Greetings! Just wanted to share a quick video I made to demo the BeatBuddy as a sound module triggered by my Zendrum ZX2. The BB is my favorite sound module I’ve used to date. I love the ability to easily customize the kits and sounds, and the available kits sound amazing. Here I’m using a custom version of the Modern Classic kit. I added a snare drag articulation and swapped the top velocity level samples for the ride cymbal to the ride bell. I actually made this video more to demo the BB for the Zendrum FB group, but I though people here might enjoy it, too. If you want to skip the sound demo part and get straight to the grooves, just start watching at 1:15. Best!
So to trigger you just send midi on a channel? BB could be a drum module for all kinds e-kits. Or other finger drumming pads into the looper to create drum parts live.
I’m directly triggering the sounds from the BB pedal itself. Midi goes from my Zendrum into a box called the ZDS Shifter Pro. It was designed to work specifically with the Zendrum to set up midi rules. I’m currently using two rules. The first one stacks a kick note on top of my crashes and the second one remaps the incoming hi-hat note to the ride cymbal note. I enable each rule by pressing a foot switch on the pedal. Then midi flows out from the shifter directly into the BB to trigger the sounds. There’s no perceptible latency so it works really well!
That’s right, I think I have it set to receive incoming midi on channel 10. So all of the pads on my Zendrum are sending various notes on channel 10. Super easy to set up! And yes, you could definitely set this up with a looper and trigger the sounds with any midi controller to build drums loops on the fly. I also have a Hologram Microcosm that has a looping function, and I plan to do exactly that! Plus then I can use the effects in the Microcosm to glitch things up a bit. More on that soon…
