A very strange idea for full backing tracks in BB

[INDENT]In the course of creating a song with only two drum hits in it to use to monitor MIDI from BB, I dropped in a short WAV of the introduction to Martha My Dear as the Accent Hit (where you’d normally do a crash cymbal hit). Just for the heck of it, to see what would happen.

Well… It played! :rolleyes: Since you can use a WAV file as a drum sample in a drum kit, and size doesn’t matter so long as the kit stays under 100 MB, I’m thinking it might be possible to stick a whole song (or maybe a couple, three) as three different drum strikes. I’m not saying there’s a good reason to do it. I’m just saying it could be possible.[/INDENT]

[INDENT]So, I did it. I made a drum set with the bass drum’s sample being SRV’s Scuttle Buttin’, and the low tom Hendrix’s Little Wing. It will play them when the drums’ MIDI notes are triggered. It makes a hellacious noise, as each strike plays the song all the way through. Imagine that.

I’m not recommending using whole songs as drum samples. But it does create some interesting possibilities. Just off the top of my head, one could record songs on one to a few non-drum instruments, say an acoustic guitar track and a bass track, and make them the samples for a couple unused drums/MIDI notes in an existing drum set; then trigger them in a MIDI song file once right at the start with a single instance of the notes simultaneously, and voila–one has backing tracks, as long as the total drum set file still doesn’t exceed 100MB.

For example, replace in the Standard drum kit (a copy thereof, of course) the handclaps, one of the crash cymbals, the metronomes, and the cross-sticks, and maybe a couple snare and cymbal samples, with a WAV track of bass and rhythm guitar playing (e.g.) “I Saw Her Standing There” and save it as the ISHST drumset, paired with a MIDI file of the drums imported as a song… And you could have full backing tracks on board the BeatBuddy.

Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems plausible anyway. Am I way off base here?[/INDENT]

3 minutes of WAV at cd quality (44.1k, 16 bit, 1411 bit rate) is only 31 megs or so. If you broke a song down bar by bar, or measure by measure, you’d certainly have some overlap that would allow you to reuse samples. So, there doesn’t seem to be any hardware or device limitation

if you had a song that was G - D - C, you could sample the G part, the D part, and the C part, and make each it’s own “drum”. Three “drum” hits would play a full measure. There are midi-to-wav converters out there, so you could do that sampling part pretty easily I would think.

It’d be fun to at least have a song that is your own introduction.

“And now, what you have all been waiting for! The ONE! The ONLY!” etc :slight_smile:

Or you could just record measures and use the WAV files as the samples.

Another way to go, and this is to make BB a backing track player pedal, and not a drum pedal: Have the drum set consist of two instruments: Say, metronome and snare (any instrument). The sample for the metronome is the metronome click. This is used for count-off. The sample for the snare is any audio backing track WAV file under 99MB or so. The set gets its song name. The Song (BB song) is a MIDI file consisting of a count-off measure, and the next measure consists of a snare hit on the first beat–which, of course, plays the WAV file, and plays it all the way through. There: You have a backing track, and the BeatBuddy acts as a backing track player. (You would have to set the tempo on BB to the tempo of the backing track–easy enough.) No drums–just your tracks. Hit the pedal once, and you’re off to the races.

Of course, the output quality might be less than ideal, using the one or two 1/4" outputs.

Im interested in how this turns out, because I definately want to find a way to make a typical 3:30 song or “drum track” with fills & occasional crash.

Do you have a song in mind?

Check this out:
http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?threads/beatbuddy-karaoke-steely-dan-reelin-in-the-years.4349/

I might try something like this myself if I can find some decent wave files that I have created somerwhere. I know I must have a few. Sounds interesting and plausable too. Why not try it.
We might expand David’s invention into a massive instrument of music. Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.

Hey now! :slight_smile: I was the one who figured it out and did it! :slight_smile:

I’m impressed with your additions to the Beat Buddy Aashideacon (Y)
New frontiers :wink:

Oh, I think everyone will give you full credit for it. I tried it myself but the Wave File Song was too long and it wouldn’t play. I don’t have the means to cut the length so I thought about trying to find something shorter but haven’t found anything that would fit yet. You did it first, lucky one. Congratulations. Now, lets make something that everybody can use. Get a patent for it right away though.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.

I created a track that 4:45 or so and it played fine. likely the issue is with the way it deals with the underlying midi. check out the guts of my steely dan song ‘reelin in the years’, and the warren g regulate song. with the steely dan, the whole song was a “fill”, and it played the whole thing, but wouldn’t play like that as a main loop. In order to make the main loop work right, i had to match the midi loop length to the WAV length, using bpm, and time signature, and midi notes. my main loop was 10 seconds, so I make my bpm = 60 bpm, and make the time signature 5/4, and made the midi snippet be 2 measures long. 2 measures of 5/4 = 10 beats. 10 beats at 60 bpm (or 1bps!) = 10 seconds.