Mixing BFD Player Drums in Reaper (Free drum sample library)
When I started making music, about ten years ago, there were not many drum libraries available that would not make you poor after purchasing them. There were, however, some free options that would let me explore the huge world of programming drums and I started taking my first steps into making music. The sounds were not the best, but you could find some that worked in metal production.
And now we’re in 2026 and options are countless. You can make a great record virtually for free! And recently I stumbled upon one of the best free drum libraries that I’ve used in my entire life: BFD Player.
This is a huge library: there are over 5Gb of samples included in this monster and it is completely free. Damn! They are practically taking their pants off for us musicians and producers. Also, it comes with a bunch of presets that are very usable, but they are mostly for rock and pop, soooo… if you want to actually use this library for metal, you’ll have to use the “original mix” preset, which is the raw unmixed drumkit, and then mix it for yourself.
However, I already did the heavy lifting for you! That is, if you are going to create extreme metal, where the mix is dense, everything is fast and fighting for the same space in the frequency spectrum. So if you’re interested, here’s the Reaper template I created with BFD player. Just download it, extract the file and you’ll instantly have a great sound to write your MIDI drums and accompany it with your guitars. In case you don’t use Reaper, fret not, my metal friend, because in this post, I’ll walk you through how I built this drum mix or you can also follow my steps in the video below.
This is not meant to be a final mix in a full song context. The goal here is to create a solid drum foundation that you can later adjust once guitars, bass, and everything else comes in. Everything you’ll see here comes directly from the workflow I used in the session.
Session Setup: Routing and Organization
The first thing I did was organize the session so it’s easier to work with. BFD Player outputs multiple channels (kick, snare, toms, cymbals, rooms, etc.), which is a feature I really appreciate in drum libraries because I want to have all the control in the sound of my drums. Additionally, as I mentioned before, this library comes with the original mix (unprocessed samples that you can mix to your taste) and instead of mixing everything directly from those raw outputs, I split the session into two layers:
1. Source Folder (BFD Outputs)
All individual tracks coming directly from BFD Player
Named exactly like they are inside the plugin
Used mainly for routing and initial control
2. Mix Folder (Grouped Channels)
Here I grouped elements together:
All kick channels → one Kick bus
Snare channels → one Snare bus
Cymbals + overheads → one Cymbal bus
Rack toms and Floor toms → one Tom bus
Hi-hats were also routed to the Cymbal bus, but depending on what specific processing you want to apply, you may have this in its own bus.
Rooms grouped into a Room channel
Snare bus and tom bus were routed to a Reverb bus, but it’s muted at the first stages of the session.
All busses were routed to a Paralel compression bus, but I like to use this trick at the final stages too. I know some people like starting of with paralel compression, but I don’t like this approach because I want to really shape my drums before messing with dynamics. When you start EQing before compression, the compressor will react differently.
Grouping elements in this way lets me:
Do initial gain staging on individual tracks
Then mix more efficiently using grouped channels
If I ever need to rebalance the individual tracks, I can easily go back
Choosing a Section to Mix
Before touching any plugins, I looped a section of the song that contains:
Kick
Snare
Cymbals
A tom fill
This gives a more complete picture of how the kit behaves. Then I loop that section continuously while working; I still check on different sections to make sure the mix is behaving the way I want throughout the whole song, but it’s helpful to have a specific loop with most of the elements, so that you don’t go back and forth.
Step 1: Gain Staging and Rough Balance
Before adding any processing, I pulled all the faders down and started balancing the kit:
Kick first
Then snare
Then rooms
Then cymbals and the rest
This is just to get a rough idea of how everything sits together. These levels will change later, but it helps establish direction. Since this was a “drums only mix”, this was the way to go, but if you have an entire song mix, I recommend having the guitars early on to shape the sounds in context. You don’t need to have your guitars mixed, but I do recommend having the dialed the final raw amp tone.
Step 2: Kick Processing
I started by analyzing the kick using an EQ as a visual aid (not for processing, just to see the frequency content).
What I noticed:
Low end mainly coming from the “kick out”
Other kick layers contributing different frequency areas
The kick will serve as foundation for your low end, so you need to have a strong low energy that doesn’t get boomy. I targeted roughly 50–100 Hz for the body and used mostly the kick out mic for that.
To avoid getting too boomy, I reduced some of the 100–130 Hz range, but this is a delicate area: if you take too much from it, the kick starts losing its punch.
Then, I boosted above 2 kHz to get more definition, which is really important for fast metal, so the kick stays audible. Beware, my friend, of boosting too much in the 5 kHz and above, ‘cause you’ll end up with a spike that’s difficult for next compressors in chains to tame or even for your ear to handle.
I recommend checking the phase between kick mics at gain staging stage, but I like checking it every now and then, just to be sure. Since these samples come already phase aligned, flipping the phase actually reduced low end, so I kept the original polarity.
Once I had the tone I wanted, I needed compression to shape the transient and make the kick more consistent without losing the attack.
Here’s an important observation:
If you use a fast release, more low-end buildup appears and makes the kick muddy.
And if you use a very slow release, the kick disappears in a dense mix.
So I adjusted the release carefully to balance those two.
Then, you may notice that after compression, peaks get too high and spiky. I added a clipper (GClip) to control peaks and keep the transient tight. But be careful and use it lightly; too much creates distortion, and not a pleasant one, but the one that makes you think that everything was recorded with a phone with no knowledge whatsoever.
Now that everything got louder, I started noticing too much the bleed from other drums in the kick micks, so I added a gate to remove this. I used a fast attack and slight pre-open.
Step 3: Snare Processing
The snare already sounded good and I wanted it fairly raw so I kept processing minimal. Here’s what I did:
Gating
To control bleed from other drums… obviously.
EQ
To reduce boxiness around 500 Hz and boost a little bit from 3 kHz and above. When I want a more explosive snare, I remove a lot (6 to 12 db) from the 700-900 Hz area… and I mean, a LOT. Since this was a raw mix and no other instruments were involved, this was not the case.
Compression
Used to bring out the attack
Help the snare cut through
Clipping
Controlled peaks
Helped match level with the kick
Step 4: Cymbals and Overheads
Like the rest of the drumkit, these cymbals and overheads were extremely well recorded, so I didn’t need much processsing. The main issue was too much low-end information, so I just needed a high-pass filter to clean up the bottom until around 300 Hz. Then I added some small EQ adjustments to remove unpleasant resonant frequencies.
By the way, I kept the drummer’s perspective, not audience perspective. Why the fuck would you pan your drums audience perspective? It’s like whipping your ass from back to front. In all seriousness, though, I like drummer’s perspective because air drumming is like really important to me and for a lot of metal fans; so I think audience perspective is only valid if you’re mixing a live show, not a studio album.
Step 5: Room Mics
Initially, the big room sound didn’t work well for this fast track. When you have multiple room mics, you have to experiment a little bit and see what works better with your track, or it may create too much buildup in low and low-mid frequencies (up to ~500 Hz).
Reducing big rooms usually helps with this, leaving more space to tight and small rooms without too much sustain from the shells.
EQ on Rooms
Cut 500 Hz – 2 kHz range to reduce washiness (you know, that whoo whoo sound that comes from hats and cymbals. Really nasty frequencies on drums). This lets the drums feel glued together without the room dominating.
Step 5: Toms
I like to work on each tom individually. The trick is to dial one tom first and if the toms are same shell types, using same patches (according to the size) and mic’d consistently, you only need to copy settings and refine little differences:
Gating
Removed bleed from other drums
Some snare bleed still present → may need further control later
EQ
Reduced low end slightly
Controlled boominess around 200–300 Hz
Compression
Added attack so tom hits are more audible
Step 5: Reverb
Reverb is usually what I do last and any reverb will do. In this case, I used the stock reaper reverb because that was the point of this entire experiment (create a great drum sound with only free plugins); this made it a little difficult to dial in, as stock reverbs sound really digital and unnatural, but if you try enough, you can get a good sound. I may end up changing that stock reverb to some other free plugin, but this was the initial point for this mix. You just have to have a goal in mind. The goal was not to make the kit huge, just to add space without creating mud.
Step 6: Final touches
There are some final things that I won’t be explaining too much here, but that make a ton of difference if you already have a good sound in your Drum bus:
Parallel Compression: Add more attack and punch to the entire kit
Compression on the drum master: Medium attack and slower release to let transients come through and control overall dynamics.
Clipping: A final layer of clipping to control peaks. It’s dangerous to add clipping in both the individual tracks and then the entire bus, but sometimes it works. Remember that there are no rules in art.
Limiter: I added a limiter to catch anything remaining and boost a bit of gain.
Final notes
As I’ve been saying throughout this blog entry, this is a rough drum mix, not a finished production.
Once you add guitars, bass, vocals and any other instrument that you may want to force into the mix, you’ll need to rebalance levels, adjust EQ, and rethink low-end relationships. I just made this as a fun experiment to get a nice drum sound that can be used in extreme metal productions as a starting point, but it should not be the end point. Rarely any template or preset is. And in case you are wondering, yes, you can download this template completely free and use it for your own productions. I saved this exact setup as a template, so you don’t have to build everything from scratch, you only need to install the plugins I used, which are all free plugins.
You can download it here:
By the way, if you are using a DAW different than Reaper, I’m truly sorry but you have to do all this process from scratch. But in case you already have your MIDI written and all your instrumentation ready and only need to finish with a great mix, I can help you with that!
Closing
This library is completely free, and honestly, it’s pretty impressive what you can get out of it with some basic processing.
