Except that, to make a OPB file, ir sounds like it requires modification of a midi file. I don’t do midi.
I would happily use an OPB file, but alas, the songs I’m looking for are not that popular.
Still waiting on the promised feature that has never been delivered. Where are you AutoPilot? 
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Imagine the happiness and joy when this feature will finally be released! I’m following closely and haven’t yet bought a BB- but will when I know for sure this feature will eventually make the light of day.
I’m with the majority of users who have commented on their frustration with unacceptable responses like yours, wrt software updates and the long awaited Auto Pilot feature for BB. When I first purchased BB along with the Premium Content, I quickly realized it was not a usable “live performance” device as I had planned to use it. Maybe an Octopus can do it, but mere mortals that play an instrument and sing, play solos etc. during a song performance find it impossible to navigate through all the “Parts” at the exact right timing, while playing. Thus the strong desire for Auto Pilot! Tried to be patient, even bought the next year’s Premium Content, and the next year’s Premium Content as a gesture of loyalty to what I think can be a great product. Turns out the 2022 PC was a waste of money compared to what was already available in 2021 PC. So no more of that stupidity on my part. But I sure do get reliable weekly AEROS spam on email and text, while you make zero progress on the BB features and capability. Not one more penny for you SS, until you deliver.
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Right On Man!!
Well…I bought one. It’ll be here in two days. I’m excited about using it- but since it’s lacking AutoPilot, I’ll be learning how to use it along with BBM and Midi to make some One Press Songs for my set lists. I am not a drummer, nor a MIDI person, but think I understand the workflow, so wish me luck.
I have to say, I am a bit worried that SS might be working on a new device that will replace the BB and hence, the lack of development for older tech that’s difficult to reprogram and work with AP…I’ll be disappointed if, after receiving it, I find out a newer model is soon available that has AP and a ton of other new features!
Hi
Well @Bighouse hope you enjoy the BB. Not wanting to be a damp squib about it, I personally will not spend another penny with SS until they sort out the mess that is the BB software. It isn’t just the lack of auto-pilot it is the mess that is the software as a whole. It is nothing short of terrible and SS make zero effort to improve it, despite repeated promises (lies) for literally YEARS that a new version that fixes all the s**t that the current software delivers is ‘coming soon’.
Seriously SS, ask yourself this. If you offered a full refund on return of a BB from dissatisfied users, how many unhappy customers would take you up on it? More than you could handle I would guess. Not a great endorsement is it?
Meanwhile SS forge ahead with rafts of improvements and new features for their Aeros baby, which is a complete slap in the face for the buyers of the BB that got their company off the ground in the first place.
And the worst thing of all is their TOTAL lack of reliable and regular communication about what they intend to deliver and where they are with delivering it. Nothing. Just an occasional message in a thread like this assuring us that they do love BB users really and that ‘something’ is coming our ‘sometime’. It is frankly pathetic. I feel I wasted hundreds of dollars on a complete mis-sell. And yes, you guessed it, I am pissed.
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Thank you for stating exactly how I feel. Ridiculous.
Very well said.
Well, I’ve heard others share your feelings. I would prefer BBM be a more modern app, with drag and drop capabilities even, but should be able to do with the pedal what I hope to do, without the lacking modern improvements.
I will know soon enough as it should arrive tomorrow.
I am still hoping that SS makes good on their promise for substantial fixes/upgrades including AP.
It’s not the point, I’ve paid for the entire premium collection based on the promise of autopilot. I also don’t want to be reliant on community content, for me the whole point is to use professional quality beats from the premium library.
As I’ve said in other posts I play guitar and sing and have bunch of other pedals on the floor. I just need the BB to play the drums !
Well yeah, I play songs that I’m familiar with. I wouldn’t try to perform a song that I have never heard of before, even if Autopilot was available. You have to be familiar with the song, and practice it. Once you get familiar with the song, you’ll hear where the transitions are.
We rehearse every song many times before playing it live, but not many of the songs have few enough transitions to be usable live for me.
One song in our set is sultans of swing, I tried to learn to transition that while playing guitar and singing.
There are just too many transitions, I spent hours playing along with the song and I just couldn’t figure out all the transitions, and in less than 30 seconds I was out of time with the song.
I’m sure I could hack out parts etc but why should I, when I bought the songs I expected to be able to use them out the box.
I’ve come to accept that I just don’t want the extra learning curve and time required to learn to use the beatbuddy as another instrument,.I play guitar and sing, the whole point of the beatbuddy for me was it played the drums.
I’ve made this point a few times now so sorry for repeating myself, I want the auto pilot feature or the beatbuddy and especially the premium library are no use to me for live use.
I accept that others are either willing to put up with its limitations or they like the control to transition themselves, but it’s not me.
Tbh I no longer have any hope that we will see the Auto Pilot, I’m not even sure we will get a new BB manager. Like others have said, the focus is on other products.
The beatbuddy was released in 2014, which by most standards is regarded as a legacy product. I’m guessing that’s why there’s no stomach to release software updates in a timely manner.
For everyone’s sake I hope I’m wrong !
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AutoPilot 2020 (3 years already) should be a small subset of the enhancements to Beat Buddy Manager.
Unfortunately there are none/zero/nill for about many many years.
Get it together Singular Sound. Great product that is rusting because of your neglect to keep it updated.
Sad.
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It would be wonderful if the BBM could make One Press songs easily through drag/drop of loops, similar to most DWAs, without having to use something like GarageBand to do so. I’m hoping when they do release an update, we see why there was such a long delay in features, and we’re all blown away by what they provide us.
As this thread relates to Auto-Pilot I won’t mention the plethora of other issues (let’s be straight here, Bugs!) with the BB manager software. It is a total dogs breakfast. SS have admitted as much by their previous, aborted, attempts to re-write it. It is software that is simply unfit for purpose and it would seem that SS have given up on it and us. And their complete lack of communication about what they are doing (apparently nothing) to make it right tells me that BB is a dead product. Yet they are still pushing it on Facebook ads regularly. Shame on them when they clearly know there are big issues with the management software for the device. Maybe they have a crate load in the warehouse they want to get rid of?
If you are listening SS (doubtful) I would be happy to conduct an open discussion with you to further in my assertions here.
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These days I pretty much use BBManager only for managing song parts and creating the song format, and then exporting the song. I might create a simple beat in there (like a high-hat count-in, or modifying a main beat to create a transition roll or something simple).
I try to minimize my involvement with BBM as much as possible. I use GarageBand for creating beats, stitching midi parts together to make 1 press songs or song parts, etc. I use the BBLoader for managing my card (Huge benefit just right there)
But I’ve made it work. With a little bit of technical savvy you can still make it do about anything you want. The key is to just have a little patience, and more importantly, have a plan for what you want the song to look like. It’d be nice if I could do it all in BBM and everything was seamless. Maybe someday.
But between the existing forum resources and a little technical knowhow it’s been a powerful addition to my live rig.
That said, it is a steep learning curve and I had experience working with IDEs before. But even if you could do all of that inside BBM, that learning curve and need to “have a plan” for the song will still be there. It will still require a decent amount of technical savvy.
My point is that if you want to build it, you can build it. It just takes a little longer and uses a few more tools than you wish it did. I don’t feel like not being able to do it all inside BBM is a dealbreaker. If I want a one press, I make a one press. If I want to combine a verse and a chorus together so it can loop on a single part, I do that. Even with with AutoPLay I probably STILL would want that freedom to configure the song the way they way I want to make it the easiest for me to play and manage along with all my other pedals and looper setup.
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Hmmm @josborn777 , the post by Goran you are replying to seems to have gone. Interesting. Or am I just missing something…
In response to your post, I think you are right if one is prepared to spends many hours playing with computers and software piecing stuff together. Although even then, the part that BBM does do that is needed anyway, the file management and transferring process, is a complete mess. Have you ever looked to see what it spits out onto you local hard drive when you create a project? It is ridiculous.
For me, I want to spend my time playing and practicing for gigs, not nursing a complex collection of software to carry out a function that SS should have provided software to do years ago. Just my view of course.
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I wasn’t actually intending to reply directly to Goran’s post. That was accidental.
I can definitely see how the process is more than a lot of people will want to do. But I think that’s still the case even if the tooling was self contained in BBM. But you can get pretty good at it with experience. I’ve spent about 4 hours working on beats this week but I’ve accomplished a lot:
- Made a DOB for “I Need a Miracle” (Grateful Dead). For this I used some Shuffle beats from the premium Shuffle beats collection. I just assembled the song in Garage Band exported, tested it out in BBM and then exported the .sng.
- Modified a forum OPB for Trucking’ (Grateful Dead). It has some tempo/time signature issues to resolve. It was a very basic beat, so I also added some lead in fills for the verses and choruses to spice it up a little. There were a few places where the bass notes didn’t quite match up in the 7/4 part, so I tweaked those. This was all done in Garage Band. Export midi, Test, Export .sng.
- Created a .sng for Bad Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce) using the recommended beat in the song matcher. This was just Save As->Rename->Set Tempo and remove intro, etc. 5 minutes of work.
- Created a .sng for Midnight Rider (Allman Bros) using the recommended beat in the song matcher. This was just Save As->Rename->Set Tempo and remove intro, etc. 5 minutes of work.
- Created a .sng for Whipping Post (Allman Bros). This one was more complicated. I had to create an 11/8 part for the intro and interlude parts. I wanted the entire verse->chorus in a single Part so that I just trigger at the end of the chorus to go into to the 11/8 part. There’s also the build up at the end of the main jam before the last chorus with a couple unique drum parts that I wanted to capture. I used a 6/8 blues beat and then used Garage Band to create the 11/8 beat and the combined Verse/Chorus midi. Then I used BBM to assemble the song and export the .sng file.
A year ago? I wouldn’t have even known where to start on a lot of that work. But now I’ve done dozens of custom songs to fit my needs and I can whip them out pretty quickly if I can find a suitable beat to start with.
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Hi guys, I just wanted to jump in here and tell you what I can.
Autopilot as a feature was never within the design scope when the BeatBuddy was first introduced. This is a feature that we have wanted to build for a long time because we know that it will make the BeatBuddy useful in a whole new context. We understand that playing songs with many song parts can be difficult and confusing and that the Autopilot feature would solve this. This is why we’ve said in the past that we plan to build it.
Again, I’ll emphasize that this wasn’t a part of the original vision for the BeatBuddy, but we still do plan to build it. It will be part of a completely rebuilt BeatBuddy Manager software, which we are currently working on. I will not give any estimated release date, because any estimate will almost certainly be wrong.
I know many of you will not be happy with this statement - the only thing you’ll be happy with is an announcement of the release of perfectly working software. But I thought that saying something is better than saying nothing. And I do want to say, for whatever it’s worth, that I do feel your pain. I want a perfectly working BeatBuddy Manager with Autopilot as well. I know that the BeatBuddy can be so much more to so many more musicians with this software living up to its full potential. All we can do is keep moving forward.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
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