Run BFD Eco

In the Options menu select "Set Data Path..."

Hit the Plus button and point to the root folder above the \Audio folder where you installed the Rock Legends QuickPack

Hit Close

Eco should scan and prompt you to authorize the new data... otherwise in the Options menu select "rebuild databases"

Usually the data path is set by the installer... but you're running Vista...

Let me know...

Cheers,

Rail

@bob... I hear ya, man. I've had this computer up and running for months now and I'm still just tweaking, learning and acquiring. Almost there though. Cheers.

Rail, all went well. It turns out that it already had the right path. It was pure user error. I ignored the original authorization when I was authorizing BFD. I didn't know what PSCWK was LOL.  

Again I thank you. Be assured all is well now. 

Plus this is outstanding of you and your company to come here and offer such timely help. 

I don't often ask for help  I am the one that gives it but here I am sort of flabbergasted by your great response.  

Yeah... + one gazillion to Rail. Awesome. Just awesome.

John


Rail, all went well. It turns out that it already had the right path. It was pure user error. I ignored the original authorization when I was authorizing BFD. I didn't know what PSCWK was LOL.  

Great!


The working title for the kit was CWK named after a famous drummer who used to play this kit.


Enjoy!


Rail

Glad to see you've got it running Beepy + John

Beepster, one thing you mentioned that caught my attention was that you were right clicking and choosing to "run as administrator"
Is this because you get error messages when you don't?

If so you need to change your user account settings.

Go to start/control panel/user accounts and click on, "change user account control settings" there you will see a slider.
Slide it all the way down to the bottom where it says, "never notify me" that will stop any annoying messages.


I'm guessing you must have been drinking some strong coffee last night?
Most amusing thread. 

Steve

synkrotron

John


It is far more capable than SD3 but I will not get rid of Battery 3 any time soon.   

Hi John. It sounds like you have a similar drum set-up to me : Battery 3, SessionDrummer 3 (which we all have of course) and BFD Eco. I don't have the BFD Eco DV though because it wasn't available as a download. I'll probably miss that and I fancied the idea of having a cymbals only drum synth. I understand that you can do the same in full BFD though, so I might just upgrade to that sometime in the near future.

I guess we do. :)  Its a nice small drum machine synth.  As I said it wont replace Battery but for a lot of things it will do just fine. Really its their way to get us to get its big brother. 

@twaddle... I actually do the Run As Administrator thing every time now because of a few issues I had when installing some of the Sonar Suite extra content/programs like DimPro/GR4 and various other programs unrelated to Sonar. I figure it takes like an extra millisecond to do it that way and can potentially eliminate massive headaches if something does screw up. Just a good habit I picked up. Helps balance out all my bad habits. ;-p

Okay... back to it. So I decided I just wanted actually play with BFD for a bit so I'm gonna wait to figure out the Rock Legends thing until after I've gotten a little bit of satisfaction first. So I booted up my computer then plugged in my Focusrite Scarlett 18i6. Plugged in my headphones and turned up the headphone volume. Clicked on some of the kit pieces on the BFD GUI. No sound. Okay. There probably isn't a kit loaded upon first opening. Up in the top right corner of the "Kit" screen I see three dropdowns labeled "Preset", "Kit" and "Mixer". I clicked the "Kit" dropdown and see a list. First is labeled "BFD Eco Default Startup Preset". Sounds promising. So I select that and all the little icons on the mixer GUI below the graphic kit start showing two rising bars one at a time. The pieces are loading. Great. I let it do it's thing and try again. No sound. Alright. I figured that would happen as I have not set up any kind of output to my audio interface. I poked around a bit and couldn't really find anything useful so I clicked my Windows Start menu, navigated to the FXpansion folder, clicked it, clicked the BFD Eco folder and there is my manual. Right click, open with Adobe Reader. Chapter 11 details how to find the Audio Devices options. Now I should have done this in the first place but there is at the top left of the BFD screen a dropdown menu labeled "Options". I clicked that and opened Audio Preferences. A window pops up and there is my preferences window. HOWEVER... and this is important, my 18i6 is NOT displayed but my Echo Layla 3G is. I should explain, I have two interfaces hooked up to this system. My Echo Layla 3G PCI and my Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 (USB). I keep the Scarlett unplugged until I am booted up which is what I did this time. The Echo is disabled in Windows settings and doesn't cause me any problems. I'm keeping it installed for A/B purposes. So what did I do? I left the Focusrite powered up (it draws it's power from a wall wart adapter) and restarted. When I opened BFD after the reboot I clicked options menu again and my Focusrite was displayed in the available devices list. I selected it and I got sound. So there you go. If you want BFD to detect your interface make sure it is installed, connected, powered up, whatever if you want it do be usable by BFD. I did not see a scan for audio devices option. Perhaps there is one somewhere but I'm just gonna do things this way from now on. Cheers.

In BFD Eco in the Options menu select "Key Map..." Start by loading the factory keymap for your device

Rail

Alright. That learn button at the bottom of the mixer I referred to that turns everything green seems to actually be for mapping the faders and other controls. Not the kit peices themselves. The Key Map that Rail just pointed to is in the "Options Menu" which is at the top middle of the BFD screen. There are two buttons. One is a box with a checkmark and beside that is a box with a question mark (that's the help button obviously). The options menu is the checkmark. A drop down appears with a "Key Map" option. Click that and up comes the key map. It's a piano keyboard (like a piano roll) with MIDI notes and kit piece descriptions. Cool. Now we're gettin' somewhere. BRB... and seriously Rail, thank you. I hope you stick around.

Alright. I don't think this is gonna work the way I want it to. It looks like I'll have to drag kit pieces to the appropriate note on my preprogrammed pK or reprogram the pK. The drag and drop method will be easier though. Cool. Not great... but cool. I'd like to point out again that Addictive drums has a learn feature where you simply click a button on the kit piece within the GUI and then tap the pad or key you want it mapped to. Perhaps there is something within BFD that allows this but upon first glance I ain't seeing it. Now I'm gonna map the pK. BRB.

Hooray! Now I actually get sounds when I hit the pads on my pK but they are not what I want where I want. So I have two choices here. I can map the pK manually or drag and drop pieces from the key map. Again I click the Options menu (the checkmark one... not the one at the top left of the screen) and open the Key Map. I click a kit piece on the mixer and underneath in the Articulations munu I get options for that piece. Now THIS is cool. I can now drag one of those articulations from menu (a little ghost image of the kit piece will appear while dragging) and then drag it over to the keyboard graphic to the MIDI note I want. Very cool. NOW I can map. Sorry for the false start but remember... this is a "beginners" adventure. lol

Alright. I've got everything mapped now. Some things that will help in this process are a) If you want to use the default setting for your device within the Key Map do what Rail said and click the dropdown menu at the top left of the screen below the Kit, Channel and Grooves buttons. There is a list of device presets there. I did try the padKontrol preset but it was whack so it was useless to me. You may have better luck with your devices. b) In the middle top of the Key Map screen is an option labeled "Octave Numbering Scheme". Different MIDI devices from different manufacturers default to different octaves. I think this is a throw back to the originally MIDI wars. Whatever. Set this so that your device keys/pads correspond with the MIDI notes on the Piano Roll keyboard thingie on the right. My pK seems to work at -1 octave. c) When mapping the the kit pieces to the piano view to scroll through the GUI keys click the little mini keys beside the big keys and scroll. There doesn't seem to be a traditional windows style scroll bar. Tripped me up for a second but I figured it out. d) If BFD is indeed reading the input data from your MIDI controller when you hit a key or pad the note that key or pad represents on your device will make the note on the virtual BFD keyboard/piano roll thing turn sky blue and the screen will scroll automatically to display the note. THIS made my mapping much easier. Instead of hunting around the graphic keyboard I could simply hit a pad on the pK and the virtual keyboard displayed the note in blue and then I could drag the kit piece I wanted directly to that key. Beautiful. This even worked when I had the octave settings wrong. Meaning that even if the pad on my pK was programmed to C1 but BFD was reading it as C2 I could still drag the kit piece to that key on the GUI and have it played on the appropriate pad on my pK.

@Platinum Samples... Hi, Rail. I know this is probably not possible but I'm gonna ask anyway. I absolutely LOVE that Andy John's kit I snagged for Session Drummer and would like to know whether there is a way to toss it into BFD. If not I'll definitely be looking into snagging the BFD compatible version. Any other similar kits I should be looking at? Cheers.