Those of you regularly gigging with BeatBuddy PLEASE post your experiences, as well as any problems, ideas. innovations, etc. that you’ve discovered. Please include info on your rig, PA, pedals, genre, sets,what band member actually runs the BeatBuddy, etc.
I gig with mine. I have not come across any problems as yet but maybe that is because I Practice with it up to 8 hours a week. The rig I use is 8" tops with a powered 15" sub and a Studiomaster gold mixer. The pedal is harsh so has to be topped off a bit but other than that it is great!
I use it for gigging, but usually only do songs that require very little interaction. Practice helps, though. Here’s my new live setup:
A 15" powered PA speaker for the room. I use two if I’m outside.
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My christmas gift: The behringer hot spot monitor/mixer!
Channel 1 is mic → TC Helicon H-1 harmony pedal → hotspot ch 1
Channel 2 is guitar electric pickups → Boss tuner → Mesa VTwin pedal → hotspot ch 2
|–> TC Helicon harmony pedal, for “intelligent” key
Channel 3 is guitar piezo pickups → Boss AC3 Acoustic Simulator → BeatBuddy → hotspot ch 3
So now I’m singer, harmony singer, electric player, bass player, and drummer!
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Aash is that a Parker? (On a small tablet, can’t see it good)
Yeah, parker Nite Fly with the built in piezos in the bridge. However, I took out the stock pickups and put in Fender Lace ones… blue in the neck, gold in the middle, and dually reds at the bridge. Very versatile sounds!
Thanks for your info!
I’m gigging BB in 3 different but similar projects. A Duo (me on acoustic guitar/vocals and the wife on Upright Bass) play a 4 hour gig at a Farmers Market on Wednesdays, we add a Banjo Player and another Acoustic Guitarist/Singer for the same Market on Saturdays AND the same players (adding a few more) on Sunday Mornings for the Worship Service at a Church.
Our style is Acoustic Roots Americana. We use a Fishman SA220 Solo Performer PA for the Market gigs and there is a Bose System at the church (200 seat room). Guitars, Banjo, vocals and Beatbuddy go through the PA and we use Fender amps for Upright Bass and Electric Guitar.
I program and run the BB in all 3 projects. In the duo, I have the BB midi synced to a Boomerang 3 for jamming and noodling.
We love the Beatbuddy - it really elevated our band vibe and brought an added element of professionalism and energy to our music. I would never go back to playing without it!
8daypsalmist, thanks for your input… Your versatility with the BB sounds very interesting! Please post some videos when you can. I’d love to see y’all in action!
My biggest recommendation is you must have a monitor that is primarily for being able to hear the beat well, particularly if you sing as well as play. I personally use the headphone out as the feed for a small personal dedicated monitor that I have on a stand similar to aashideacon. It’s frustrating if you have to focus on staying in time in a loud room and this helps. My biggest problem with the pedal is there’s no way of having a heads-up display attached to the mic stand. I’d rather not have to look down while singing but I don’t trust myself to stomp on the right thing at the right time and then release it at the right time.
Thanks Charles, I hadn’t thought about using the headphone output as a monitor feed!
I posted some notes about a month ago (http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?posts/19011/) but in brief (you can hear some of the work in the mp3s via the FB link in my signature) - we work as an ‘acoustic-based’ trio (two acoustic guitars running through pedal boards with an electric lead) and all switch off on bass and I add flute on occasion.
We run everything including an amp mic, a bass DI, pedal board outs that include Harmony G vocal boxes on the mics and Beat Buddy stereo outs first through a Boss vol pedal into a 12 ch mixer. The L/R mains pass through a 31 band EQ on the way into EVZXA1 (800 Watts each) powered speakers with a QSC12 (1000 W) on the floor mostly for the electric guitarist who refuses to adopt IEMs like the other two of us and complains about his hearing. We play a variety of outdoor events, local small bar gigs and really aim for the larger restaurant venues that can separate ‘family diners’ from entertainment seekers.
Shaemus (known to you all as Beat Buddy) was expected to add to a handful of songs and within days of getting it 5+ months ago it wound up on almost everything we play and we would never go without it. I don’t program and am adamant about having freedom to let live music happen when we play. The device just flows into the style of what we do. Volume control, pausing, some intros and outros. I rarely but sometimes do mis-step but found even then I can recover gracefully. For instance prematurely ending a song when I meant to pause it. We do Breathe/Time (Pink Floyd) finishing with the final Breathe verse and in the guitar solo in the middle (Time) I shut BB off with an outro, restarted as the solo progressed, paused the restarted song after the intro fill and restarted in time on the next measure. Panic can be the mother of invention. When I listened to it later (we tap everything off stereo outs from the EQ feed to record as an mp3)…it sounded very cool.
As an added ‘note of interest’ I am building and using sound absorbers both to advertise who we are and to place in front of offending hard surfaces like glass or corners that capture sound badly. If you ever found you had to set up with your mic pointing at a window and tried to get sufficient gain to be heard you know what I mean. Let me know if you are interested in details (basically a 2" Roxul rigid foam pad backed by 1/4" board covered with fabric - cool overly expensive stenciling extra).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ox8a86zks7bjgy9/Acoustic%20Drive%20absorber.JPG?dl=0
I’ve been gigging with mine since I got it, way back in 2014. Well over 100 gigs with it, mainly either solo acoustic, or with a duo. I did the footswitch jack modification to control the main pedal function, which allows me to mount to my mic stand and be within arm’s reach for quick tempo changes, volume adjustments, etc. as well as being able to see the visual display much better. Non-latching (momentary) switches in both footswitches.
My only advice is to make sure your footswitch cable(s) are high quality, and well taken care of. Nothing worse than the BB pausing at random, which actually happened at one of my earliest shows with it.
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I got the Beatbuddy at the end of December. Spent quite a bit of time between Christmas and New Years figuring out how to use it, how to save songs, etc. Played 2 gigs with it the past two weeks. Our band is a trio = acoustic guitar/lead vocal; electric bass/backup vocal; and I play electric guitar, keyboard, electric violin and do some lead and background vocals. I run the Beatbuddy for the group. We play classic rock, some country, Elvis, etc. Freebird, Hey Jude, Folsom Prison Blues, Blue Suede Shoes, Volcano, I Shot The Sheriff were all in the set list last night. For the first gig, we ran the BB into the PA and monitor speakers. EV powered speakers, Allen and Heath mixer, QSC K10s for monitors. The bar was very loud, crowd was loud, and it was tricky to hear our instruments and voices over the BB in the monitors, but if we turn the BB down, we couldn’t hear it. An audience member came up to play cowbell on “Don’t Fear The Reaper” and wanted to drag the tempo. I had to pause the BB, because we couldn’t match up against the slow cowbell. So last night, we simply ran the BB into an EV monitor speaker, 12", 1000 watts. We placed the speaker directly behind the band, facing out, about where a drummer would be. We didn’t run anything else into this monitor. We cranked the BB up, but we didn’t put it through the PA. Worked great! The band could hear the BB and stay with it, but it didn’t overpower our vocals and instruments in the monitors or the mains. My wife in the audience said the balance was great! Seems more like playing with an acoustic drummer in the back of a band. I use a wired headset microphone, partly because of switching between guitar and keyboard, but mostly so I can see the BB and the footswitch while I’m singing. The band agrees that it’s a great addition! We have had many more people dancing at the last 2 gigs than ever before, and I think it’s the drum groove that really gets us grooving and the people want to dance. At the first gig, I did more fills, but I find that less is more, and I didn’t fill that much last night. I love the pause feature, for example “Keep Your Hands To Yourself” and can pause for 1 bar, hit it on the word “hands” and it fills back into the groove. Overall, I’m very happy with this unit. It sounds great, and I’ve been able to use a lot of the grooves that came with it. I’ve edited some so that they fit the songs we play. I don’t use the “Outro” button very often, mostly I just fill 1 bar before we are going to quit, and then pause the pedal on our final bar. Depends on the song, of course. I posted a picture of us playing, although you can’t see the beat buddy…[ATTACH=full]2127[/ATTACH]
Love to hear the success stories!
I do the same thing as well at some of the gigs I do with my duo (bass player/singer and myself). I use an older Behringer powered 12". Mostly for low end because he runs a Bose system and the sub is difficult to hear standing close to it. We run the BB into it’s own channel, and use one of the AUX outs to connect, that way we have control over mains/monitor/and the Behringer mix. I recommend doing that for anyone playing in a large or loud room if you have the resources. Feels more like playing with a real drummer.
We’ve been slowly trying to integrate the BB into our sets (2 piece guitar and bass). We’ve found that the hi hats and ride cymbal samples on all the kits seem to be mixed very loudly and doesn’t blend well with our acoustic sound; it just sounds harsh and busy.
So I’ve gone through all the kits and dropped all hi hats and ride cymbals down to about -14dB, that seems to be the sweet spot for most. I did some testing and it’s sounding great; kits that I previously wouldn’t have used are now sounding awesome. But the real test will be when I gig next.
Just got mine so not yet but will be as soon as I integrate it into my rig. I play solo (busking mostly) at farmer’s markets using a keytar and Jamman Solo XT loop pedal. The Jamman does not talk midi (swell it does but it’s their own propriety sysex) so getting it and the BB to play nice together has been a challenge as I want to use the Jamman as the master.
When I tested them they stayed in sync even without a midi clock but I wanted to be able to set the tempo in the BB from whatever was set on the jamman without having to bend down (I have them preset to the same bpm as the track num. So, select track 110, get 110 bpm etc). I figure I can move up/down through different songs (iekits) on the bb using the footswitch.
Basically I do not want to have to keep bending down to mess with things on the floor (getting old and it does not look so good anyway).
It’s taken me a couple of days but I’ve managed to get the Jamman to set the BB tempo so next step is to build a box to put all the gubbins in and stick it on my pedal board. I’ll post a video as soon as I have something. I am hoping I can get this all done in two weeks as aIl have a bar gig then so it’d be good to have a more interesting drum beat than the boring old thump thump thump of the Jamman.
More info here on my ‘random stuff’ blog : https://branchonmaybe.wordpress.com/
Got my beatbuddy for Christmas, had a few problems setting things up, but finally with help from a member and beatbuddy staff things are working great. I’ve done a few gigs as a solo playing acoustic guitar and harmonica. I use a Bose L1 Compact system. It’s the greatest system I have ever used. I connect my beatbuddy, OnSong pedal, vocalist voice 3 Harmonizer and I’m on my way. I should’ve started playing solo 40 years ago. The comments I get are unbelievable. Mostly the older ones in the audience are looking for the PA system and think I’m doing karaoke. The control I get with all my pedals through the Bose system is incredible and only weights 29lbs. I put everything in the trunk of my Solara. My Bose gives me enough volume for a hall that holds 150 people and it’s loud enough,believe me. For three or four piece bands, If that is not loud enough The Bose L1 I I system will do the job for you and it’s worth it.
I’ve been reading a little bit about beatbuddy and OnSong? I would like to learn more about that if someone speaks very simple English. Those midi terms and electronic terms I don’t understand:)
The beatbuddy is the greatest and never talks back.
Thanks Chip & Jay
Hey pepegl, next chance you get, share a video of you gigging with your BeatBuddy o_O
We do a mix of Norteno, Mariachi, Classic Rock, Western and the like and have used the BB for several years now. Our lead guitar player did not like the Intro’s on most songs and he would just start a song and then do the pause switch on the foot pedal to begin the song. It works that way like a dream and most of the time we do not use the Outro either. Since he can not see the pedal well from a distance, he puts it on the table with the monitor or amp and uses a longer stereo cable to run to the footswitch. This works well for out situation and as we become more familiar with the program it has become a useful addition to our music.