Beatbuddy, great concept, good product but almost all of the included and available drum kits are pretty in your face aggressive. Honestly they sound as if they were played by exactly the kind of
aggressive drummer that drove us all to buy it! Where can I find some kits that will sit in the mix in live situation without calling undue attention to the missing drummer? Honestly the included kits and premium content sound as if the missing drummer is the leader of the band. Not good.Please assume I know what I am talking about no resume flaunting needed. Thanks guys
There are several threads and posts on this forum that try to answer your question. I don’t think any of them provide the definitive answer that satisfies the original posters (OP). There are several kits with bass that users have crafted and they’re at Resources/Drum kits. Just because they include bass doesn’t mean you have to use the bass parts though. Give those a preview. If you find a kit that comes close to meeting your needs but has instruments that are too overbearing, you can use the tutorial that Phil Flood has posted on how to modify a kit. If you don’t want to tackle using a DAW, you can ask for help and someone is sure to pitch in.
I think your concern may be more than just the drum kits though. If you found a kit such as Jazz or Ballads that comes close, it could be that the default beats are still too much. If that’s the case and you can’t find one that meets your needs, take a look at the Premium beats or preview Groove Monkee offerings. Let us know what you come up with—if anything.
Thanks. Glad I am not the only one that noticed this. Yeah the playing is very questionable. As is the drummer did not realize he must record the beats while actually playing with other musicians. They sounds very much like a “not fancy” solo. Not really blending very well. I will try other kits and Groove Monkee before I give up and re-ebay Thanks!!!
Pete, what instrument do you play and what genre of music do you play? I think it might help the drummer that develops the premium and default kits and beats to know.
I play almost everything (nothing beyond classic rock) Full time player whole life. Casinos, restaurants, clubs etc. Also have had a studio and produced over a thousand tracks over last 30 years, long time producer. I was featured in Mix, wrote for Mix, Eq etc (Dang Persist I was trying to avoid this, but I guess establishing cred is needed in life (-: ) I play keys with left hand bass while singing and fingerstyle rockabilly full bass/ryhym patterns etc. New Orleans R&B to jazz to blues to country nightly. Anyway, I know the concept of BB is viable having used the Steinberg software version of it (yeah you know what program I am speaking of) to rough in tracks for over a decade I know we can make this work with the right production. Whew!
Pete,
I think you are dead on with your description of the TRACKS that come with the BB. I find most the KITS to be really good, but there are some cymbals that are just way too loud, and those can be adjusted in the DrumKit maker, or, for a quick fix, in the midi tracks themselves by just reducing the velocities. Overall, I have found this pedal to be better than any other accompaniment device I have tried before, including some very interesting stuff from Yamaha, Alesis and Roland, and a not so interesting device from Digitech. It’s quite flexible, but it really is a Garbage in, Garbage out kinda thing. As long as you feed it good stuff, what you get out is good.
Phil
Sorry, Pete—wasn’t trying to get you to flaunt your résumé (which I know you wanted to avoid :D)—just wanted to get an idea of how Singular Sound might be able to help.
I usually cut the velocity on cymbals down by sometime 40 to 50. Is it the velocities of the cymbals that you find too aggressive or any kit in particular that you would like to have toned down? Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
What Singular Sound and Goran Rista offer is a great starting point for users to tweak-to-taste. Sounds like you’re comfortable using DAWs and if so, the concept of adjusting velocities may give you a leg up on other users that are just starting out with the BB. Since you will probably not be using the other kits, you may also find it fairly easy to use the built-in MIDI editor to touch up some of the drum instruments (although I find it much easier to use a DAW to just select the entire row of say, crash cymbals in the drum track or region and reduce the velocity by a relative 20 to 40).
Hi Phil. No doubt it is the best thing out there. Imo it is potentially fantastic. I think the kits are “ok” I have one more the the latest $10 kit to play with, maybe that one will be “a team player”. On to the patterns:
Really guys? It never occurred to you that one of the reasons we want BeatBuddy is crappy overplaying drummers that show their butts on every fill they get a chance. “Hey look at me, hey look at me I’m the drummer look at me” (-: ) grrrr. Imo the beats that come with and are available for BB are what is going to drive people to or away from the unit. I do not know how the prooduction of these patterns is being done, but it is not the way to produce “beats” that sit in a song and do not force you into accommodation to a machine. It should be the other way around. The patterns should have human feel, but be waaaaaaay more nuetral (and yes I bought “Gig Basics” Another thing. These fills!!! Do the guys at BB not understand that a fill is not really an intelude to be “noticed” especially considering we are using a machine! Fills should be able to be used at a wide range of tempos! They are simply there to get from point a to point b graceully. Persist, read your new post. Yes I more than comfortable on Daws having been there with CW from the start. The thing is I think BB is a great idea, that’s why I bought it I really would like to be able to take it to the stage without a lot of painful editing. Yes no doubt I am likely to be a bit more picky than some will be, but I almost guarantee rhay this post is giving voice to a lot of folks experience. Especially veterans who try to take it directly to the stage. As ststed, this is a wonderful concept capable of really making a difference in the live music world. What we don’t want is a “drummer” to hear a crazy overplayed fill or groove and snicker. This is all eminently fixable and I am sure it will be.
If you don’t like the fills, it’s pretty simple to remove and replace them with something you find more tasteful (there’s nothing that says you have to use them). The point that I guess I failed unable to convey was that the BeatBuddy cannot be everything to everybody. It’s as customizable as the effort users are willing to devote to it. If you are unwilling to devote that effort (and as a gigging musician, you may not have the luxury of that time), then perhaps it isn’t the tool that meets your expectations or requirements.
Your objective feedback will hopefully inspire Goran and others to improve the drum kits and beats packages.
No doubt. I have done this some fills already. I in no way wish to present a negative pic of a fantastic product. I think the potential of BB has yet to be tapped. BTW is there a simple way to lower velocity across an entire drum within the Beatbuddy manager as opposed to individuals beats?
. I realize these are round robin mult-sample but I mean overall velocity
This has been a long-standing user request, though because it can’t presently be done for an entire kit within the BBM.
Perhaps at some point you’ll wish to share some of the fruits of your labor for the default kit fills that you come up with.
http://forum.mybeatbuddy.com/index.php?threads/how-to-change-relative-kit-volume.7680/#post-33553
See post #7. You can lower overall VOLUME for a drum in a kit, but not the overall velocities. To lower velocities, you would need to edit the midi file.
I’d really like to see a way to group instruments for volume adjustments, such that all the cymabls could be raised or lowered, or, in the case of the bass and keyboard kits, all bass notes or all keyboards notes should be able to have volume adjusted en masse.
Lowering volume is nothing .it is a global lowering of velocity per instrument that is absolutely a necessity. This will prevent a snare or crash for example from being so very very intrusive as lower velocity strikes will (hopefully) be triggered .Sure hope these issues are being addressed in a very near future software update. Some of this stuff is pretty basic
A basic, basic editing need.
We need to be clear about terms here. In BB land, “Kit” refers to the drum SOUNDS, that is the samples. They have some “agressive” rock kits with lots of ambience and they also have some acoustic kits such as cajon for flamenco that are softer and more “intimate”.
“Beat” refers to the RHYTHMS played using those kits. You can change the kits used for any given beat and you can create your own new beats using any of the kits that are installed in your project.
I believe that your complaint is that the BEATS (not kits) are too BUSY (not “aggressive”). I think most drummers will equate the term “busy” with the concept of overplaying. “Aggressive” usually refers to actually hitting the drums hard. It is possible to hit the drums hard, that is play aggressively, and yet play a beat that’s very simple, not busy.
So, I think what you’re looking for is beats that are not too busy, possibly using kits that have a more “intimate” sound, that is without a lot of reverb or ambience.
Having said that, I think you can find those in their current offerings, and it might just take a bit of editing on your part to remove sections (intros, fills, transitions, and outros) that are too busy or to change the default kits for some existing beats.
Actually I have a problem with both the kits are sampled at possibly too high of a velocity and the poor execution of fills. Fills need not be nearly so busy, if they were not they would work at nearly all tempos. Drummers, trouble even in a can:slight_smile:
I edited nearly all those busy fills on the most common BEAT I use that came with BB in the BBM editor