Hi all, i am new to this forum and really interested to buy a BB, but i would like to know beforehand if anyone has midi synced bb with Boss rc5 looper pedal.
If yes, My questions are:
1: if i play and loop a guitar part and then trigger the drum beats, does the BB match auto sync tempo like the rc5 does?
2: How does the looped track(guitar part) from rc5 behave upon the signal triggers to BB for rolling/pause/transition mode, intro etc.
3: Does the loop get quantised?,
4 : Does it stay synced?
5 : While rolling, does the loop pause or still play continuously?
6: can i pause the guitar loop only and play different song part along with the BB beat?
7 : if question 6 is possible, can i trigger the rc5 to play back the paused loop at any time and will it still be on sync with BB?
Any input is appreciated.
Thank you all in advance.
thanks Brennan for the reply. I have ordered the BB and eagerly waiting for the delivery. then i will be able to try it out myself to find the answers to my questions above.
cheers
Hi all,
thought i would share my experience syncing BB and Boss RC5 for those who have similar queries like I had initially, now that i have used them for couple of months, these points cover all the answers to the questions above.
When BB set as Master and Rc5 as slave:
They sync very well, BB sends the tempo and also sends signal to RC5 for pause, unpause, stop.
On Fills and transitions, the Rc5 loop keeps playing.
The Rc5 loop only starts to play after the intro has finished. And stops at the end of the BB Outro.
Pausing BB stops the Rc5 loop. Unpausing BB starts the Rc5 loop from the beginning. And is always in sync.
The BB and Rc5 stays synced as long as they are both set to same Time signature.
You can pause and unpause the Rc5 loop anytime independently while still having the BB playing. Here, again, pause on Rc5 will be STOP the loop, And an unpause will start the loop from the beginning.
You have to unpause the Rc5 loop at the beginning of the BB 1st measure to have them re-synced. It is really easy to achieve the re-sync.
On the fly changing the tempo on BB changes the pitch of the Rc5 loop.
Now,
When Rc5 as master and BB as slave.
You cannot really do much with this setup. The Rc5 sends Tempo to BB and the beat on BB will play with the tempo that Rc5 auto reads from your loop. So it will be on sync. BUT only with a BB song without an intro.
If you have an intro on a song on BB, and lets say, you recorded a loop on Rc5 and the Rc5 triggers START to BB at the start of the loop playback, the BB intro kicks in. And… boy, you will be so out of sync that you cant even think of making it right.
the Rc5 start command triggers BB to start and the Rc5 stop command Pauses the BB.
the multi function dial knob on the Rc5 reacts to the BB, when rotated, 01 memory will locate first song of the first folder of BB. 02 memory will locate the second song of the same folder. and so on… it only reacts to the very First folder of the BB.
I may have missed some other features but will surely update when i come across them.
please feel free to ask any question related to these two devices and i will try to answer prior to your purchase decision.
If you were to ask me, I always have my BB set as Master.
Hi, I just got a rc-5 to attempt to replace my infinity which seems to have started crashing randomly… have you had any joy making the rc-5 sync start/stop to the beat buddy’s measure?
One of the great features of the Infinity was it ‘recognises’ the first beat of the bar and syncs its start stop to that so you don’t have to press the pedal bang on the downbeat of the first bar. I can’t seem to make the rc-5 replicate that behaviour.
Hi @Cups not sure if i got your question right, to sync your loop to BB, you need to end the loop on Rc5 right at the start of 1st measure of BB beat lap so both Rc5 loop and the BB beat starts together and stay synced. So may be thats something that Infinity does and Rc5 lacks.
sometimes it seems it doesn’t quite sync right as if the RC5 is time stretching the loop, especially longer loops. The loop should be just about perfect, and if the loop isn’t QUITE on, it would be better for it to just simply restart on each loop at the right time, no?
I am talking a 24 bar song structure, so maybe its just about being totally perfect?
I’m also going to restart stuff and see what happens.
I’ve tried to make 10 memory slots to use different options when it comes to loop length -
Free, Auto, 1,2,4,8,12,16,24,32 bar lengths. I figured if the unit knew what was happening, it would transmit better, but no, same issues. Very very slight deviations.
so I gave up on the beatbuddy being master.
I had an idea.
What if i programmed the rythhm section to be at 0 volume, but adjusted settings pertaining to that?
RYTH level 0
START before loop (so that you can start beatbuddy first and have something to play over? It doesnt actually seem to start right away though)
STOP loop stop
REC and PLAY count at 0, but it would be neat to have a metronome here or something
It seems to work great! I think im going to keep messing with settings and see the different results I get.
It seems to not actually trigger recording right away, recording seems to wait for me to start, but when I do, the BB kicks on. No tempo fluctuations that I can sense.
Hi @Nepali_brother ! Could you please help me with something? I managed to sync my BB x RC5, in fact it’s basically plug-and-play. And I even made myself a custom cable as your schematics you posted in another thread, thank you VERY MUCH for that! Works flawlesly! But I wonder if I could go a little advanced and STOP/CLEAR my loop at the end of a transition. This configuration would save me a step in. my pedalboard. At the end of my soloing I have to step three times: One for Fill/Transition, one for changing the patch of my GT-1B, and the last one to STOP/CLEAR the RC5. That’s really prone to a tragic error into my performances.
Hi @BobWilliam sorry for late response…
hope you are keeping well and i am very glad to know that my posts were helpful for you.
Regarding the stop/clear right after fill/transition and also to acquire that in a single tap, i haven’t tried that specific action myself but i suppose a midi controller (you are probably familiar with them) would probably be able to do so, sending multiple messages on a single tap and release. I use morning star MC6 and you can send multiple commands on a single tap. (I’m gonna have to test this specific action that you wanted to do before i confirm since the stop/clear is a combination of two midi commands itself i think and i dont know yet how it reacts to fill/transition when the commands are sent together; if it stops and clears while transition is happening or triggered; or it may well finish fill/transition first and then stop/clear which you would expect?? )
Let me know how it goes if you ever try this with a midi controller before i do because i haven’t used my pedals for quite a long time now. hopefully soon.
Thank you again @Nepali_brother ! STOP/CLEAR at the end of a transition would be the best, because in my situation I just want to REC a few measures while singing/playing the chorus section, then start soloing. I even noticed now, that it would be nice to STOP-REC/PLAY too, after a transition, this would be even more convenient! My ideal situation would be basically like this:
Step REC on RC-5 while Playing/Singing the chorus section (or any section whatever)
Long-Step transition on BB would stop recording the RC-5 at the end and start looping
After finished solo section, Long-Step transition on BB would STOP/CLEAR the RC-5 at the end.
THAT would be awesome!
A couple months ago I was thinking about getting a MC8, or maybe another MIDI controller, custom made by brazilian fellows from EB Audio, but gave up the idea fearing to add even more complexity to my rig.
while the RC5 is playing the loop,
You long press BB for the transition,
while the transition is taking place, press the assigned additional footswitch which is set to outro.
This will Stop RC5 at the end of the transition/outro combined.
This will again require additional tap which you can only get away with a midi controller.
I figured out in this sheet provided by Singular Sound that the command BB sends out in the end of a transition is CC102, and in the parameter guide from BOSS it says that the only commands that I can setup is CC80~CC87
As you said, the only way I could set this up would be with the help of a good MIDI Footcontroller. To me, I think I will practice a little harder to get used to the tap dance
