#bfd3

WARNING! Nerdy musical post ahead: Several years ago, I faced the sad reality that owning a drum set in an apartment tended to piss off most of my (at the time) elderly neighbors, so I made the choice to sell it in exchange for a much less aurally invasive electronic drum kit.

I purchased the Roland TD-4 because it had some fun sounds (and I’m an admitted Roland fanboy) and decent enough action for its price point (you can obviously get much more natural-feeling drums, but those cost more $$$) ... while the built-in sounds are definitely nice to play with, they aren’t very realistic even by Roland standards. Those samples definitely have their place, but one cool feature I immediately noticed was that kit had MIDI output---meaning I could digitally record my performance to my computer, and replicate it using much higher quality samples! I originally began looking in to EZ Drummer, but after its absolutely atrocious licenser caused issues with my DAW (number one complaint about EVERY virtual instrument, btw) I ended up looking in to BFD3. There was some reasoning behind this--I present to you the following page from the TOKIO Best Collection band score book:

This is the equipment layout for the purple drum set Mabo (famously?) uses during their live performances. I noticed that it was a Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute (the Absolute models are a thinner shell than your standard Maple Custom), which BFD3 just so happen to be offering as a download pack---and at 50% off no less! Interest obviously piqued. I also grabbed a pack of their Zildjian samples and went to town setting up this bad boy:

here is a nearly  perfect recreation of Mabo’s drum kit, virtually! I had to make a few tweaks...for one, the MCA drum pack only included kick and tom samples...no less, the largest kick offered was a 22″, where as Mabo’s is 24″. Although most people can’t really tell the difference between two inches (.....ladies 👀), it does have its differences. Additionally, the snare I used was a Mapleworks Custom, another snare with maple construction, particularly because it was also 14″. It’s a decent substitute, to my ears. I also had to compromise on two cymbals, using a 16″ crash instead of 17, and an 18″ china instead of a 20. The main thing you’ll notice is the slightly different positional layout. BFD3 doesn’t really allow me to custom-position things around the kit, so I had to add a few extra pieces to get things to move and closely approximate the positions Mabo has in his set up. Regarding those extra slots, I added a hand clap (always useful) and a tambourine, because ‘94 Nagase deserves to have his time in the virtual sun too. Anyways, this ultimately gives me essentially a near-complete recreation of Mabo’s drum set for my own use, which I fully intend to exploit in all my future recordings! Since I’m sure some are curious, here’s a few really small excerpts (can you guess the two songs? :P)