Adjusting the beat accuracy?

BeatBuddy General
#1

I know the beat buddy isn’t quantized, thats fine, but I personally know / have jammed with drummers that are like a living breathing metronome. they’re accurate as hell and its great to jam with them because you just get lost in the groove and play, and they never get “off”.
but the beat buddy… quite frankly sometimes it sounds downright sloppy, like a drummer who has bitten off more than he can chew when he tries out a fill that hes not ready for. and it can be a little distracting when the fill comes in and its a sloppy mess. thats not making it sound human, its just making it sound like a fuck up. i dont want a fuck up of a drummer.

I was wondering if there is a setting somewhere that allows you to adjust the accuracy?
right now I would say the accuracy is at about 85% and I would like it to be closer to 95%.

I can work with it as is, but if this is something i can adjust please let me know, i would be eternally grateful.

#2

To be honest with you here - I completely agree with what you’ve said. Least of all would I want my personal drummer to fuck up! That’s why I quantized all the beats I actively use like Metal 8, Pop 7, Country 6 etc.

Unfortunately, what you call “accuracy” of the beats can not be adjusted. It is whatever it is at like 85% or may be 90%, but sometimes I personally feel like no more than 70%… But then you have an option to make it strictly to 100%. Just rip the MIDI track from the song you are using with BBManager software, put it to any MIDI editor of your choice (I personally use Guitar Pro 5.2 for this), and just quantize it. I mean align the notes to the sixteenth, thirtytwoth or sixtyfourth. Re-import the aligned MIDI back to the song via BBManager, Export Project to Pedal, and here you go - 100% accurate drummer. However, you can not control “accuracy” while playing.

From my own experience, different BB songs offer different accuracy, so I’d start with just changing the song :slight_smile:

#3

THANK YOU Daef for clarifying that the inaccuracies exist, and then providing instructions to alter it. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind when I’m trying to get my “machines” to play in time with eachother, which should be easy, but when one of them is intentionally being sloppy, it’s maddening. My playing adds plenty of sloppy humanness whereas most times I don’t want the machine I’m using to keep time being sloppy as well. I think I’ll create another folder and fill it with beats that aren’t so…human, that way I can choose between a virtual human drummer or a virtual machine drummer.

#4

@scudd Just let me clarify my clarification a bit more - I just said that the MIDI drum patterns were recorded “as is” - and they will play back just as accurate as they were played. But then again, there is an internal BeatBuddy clock that counts (and sends) MIDI quarter notes - this mechanism is error prone and is totally accurate - as accurate as usual clock itself. So when connecting BeatBuddy as a MIDI master to some other MIDI slave device, they will stay perfectly in sync, however the actual drums that BB is playing may indeed feel sloppy on some songs.

BB reliability as a MIDI slave is still a question for the firmware team to check, but that is a totally different topic.

#5

I found this an issue as well. Some of the beats have a great feel while others seem sluggish or unnatural. I prefer to quantize to some degree. Adding the accents in the right place and maybe placing the hi hats a tick ahead of everything else can sometimes add a better feel. Personally I like the drums and bass to be rock solid and let the other instruments fill in the gaps.

#6

Also found that some fills work better if you start them on the off beat like on the and of 3 for example. It makes a big difference to how natural the fills sound and makes the fill seems less busy. all depends on the style I guess. Just a preference of mine.

#7

I guess I’m doing it the hard way, but I found myself going into Beat Builder and correcting (quantizing) the Hi-Hat positions and Bass hits as well as some “Fills” that are not quite exact and “Tightening” the Riffs like a Professional Drummer would sound like. I am a guitar player, not a drummer but I have certainly played with some excellent “Tight” drummers and they are what you call “On Top Of The Beat”.
I notice that the timing is sometimes way off in the BB Manager. Some of the Rolls coming back into the beat are way off and I have had to actually delete these out of a “Song”. I just wanted you to know that you can correct some of this with the Beat Builder and not have to mess with Midi.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.

More realism settings?
#8

I’ve played with live drummers like this. They go into a fill or roll and we all hold our breaths and listen for whatever beat he might finally finish on :slight_smile:

#9

Well, I guess it is not a very pleasant experience :slight_smile: But it is somewhat forgivable for a real drummer, especially in a live situation (he might have tired or something).
But this is totally unacceptable, in my opinion, for a drum machine. Just like @fingerstylepicker, I remember raising this very issue even before the pedal was officially shipped.
I hope I will be able to upgrade the pedal firmware to the point where one can easily quantize beats at will. Having a toggle to choose between playing imperfect live record (as some users actually like it better!) and perfect quantized beats would be amazing.

#10

In a live situation, I actually like the sound of a little imperfection or lax timing, because it’s… natural. However, most times when I sit down with a MACHINE, I’m expecting it to be perfect. I suppose it’s like a “studio” versus “live” sound.

Back in the day (maybe they do today), computerized drums used to have things like jitter, slew, and slide parameters so that you could attempt to make them not so perfect, but by default they were. I too would like to see a “humanize” parameter on the BB.

I’m a little surprised there isn’t a downloadable song set with all the default beats, just quantized.

#11

I like the idea about having a downloadable song set with all the beats quantized. I spend a lot of time correction the timing on fills, intro, main, transitions. I am a perfectionist so it’s real hard for me not to correct the timing in the default sets. The outro isn’t so bad because there is nothing coming up behind it. There is something in the program that you don’t see. It automatically puts in notes and fills. I guess it might be to correct missing notes, but sometimes it gets in the way to correct timing coming out of a fill. I have a lot of problem with “Double Beats” coming out of fills back into the Main. I have found by lowering the volume on the “Bass Note” corrects this but sometimes it just doesn’t work so I have to eliminate the fill altogher.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.

#12

What are the divisions in Beat Builder? I count them as 1/16 notes. can you check with Charles Spenser for this? I am a perfectionist and sometimes like the beats to be “Dead-On”. I do a lot of “Timing Corrections” in Beat Builder. Sometimes I can’t get the fills to work correctly so I have to
delete them out. I find that a lot of fills create problems with the timing in the Main Beats. They seem to mess with the midi clock in the BB itself and causes “Ghost Beats” within the Main Beat and if you let it play long enough the ghost beats widen out where the whole song is a mess. This might be a software problem in the Beat Buddy itself. Sometimes the Beat file can be corrected and sometimes not. Lately, I’ve noticed that if a fill has an “Off Timing” riff, it will throw the whole timing of the song off and will cause it to be “Out of Sync” to itself. Weird! Can somebody check on this? I appreciate all your help. I have made a lot of improvements and have learned a lot since I purchased the BB in May.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.

#13

Daef, I appreciate your hard work for Beat Buddy. I know a lot of you do it free to make a better pedal for everybody. I have a question about the Beat Builder. It has a place in it to “Quatize” but it does not function. I have version 2.1 Beat Builder. It would be nice to get a “Fix” on this. I could use it right now to correct some of the timing issues with the default Drumsets. I also use the Beat Builder to lower or raise the outputs of the notes and make minor to major corrections. If you can get a word to Charles Spenser, tell him I appreciate having the Beat Builder to work with.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.

#14

“Quantize”

#15

Would it be possible that the BB guys quantize all the standard beats/songs for the BB, put it in the Download section, and those who want this instead of what comes in the standard BB SD Card can download it into another SD card of their own? Just like the backup download for the SD Card currently in the Download section, but with quantized content.

#16

Would it be possible that the BB guys quantize all the standard beats/songs for the BB, put it in the Download section, and those who want this instead of what comes in the standard BB SD Card can download it into another SD card of their own? Just like the backup download for the SD Card currently in the Download section, but with quantized content.

#17

@Daef did this, maybe you can ask him for a copy.

#18

Daef, Psalm40 said that you had possibly went through some of the drum kits and actually ''Quantized" some or all of them into a downloadable file. If this is true, let me know. I would sure like a copy. I have been doing this on my own as best as I can using Beat Builder but it’s a long process and I don’t work with midi or have the means to. It sure would be appreciated if I could get this.
Thanks a bunch! Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.

#19

Hello,
I understand this is a very old subject, but the problem is not just how off it sounds.
I don’t like the fact that the quantization is very basic. There is no way to “swing” any of the beats, especially when you add a custom beat to BB. It would have been nice to be able to “swing” the grooves, or keep the grooves made in my DAW with a swung quantization, but that won’t happen. I received an email today stating that Singular Sound will NOT be trying to fix this issue, and have NO plans to do so. I was literally told “not to expect” any future changes to the BB. Very sad in my opinion.