i have ez drummer 2…
is there some way to create drum sets from ez drummer 2 (using the wave files from ez drummer 2), for the beatbuddy?
i’ve bought several expansion packs for ez drummer 2 and it would be awesome if those drums could be imported into the beatbuddy…
I also thought ez drummer would be the perfect supplement to BeatBuddy, however it looks like the midi mappings do not match. I contacted the ez drummer support and got following answer:
Thanks for your email. EZdrummer 2 is not designed to work with Beat Buddy. EZD2 is designed to work in host sequencers, such as Pro Tools, Sonar, Cubase, etc… The EZD2 Midi uses the GM Extended Midi format. You will need to determine what Midi file(s) Beat Buddy uses first before looking at how to “wrap” The EZdrummer 2 Midi to a new Midi format.
Maybe the BeatBuddies contact the guys from EZD to find a solution. It could create synergies and help both companies to sell their great products even better.
You can certainly adjust the mappings on the BB side as you need. The beta BBManager software has what you need to adjust the notes in drum kits and songs to be more in line with ezdrummer.
How to get this Beta version and how difficult or complicated is it to adjust the mappings? You have to consider that most of the BeatBuddy users like me are “very simple structured” 
and not very familiar with midi.
To give you an idea of the mappings, here’s a helpful link: http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?threads/importing-drum-loops-from-ezdrummer-to-bb.4835/#post-17580
I think there’s also an EZD2 to BB mapping that someone posted to this forum a while back. You’ll have to search for it.
Agree, I didn’t know anything about midi before getting the BB but was able to adjust the mappings between a set of Roland V-Drums and the BB so the v-drums would drive the BB when our drummer plays them. (The BB’s sounds are much better than the v-drums.) The mappings are much easier to work than trying to deal with detailed tuning of MIDI messages or writing MIDI beats from scratch.
I was also able to set up my iPhone to control the BB so I did end up learning how to do some MIDI messaging as well but am not an expert by any means.
Here’s a paste from the thread about EZD2 to BB mapping:
But wait, Beat Buddy can’t play the extended MIDI drums that EZ Drummer has…
That’s true, you’ll need to edit them first. Drag the clip to your track in Reaper and double click it to open the MIDI editor. Change the view to show the note names and import the Beat Buddy MIDI mapping from here:
http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?threads/beatbuddy-drumsets-midi-notes-mapping.1873/
Now look for notes that are not named (usually hi hats, crashes and sometimes the bass drum). Right click the note name on the left to select the row, then use CTRL + Up/Down to move the entire row to the Beat Buddy equivalent (or whatever you can find). Shift click EZ Drummer on the FX list to disable it (thus enabling routing to your Beat Buddy) then play the clip to see how it sounds (adjust as necessary).
Now you need to get it into Beat Buddy Manager. You can’t drag it directly from Reaper, so we need to get it back into EZ Drummer. So enable EZ Drummer (shift click), hold CTRL + ALT and drag the clip into the song area of EZDrummer (the area at the bottom). Then simply drag it into Beat Buddy Manager.
Midi editor, note names, reaper, …!? He? What are you talking about? Sorry boys, I’m out. I don’t want to learn how to use a midi software like Reaper! I don’t want to edit song by song and note for note. There must be something more simple. I thought about something like a converter or an import filter or a function like “save as …” in EZD2. Or a special EZD2 drumset in BeatBuddy.
As already mentioned: I have no glue about midi 
Breathe . . .
It’s not that complicated. If you want to give it a shot, we can walk you through it. If you don’t want to do a little learning, then use the BB as is without ezdrummer but you don’t need reaper, the BBManager can easily adjust the drum kits and midi notes. There’s no glue involved either.
BTW, when we say ‘adjust notes’ we don’t mean adjusting each beat. A note in midi terms is a number assigned to an instrument. The mapping of numbers/notes to instruments in the kit or the song is what needs to get adjusted between BB and ezdrummer so that the two reasonably match.
What about creating a drum kit on the BB specifically for EZD2 files with all the correct EZD2 mappings - would that work? It’s an alternative approach for anyone who wants to create all their midi files using EZD2 - there would be no need to modify the files then.
Go for it. As I said earlier, I remapped the midi notes put out by my v-drums so it would work with most of the BB kits. That was an easy one-time tweak once I sorted out how to do it.
Yeah, I’m a little bit further. I watched the BB drum set tutorials and have an idea now how the mapping works. So what I want to do is, I take the standard BB drum kit, copy it and modify the mappings to create a EZD2 drum set.
To check it out I selected a midi file from EZ drummer where I know that this file only uses the kick, snare, hi-hat, floortom1 and cymbal2. When I play it now in BB with the standard drum set, it sounds like only the hi-hat is missing. And this is where I stuck now. In GM midi setting the hi-hat is on 42, 44 and 46. I couldn’t find out where it “hides” in EZD2.
post the midi, and i’ll check it out
And here it is. I also found the midi mappings of EZD2 which I also attached.
It’s crazy how many kinds of 'hats they use… just moved them all to 42 (closed) and 46 (open)
Thank you aashideacon! It works fine. I wanted to go the other way and assign the standard BB drumset but so far I was not successful.
I was discussing the topic in parallel with Toontrack and the most intersting outcome about the extended midi was:
The hi hats articulations are what is usually the ‘extended’ parts. There are quite a few different open articulations, for example. They are offered to allow for the most realistic drum experience. A real hi hat has varying levels of ‘open’, not just one. Also, you can hit a hi hat with the top of the stick our the shaft of the stick. Different sound. There are offered. GM doesn’t.
I annoyed them a little bit and mentioned “it’s crazy how many kind of hats they use…” (BTW: thank you again [SIZE=4]aashideacon) and this is what they answered :):[/SIZE]
My answer would be: ‘it’s not 1985 anymore’. It’s what Toontrack was founded on in the first place. The best, most detailed, realistic sounding drum libraries and sample engine. Our customer demand more realism. We provide it to them. Realism requires articulations to simulate that realism. Articulations require GM Extended mapping.
This brings me to the question: Are there any plans to make BB extended midi compatible?
The whole discussion could be seen here: EZD2 midi mapping
It should already be possible to make the BB match the extended midi used in EZD2 by designing a drum set that matches an EZD2 drum set. Although I am not sure of the limitations of a) the number of instruments you can have in a drum set on the BB and b) the memory limits for storing drum samples (is it 100MB?) which might limit the number of samples you could add (presuming there is a way to record / copy samples from EZD2). Would this be possible?
One idea I started to experiment with was to create a drum set with no instruments (except one dummy one with only one .wav file as that is the minimum) and instead of using the BB for sound I fed the midi from the BB to my laptop and directly into EZD2 to see if I could play EZD2 with midi files on the BB. Effectively reducing the BB to a foot controllable midi player with no sound. I think it worked but I didn’t take it further to see if I could include GM Extended Mapped instruments in the BB midi files. It did appear to send out all the midi stored on the BB even though there were no drum instruments in the particular BB drum set that mapped onto the midi notes. Also I wasn’t sure whether the BB would create the humanized feel it does with a standard drum set - not sure how that works?..
My only disappointment with BeatBuddy is that the stock kits are not GM Midi standard. How sweet it would be if they created all of their standard type kits in GM Standard. Then any beat can be ported from just about any drum program.
But, I get around it:
I’ve been editing beats using Sonar X3, but I’m sure any Midi DAW will do. There are so many patterns that can be ported to BeatBuddy with a bit of tweaking.
[BTW: One beat programming tip: When saving a midi loop, make sure the LAST note is extended to the END of the measure, otherwise your loop will be trucated.]
Knowing Which drums are active active within a particular BeatBuddy drum set patch is helpful. Most times I will slide an instrument over to fall into an existing BeatBuddy instrument key assignment (IE: a Kick recording on key 35 will get slipped to key 36).
But, I’ve also created my own drum set by “filling in the blanks” where BeatBuddy’s drumset is lean on wav samples.
The only problem I’ve run into is that I have to be mindful of the file size since, at the moment, BeatBuddy has a size limit. But, as long as I’m not using a lot of samples per instrument, I can fill in the missing instrument blanks easily.
Once the blanks are filled, I save my new GM Midi standard Kit and I can port just about any pattern from my DAW Drum programs.
(See example Below. Where there are X’s, BeatBuddy already has an instrument in place. Where there is need for an instrument to match a GM Kit, I have added it. Instruments are added to match a Standard GM Midi Drumkit are noted after the key number.)
I’m also uploading an image from an excel sheet I made, that shows the assigments of a Standard Beatbuddy Kit with highlights in YELLOW to show the BLANKS. You can see the .wav samples I used to “fill in the blanks” mentioned below.
Key # / Missing Standard GM KIT Instrument
34 x
35 HR Kick
36 x
37 x
38 x
39 x
40 Snare 2
41 Tom 2
42 x
43 x
44 x
45 x
46 x
47 Mid Tom 1
48 x
49 x
50 x
51 x
52 Splash Cymbal
53 x
54 Tamborine 2 and 4
55 x
56 Cowbell
57 x
58 Tamborine Slap Sus
59 x
60 High Bongo
61 Low Bongo
62 Muted High Conga
63 Open High Conga
64 Low Muffled Conga
65 High Timbale
66 Low Timbale
67 High Agogo
68 Low Agogo
69 Cabasa
70 Maracas
71 Whistle
72 Long Whistle
73 Short Guiro
74 Long Guiro
75 Clave
76 High Wood Block
77 Low Wood Block
78 Mute Cuíca
79 Open Cuíca
80 Mute Triangle
81 Open Triangle
Hey @John M,
BeatBuddy stock kits do follow the general midi! To prove that to you, just play on your computer any of the normal beats and fills MIDI files included with BeatBuddy default content. Your computer utilizes general midi mapping and will reproduce all elements of our loops (kick, snare, hats, toms, cymbals, claps…).
If you use loops from VST drum plugins like Superior Drummer or Ez Drummer, they will not work in BeatBuddy because they use slightly different mapping. General midi has 2 kicks and 2 snare drums. These plugins may use one midi note for a kick, we may use another. So, it is not that BeatBuddy kits are not compatible with general midi, it is that loops created for these other drum plugins are not compatible with BeatBuddy. Nobody ever said they would be!
Remember that BeatBuddy sets won’t have all instruments as in general midi (percussion). This is due to limitation of BB memory (100MB) and because our intention was not to replace general midi sounds, but to create drum sets for BeatBuddy Pedal. Latin set has many percussion instruments that are not fully supported by general midi, so mapping there is going to be different in places.
I am currently contemplating producing a new General kit which will be very versatile and will include other percussion elements commonly found in popular music: cowbell, shaker, tambourine, simple congas, simple bongos. How much gets included will depend on how much we can fit in 100MB.