BB2 Autopilot review

BeatBuddy 2 Reviews and Feedback
1

Hi,

This is not intended as a gripe topic, but I wanted to give my feedback of autopilot as it is. I’m really hoping this isn’t the first iteration of autopilot and that the new hardware can support an array of features.

Like many of you, I solved, or worked around the lack of an autopilot issue with the BB1 by using my DAW to send MIDI commands to the BB1. This allowed me to make a handful of parts and bounce around between parts. It also let me do a random fill without losing time, or screwing up my place in the BB1. It also meant I had to bring my tablet with me to play songs hands off.

I was hopeful that the new BB2 would let me build songs similarly, so I sat down and built a couple songs, one from scratch (Dont look back in anger) and adding autopilot to a legacy song (Sweet Child O’Mine) from the premium content…and I’ve found some issues.

First let me say that BBMO is in beta, and any bugs may be fixed or features may be coming. I hope the authorities will speak up and let us know.

However, Autopilot as it is can only do two things as far as I can tell.

  1. Say how long to play a part
  2. Say when to do a fill during a part

If you have multiple of the same part, you have to duplicate the part. Parts are played in order, from top to bottom. I would have liked to see the ability to route to a specific part, but I managed with duplication and copying. I think the idea between the two options was for “copy” to let you edit multiple parts as one part, and “duplicate” would let you edit independently. This was inconstant and didn’t seem to work right. Sometimes it would edit both together and sometimes separately, regardless of how I copy/dupped.

Generally speaking, with these two features alone, you can do a lot. When you get the song into the BB2, there are a couple of issues.

  1. If you press the fill button, to add a fill, it will re-start the part. So If I’m 8 bar into the solo and I get all excited and add a fill for no reason but the joy of it, it will go back to the beginning of the part and that’s a bummer. I’m guessing this is just a bug and not intentional.
  2. We have this beautiful new screen, and it doesn’t have the name of the part and you can’t customize colors, etc. As a suggestion, i would put the song name where the “Part 1/2” is and put the part name below and allow for some, even if a handful of basic colors, to be set so we can easily determine where we are. Some songs have lots of part, ex. GnR above has 16, and it’d be nice to have some visual clues to know where I am. I’m old and don’t remember what number does what for each song.

BBMO has a few issues that I’ll list that required some workarounds, keeping in mind it’s still beta:

  1. If a midi part has empty rests at the beginning, it will remove those, sometimes when it saves and when you reload the project. So if you make a part 3 bars long, but only have notes at the end, it will only save the last bar. You can work around this by putting a beat at the very beginning of the part and set velocity to 1, or use an external midi editor to put a beat on a non-used midi note at the beginning to ensure it doesn’t play anything.
  2. It doesn’t allow you to set a part as 0 to skip it. Doing so throws an error. You can only delete the part of you don’t want it or are still working on it. To make a part for use later, I have to use my DAW to organize the part and bring them in.
  3. Fills sometimes allow 0 for “play at”, sometimes it throws an error if its 0. Couldn’t figure out what caused each.
  4. Building parts with the midi editor has issues. The window sizing isn’t working right and scrolling around was cumbersome.
  5. The little beatbuddy in the corner seemed to really struggle to play the autopilot parts. Sometimes it wouldn’t play with autopilot, and sometimes it wouldn’t respect the number of bars to play.
  6. It’d be nice to export just the autopilot info to share with others. I can export the full song, but I’m not sure the licensing rules for sharing a whole song from the paid libraries, but sharing just the autopilot in a csv or something would save people who have the songs time.

Just some notes when working in BBMO with autopilot.

  1. The transition is included in the play time.
  2. Fills have to be in order. lef to right, of when you want to play them. (Possible fix in future? Seems unnecessary)

I’m trying to be optimistic, and I hope all these things are on the roadmap to make the BB2 reach its potential, and I’d love to see a roadmap for what might be coming.

But the reality is, if I have to bring my tablet with me everywhere to get functionality out of the BB2, then what’s the point of it? My DAW has more autopilot functionality than is being provided and I can’t just toss the BB in a bag and go jam with friends, which is what I was hoping for from the new hardware. Obviously, you can’t solve the “not having friends” problem, but I hope the rest is doable.

8 Likes
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Agreed with all these points.

A few of additional feature ideas that would make AutoPilot better:

  • For Fills, in the box where you specify which measure to play the fill, allow that field to have multiple values (ie: “2, 4, 10”) and trigger the fills accordingly. Having to add more Fills, each with their own #, is cumbersome. (this would also be great for the Main parts).
  • In BBMO, when playing/auditioning an Autopilot song (using the BB illustration in the left corner)…let us “start at” a specific part #. For example, I may want to verify that I have the right # of measures in Part #6. As it is now, I have to play the song from the start, and press the next part button to jump ahead to that part.
  • Let us specify/set the new “velocity” value in the part (instead of having to utilize an expression pedal). I already have 1 expression pedal controlling BB volume (via midi). I do not want to add second expression pedal just to adjust the dynamic velocity a couple of times during a show. Being able to specify it during a part would be great.
  • Enable a song part to send a Midi command to another device. Imagine being able to send a PC/CC command to an external device (guitar FX, etc.) to “automate” changes in sync with the song/part.
1 Like
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Very much agree with your last point. Specifically I was expecting that there would be more integration between the BB2 and Aeros. A very useful option would be the ability to have BB2 send various CC113 commands to Aeros at the end of each BB2 song part so that the Aeros transitions in sync with the BB2. What I would really like is to be able to transition to any Aeros song part and not necessarily sequence (e.g. if I want to cycle between verse and chorus). Without this feature I still have to tap buttons on the Aeros or MM during a BB2 autopilot song to tell the Aeros what song part to play next.

So could we have two more columns at the end of each song part in BBMO? One to select which BB2 song part to transition to ( to allow out of sequence transitions) and another to select which Aeros song part to transition to.

I’d like to see this feature so that I can record and use my own backing tracks on the Aeros to go along with the BB2 autopilot songs. For now my Aeros backing tracks for BB2 Autopilot songs will have to be one (the first) part of a 2x2 or 6x6 song that plays for the totality of the song. Kind of like a OPB for the Aeros :). It will start when the BB does but it won’t transition to a different part when the BB does. But it would be really nice to be able to split up the Aeros song into parts for recording and editing purposes and then link all the various parts to the BB parts for use with autopilot. That would be a ‘killer combo’ and it might even help to ‘drive’ sales of the BB2 and the Aeros ;).

1 Like
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All good points and suggestions.

I’m not sure why they didn’t use their MIDI engine for autopilot. It does everything they need it to do. They can send and receive MIDI, why not just read a file, and fire off midi to yourself if it has the BB channel. If the file has a different channel, then send it outbound for that channel. You can read files, you can send/receive MIDI, seems like all you’d need is a GUI to go around it. The BBMO could just have a timeline like a DAW does for a song, and you click where you want changes, and when you want them. Right now, you can’t do partial (middle bar) changes like you can by clicking a BB button, or using an external midi command.

I use Reaper as my DAW, and every new project loads with all the BB MIDI command files in a muted track. All I have to do is copy a MIDI command to where I want it on the timeline of the BB outbound track and I can make autopilot songs all day. I can go to any part, fill anywhere, and if hit accent, or fill on the BB, it will just keep going without a problem. I can also auto pause, start, has labels for where I am, etc, etc. I’d hope to have the BB do this work so I don’t have to bring a computer with me everywhere.

I assumed there was a limitation in the BB1 that made that impossible, but I would have hoped the BB2 would implement it so we could have all sort of control over a song and other devices. While I don’t really expect the BB to be some master controller for all the MIDI devices, it should be able to have full control over the flow of its own songs. Granted it seem like a gimmie to have the BB send custom outbound MIDI to an external device like a looper, or effects pedal.

Hopefully our suggestions are on the roadmap already, and that the BB2 doesn’t have any limitations like the BB1 has. We’re at version 1.0 and the BB1 has been given lots of love over the years with new functionality. I suspect that the same will happen with the BB2.

2 Likes
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Hi everyone,

Thank you all for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback on the BB2 Autopilot and BBMO. We really appreciate the effort you’ve put into testing, exploring, and sharing your experiences.

If you have specific features or enhancements you’d like to see implemented, the best way to make sure they get considered is to post them as separate feature requests. Once you do that, I can forward them directly to our development team for review. This helps us prioritize what matters most to our users and ensures that your ideas are heard.

Similarly, if you encounter any bugs, please post each bug as a new, separate post—one bug at a time—so we can address it properly. Be sure to include detailed steps to reproduce the issue, as this helps our team investigate and resolve it more efficiently.

Thanks again for your support, suggestions, and patience as we continue to improve the BB2 !

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I created a feature thread for the stuff here, feel free to add more:

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You can use the keyboard: type “6” to jump directly to the sixth part