Allow Mute to Persist After MIDI Start
I’d love to see an option on the BeatBuddy 2 that allows Mute to remain active when the BB2 receives MIDI Start from an external MIDI master.
My use case
I use a Boss RC-600 as the MIDI clock/transport master, with the BeatBuddy 2 synced to it. I often begin songs by building guitar/vocal loops and don’t want the drums to enter until later—usually a chorus or another section of the song.
Ideally, the workflow would be:
Mute BB2 → Start RC-600 loop → BB2 receives MIDI Start and begins running silently in sync → Unmute or trigger a Fill when I want the drums to enter.
Currently, when the RC-600 initiates the first loop and sends MIDI Start, the BeatBuddy automatically comes out of Mute. Mute Pause is also cleared, so there’s an audible bit of drums before I can mute it again.
Suggested solution: Persistent Mute
It would be great to have an optional setting such as:
Maintain Mute on MIDI Start: ON/OFF
With this enabled, MIDI Start would still start the BeatBuddy’s transport normally, but wouldn’t change its current Mute state. The BB2 could therefore follow the external MIDI master silently and remain perfectly synchronized until the player intentionally unmutes it or uses a Fill to bring the drums in.
This seems like it could be useful for anyone combining BeatBuddy with an external MIDI-master looper, sequencer, or backing-track setup where the drums aren’t intended to enter at the beginning of the song.
Current workaround
I currently accomplish this using a Morningstar MC8 Pro:
Volume 0 → MIDI Start → Mute → Volume 100 → later Unmute/Fill
It works reliably, but requires several MIDI commands simply to prevent the brief drum audio caused by Mute being cleared when MIDI Start is received.
Related idea: Press/Hold assignments for the onboard switch
It would also be fantastic if the BB2’s onboard switches supported separate Press and Hold assignments, particularly when a switch is assigned to Mute.
For example, with my Morningstar I currently use:
Press = Mute
Hold = Volume 100
Having freely assignable Press/Hold functions on the BB2 itself could potentially let me handle this workflow without an external MIDI controller.
But the primary request is simply:
Please give us an option for Mute to remain active when BeatBuddy receives MIDI Start from an external MIDI master.
If you use BeatBuddy with a looper or another external MIDI master and would find this useful, please upvote!