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.

BTW the description of the Key Map is on page 28 of the BFD manual.

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.

Okay... I'm a dumbass. Remember to load a kit or preset every time you open BFD. I just had a moment of "Durrr... why no sound?" I had closed the program and did not load a kit. That said I also neglected to make sure BFD saw the padKontrol. To do this I had to go to the "Options" menu at the top left corner of the screen. Click "Open MIDI Preferences". There it was recognizing the pK and the pK MIDI inputs were already selected however the ouputs were not. I selected the correct output but this will vary from device to device so I won't detail that.

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

On my pK I have to press the "Setting" button to display MIDI notes. After that I can hit a pad and it will show me the note that pad is currently set to. I want to put a kick on my lowest left pad and it is telling me that the MIDI note assigned to that pad is C2. Now I click the Kick in the mixer window, all of the articulations for that piece are shown in the articulation window (which now say Kick Articulations) and because I want a full hit on that pad I drag "Hit" to the C2 note on the keyboard graphic to the right. Now I have a kick sound on that pad. SUCCESS!

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.

So I have not installed the Rock Legends kit yet so the following does NOT apply to anything related to Platinum Samples but I think it's important to note. When I bought this software I bought it for the functionality of BFD NOT the included kits and samples. I had already checked out all the demos of the kits on FXpansions website and knew they weren't for me. I actually was a drummer at one point and was spoiled with some very very nice kits so I know what I like and the included BFD kits are not to my taste. They are quite good for what they are and are exactly what they claim to be so this is not a slag by any means. It is just personal preference and what I need for my own recordings. Many will find them perfect for their needs. They are also recorded dry and are meant to be tweaked through your DAW or the tools within BFD whereas other programs are based on something you can drop directly into your tracks with minimal tweaking. This is a professional tool meant for a specific purpose (which is provide pure drum samples for production) so be prepared to put the work in. That said this is exactly why I wanted Eco to start with. I didn't need or want the huge sample library that comes with the full version and as far as I know BFD Eco is pretty much fully functional (if I am wrong someone please tell me). Now I can add kits that I actually want VIA the FXpansion site or third parties such as Platinum Samples which considering how awesome the Andy John's kit for SD3 sounded and the amazing support provided is going to be a go to for me. That brings me to a question for Rail if he is still around but I'll put that in my next post. Cheers.

@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.

Be sure to play with the "OH" (overhead) and "Room" faders on the BFD mixer. Turn them both right down for just the pure kit pieces and blend them in to taste. Massive difference in sound. Amazing. Also make sure your individual kit pieces are not clipping. Yup... I think I'm in love here. So much control and I haven't even gotten to the EQ stuff yet. :-)