thousand years later there was the two bar stereo drum loop that filled floppies (ask your parents) and revolutionised dance music. For a long time after that, the idea of using sampled drums in other styles was restricted to the kind of plasticky sounds that were, to be kind, uninspiring to say the least.

Modern composers could be forgiven for forgetting (or being born after) the time when the multisampled virtual drum instrument was revolutionary. Among this small new crop of sampled drum instruments was BFD Drums. Recollections vary on what the F stood for, but these Big Drums were one of the first virtual drum instruments to sport the now familiar form of usable sounds driven by MIDI, playing through their own sub mixer ready for the DAW. BFD and other revolutionary instruments are the direct progenitors of the modern drive-slaying mega-libraries we have now.

BFD Player

Building on BFD’s heritage is their new free Player instrument. Landing in familiar form, it has one Core Library of sounds with mixer, as well as a respectable repertoire of tagged MIDI beats and fills. Perhaps the only omission is its own arrange track or transport buttons, however anyone using it in their DAW can deal with that. The plugin instrument and the included standalone app both include tonnes of keymaps for existing big name VIs and digital drums, meaning the latter behave well with input from drummers or existing MIDI.

In the video we go through some of its Core sounds, and also demonstrate two expansions in the shape of BFD’s Dark Mahogany and London ‘70s kits. As well as skimming through Player’s generous MIDI, we also show how BFD Player’s nimble mixer can fire out record-ready sounds before they hit the DAW…

BFD Player Features

• Free 5GB Core Library.

• 3D kit view with switchable drums.

• 4 mix macros to quickly change the sound of the loaded preset.

• Groove browser with filtering mechanics.

• 340 drag and drop drum patterns.

• Collection of production ready presets. 'Original Mix' preset gives users access to all channels.

Big Hit?

Making a welcome splash, BFD Player does everything its predecessors did; respectable, multisampled drum sounds. What’s truly remarkable is that Player and its 5GB Core Library are completely free. As a drummer and user of Toontrack’s EZdrummer 3, I can safely say that BFD Player sounds great and can stand up to the paid competition admirably.

As soon as the Expansions are fired up, the true power of BFD Player’s sound engine becomes apparent. This brings expertly sampled extra sounds, but also more advanced options in the mixer such as preset submixes and extra Room and Ambience channels with width options to really shape the sound. The Macros across the top of the mixer are available across all of the kits including the free Core sounds.

We can think of a number a DAWs that could do better on the drum instrument front, so dropping Player onto a track is going to make drum-less productions a thing of the past for anyone on a budget, with excellent expanded sounds lying in wait…

A Word About This Article

As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. In 2023 we are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.