Hi guys, I’m considering ordering external MIDI Master Clock device, to be able to start/stop BB and other devices (Aeros looper) independently of each other, so that I could e.g. start a song by just writing some loops, and then I want drums to kick in, with the intro fill, perfectly in sync; then pause the looper, then unpause it, etc etc.
But before I go ahead and order some MIDI Master Clock device, can someone confirm that having external clock, with MIDI IN configured on BB, when I hit the start button on BB itself, BB will do the following:
Play intro fill until the end of the measure (be it almost full measure or some very short time - just like regular fills in the middle of the song)
After the end of the measure, start playing regular drums
Essentially, yes, but the construction of the song that is active in the BB will be the controlling factor.
With the Beat Buddy midi in setting set to Sync>Enable, your BB will use the external clock as it’s clock. When you press play on the BB, the BB will play the intro section first. The intro could be one measure, or it could be many measures, but it will play through one time, the move on to main loop 1. Main loop 1 could be one measure or many measures, but it will play continuously until the BB receives a command to either play a transition, which will then move it to main loop 2, if the song contains a main loop 2. If there is no main loop 2, the BB will return to the beginning of main loop 1. If you double tap the BB, the BB will move on to the outro section, which it will play one time and then end.
As to whether it plays “regular drums,” well, it will play whatever drum kit is active, and it will play whatever pattern or patterns are programmed into main loop 1.
Thanks @Phil_Flood. Glad to know that BB still plays intros and outros with external clock.
I wanted to clarify one specific thing about syncing up with external clock. Let’s assume the following:
Active BB’s song contains intro with the length of exactly one measure;
BB is stopped;
We’re exactly in the middle of the measure right now.
At this moment, I press play on the BB.
So without the external clock, BB acts as follows: immediately resets clock to the beginning of the measure, plays full intro (one measure), then moves on the main loop 1.
But with external clock enabled, I presume that BB can’t reset clock to the beginning of the measure. So what exactly does it do in this case? Variants that make sense to me are:
Start playing intro immediately, not from the beginning but from the middle of it (because we were in the middle of the measure when I pressed play on BB), and at the end of the measure, move to main loop 1
Remain silent until current measure ends (i.e. wait for half a measure), then play full intro (one full measure), then move to main loop 1
So does it do one of those two things (which one?), or does it do something else?
I’ll try to set up some scenarios to play with this and report back. M6 guess is that the BB will start playing the intro from the beginning, ignoring the position in the measure and starting at the next available beat. I’ll try to sync it to an Alexis machine first, and then to a 2nd
BB.
Oh, that sounds terrible, it means that I can’t reliably start/stop BB separately from the other components and expect things to stay in sync. I really hope BB handles it better than that…
Start playing intro immediately, not from the beginning but from the middle of it (because we were in the middle of the measure when I pressed play on BB), and at the end of the measure, move to main loop 1…
When I did this, the BB played the intro from its beat 1 of the intro. It ignored the place with the pattern of the master unit, in this case the Alesis SR-16.
Remain silent until current measure ends (i.e. wait for half a measure), then play full intro (one full measure), then move to main loop 1…
When I did this, the BB plays the full intro then moves on to the next part. Note, it does not play just one measure of the intro, it play the full intro if it is multiple measures.
Pausing - If I pause the BB when playing the intro, upon resume it starts a main loop 1 beat 1. If I pause main loop 1 it reverts to beat 1 of main loop 1. Note that I was using the default BB midi settings, and did not try a change in the Mute/Pause settings. The BB defaults to “midi activated” in the mute pause settings, but, as I stated, upon a resume from a pause it always goes to beat 1 of the main loop.
Hm that definitely sounds like either BB firmware has a bug, or that MIDI sync didn’t work at all in the setup. Did you have an evidence that BB did recognize the MIDI IN clock?