BB Manager stitches my song together but BB pedal does not

Aeros Loop Studio
1

I’ve created a couple of beats for the Bowie song Modern Love using Anvil Studio, which I’ve used a hundred times. When I play the song in the BB manager and navigate through using the the “virtual” BB pedal (in the upper left corner) everything stitches together perfectly (meaning, the transitions from one midi beat to the next are seamless). But when I try the same song using the real BB pedal there is a 4 beat lag at each transition. I have made many many midi beats and BB Manager and Pedal are always in locks step…I’ve never encountered this. Not sure how to remedy it. I’ve attached the BB song. THANKS for any help you can render.

Modern_Love.sng (749.3 KB)

2

Sometimes, but not always, the Intro or Outro causes a chain reaction throughout the rest of the song sections.

I checked out your song in the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM) and the Intro seems to be the problem as the ending lags. Usually this means that the MIDI file wasn’t edited to end exactly on the (in this case) end of the bar. Once I adjusted the end of the MIDI file section in my DAW (digital audio workstation), it no longer lags at the end of the Intro and the rest of the song sections transition smoothly.

I can’t verify this on my pedal as my rig is still elsewhere so I’ll leave it up to you to verify on your pedal.

Here’s the file I edited. Just download, unzip and replace your Intro section with mine and let me know if that helps or whether or not I need to do some more troubleshooting. If you’re still having issues, you might use your DAW to check that your sections are ending properly.

NEW INTRO.mid.zip (769 Bytes)

3

Hi Persist
Thank you SO much for your help. It didn’t solve the problem though (on the pedal). My intro worked well in the BB manager but not on the pedal - same as your intro. It’s really weird. So strange.

Here’s what I tried since posting this issue…

  1. make a whole new BB “song” using the same midi files - no help
  2. exported each midi file back into Anvil Studio to “cleave off” any time segments at the end. There were none but I figured I’d try anyway. Then replace each midi file with the new “cleaved” ones. - no help.
  3. of course, tried your “new intro” midi. Same result.

I’m wondering if time signature differences could have something to do with it, but each midi (even the fills) are created in 4/4 time. Bowie’s intro may be something different but not sure.

And, of course, yours and mine are transitioning beautifully in BB Manager.

4

Weird but solvable. I’ll try to test some more when I get my gear (BB) back tomorrow.

5

Got my gear back a day sooner than expected.

I just finished testing your song (that you posted here—not my edited version) on my BeatBuddy (BB) pedal and there were no issues with any of the transitions. I used firmware version 3.8.0. I renamed the song to FULL Modern Love as I intended to test the song by removing one section at a time and saving different versions of your song to try and identify the bad section on the pedal and then examine that section’s MIDI file using my DAW (digital audio workstation). Lucked out and didn’t have to test beyond the FULL Modern Love iteration.

Might try to download a fresh copy of the firmware and use your computer SD slot to copy or drag the firmware files to your card. In the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM) and delete the version of Modern Love and import the version I used and attached here. Beyond trying these 2 usual suspects, I can’t think of anything else to suggest. You could try restoring your pedal to default settings as well.
FULL_Modern_Love.sng (749.3 KB)

6

Firstly, thanks again! Secondly, your FULL version works fine on my BB pedal!

A bit more background… When I set up Modern Love, I had made a fill (it’s in the version you have there) and tried using it also as a transition fill. It worked fine as a mid midi fill but only produced 4 beats of dead air when used as a transition fill. So as part of my trouble shooting I took those trans fills out, but the dead air remained.

Tried dismantling the song, re-assembling it with a new name, still the dead persisted. So I took out the transition fills but the dead air remained. I guess I sent you the version with no trans fill which gave dead air to me but it worked for you. Very odd.

Also of note, I updated to the latest version of BB pedal firmware prior to starting this project, so I can’t say it was the update that caused the issue. BUT this was the first song I tried to set up since the update and I’ve never had a problem like this in all the years I’ve been using BB.

For kicks, I took your FULL version and added back in the trans fill - dead air came back!! Took them out, the dead air was gone. So while my version seemed indelibly scarred by the fills, yours was not.

My BB pedal was preordered WAYYYYYYY back in the day - I had to wait for it several months - my SN is 0003798. So it’s old and quite worn. Many gigs, countless hours of rehearsal and recording. Maybe it’s just getting to the end of its life span? HOWEVER, no other songs exhibited this behavior. And I’m at a point now that I’m creating about half of the midi’s that I use when making songs so I can’t even blame it on my piss-poor midi skills.

My BB manager software version 1.6.5.0, which seems to be the latest one. I upgraded that probably a couple of years ago.

Anyway, this problem seems solved. I’ll have to see if there are any recurrences when I get around to making a new song. Maybe it’s just gremlins!

Thanks again for all your help!

7

Glad you sorted it out.