Exactly. The music has to breathe. Can’t fill every space.Silence can be a beautiful sound.
Totally with you here. The MIDI notes must fully comply General MIDI mapping. But to be honest, if you skip Latin drumset, all MIDI notes covered by BeatBuddy are very conformant.
Can you be more specific in what you feel is the major discrepancy for you? MIDI note 35? It is simply not supported at all. You can use note 36 instead of that. It’s not the discrepancy.
Version 1.0 is just about done. It would have been done already if I wasn’t shoveling snow every other day (blower died after storm #4) or chipping ice off my house (it’s raining in my first floor) or fixing my furnace (main zone valve stopped opening). I also burned up a little time with the MIDI tick to grid arithmetic because I was thrown by the fact that note-on events with 0 volume are actually to be treated as note-off events (MIDI standard was created by sadists) and some downloaded MIDIs I was using for testing made it look like my math was off. Also I haven’t done any desktop software development in Java/Swing in almost a decade, there was a little bit of a learning curve, as there is a lot of do-it-yourself even when it comes to pretty standard stuff.
Version 1 has:
bulk adjustment of instrument’s note volume, either setting to value or increase/decrease
bulk adjustment of all note volumes (handy for getting consistent song levels, without use of a compressor)
cut / copy / delete / paste / insert bars
drum kit editing (I’ll provide the standard BB kits out of the box)
*pre-filtering of MIDI files: when it loads a MIDI it only cares about drum related notes and it puts them all onto a single track
*saving pieces of a MIDI track to individual files
These last two features are biggies for the non-MIDI folks. It means you can take a downloaded MIDI file, open it, and see only the drum track. Then if it’s obvious based on the measure counts or the instruments being used where the transitions are, then you can use the save-range functionality to extract the verse/chorus/bridge etc., something I really wish that other MIDI editors had, but I can understand why they would not.
Great, can’t believe you’ve done it so fast.
I changed the smallest note size to 64ths because 32nds really didn’t allow for a swing plus you can create rolls now. To make this workable I added zoom-in/zoom-out. I added the ability to randomize the volumes for an instrument using a range you provide. After you plunk down a bunch of notes at say 70, then this will let you make the volume vary randomly say between 65 and 75. I’ve also added a swell function because it’s a real pain to create a cymbal swell or drum roll swell. The only thing left to do is add time signature support and version 1.0 will be done. [ATTACH=full]732[/ATTACH]
Version 1.0 is ready to go, I just need to work out the packaging. I’m going to try to make installation as simple as possible so I’m thinking I’ll package one version that comes with the Java minimal runtime environment and another that uses what is already on the PC, the main difference being tradeoff of a larger download size for the simplicity of not requiring a separate Java installation. I know nothing about Mac packaging, so that may take a little help from a Mac developer.
In the meantime, for those really itching to get their hands on it, I can give them a Java application JAR file and a Windows CMD file or Mac OS X command script file to launch it, if they already have a Java runtime environment installed.
oh, another feature I threw in: display the note event count (for those of us trying to limbo our way under the 500 events limitation)
So where’s the download link already? 
As a drummer I can give some input on this. 8th notes are not enough especially if you want creative bass drum kicks, or snares (such as jazz) if your desire is to use real tempos (As opposed to using tricks and workarounds to a limited system, like running the drum tempo twice as fast as the real tempo to get the beat the way you want it to sound) I think you are thinking along the lines of HiHats, but when talking subdivisions you need to think of it as the smallest quantity needed within Hi Hat strikes. I don’t have a Beatbuddy yet as I really am waiting for the bass lines thing to be worked out, but if you listen to metal (especially speed metal) its all about the crazy bass kicks (even in alternative rock) and in Blues/Jazz its all about snare hits (of varying velocity) 16ths would be best for real flexibility, but many drum machines/sequencers have an option where you can choose this subdivision, so maybe you could have an option to choose 8th, 16th or even 32nd, but default it to 8th notes to keep it simple.
I would’t expect it to be built with less than 32nds. The 8th, 16th 32nd subdivision switchability would be nice giving more measures view-able at once.
I opted for 64th notes being the smallest unit because while I was testing opening various MIDIs, I opened “No Woman No Cry” and the quantatization to 32nds made it sound awful, the swing was gone. The problem was then that I could only fit about two measures on my laptop’s screen and it was hard on the eyes. So to compensate, one, I added the ability to zoom out so you can traverse a song more easily, and two, I played around with the grid line coloration so it was easier on the eyes. I emphasized the quarter note boundaries, slightly emphasized the eighth note boundaries, and very slightly emphasized the 16th note boundaries (the previous screen shots aren’t up to date).
Sorry for the delay, but last night I added a most-recently-opened-files section to the file menu which will be immensely helpful if you’re bouncing between song fragments, and that involved creating a config file writer/reader. The app also now remembers the directory you’re working out of which is helpful and it has one of those getting started pop-ups when you run it for the first time.
More importantly, I’ve been struggling with getting the #@&*%'ing Java table component to fully update itself when you switch drum kits. So, to get this thing out there, for release 1.0, I’m skipping the multi-kits feature for now. The instruments for the standard kit will cover the instruments for almost all the standard BB kits plus I’m adding a couple common extras: tambourine, maracas, bongos. I’m guessing that will cover 90% of what people will need, for now.
You are so right, my Texas Swing 1/8 notes will need to fit at 1/16, 1/32 or 1/64th boundaries. Depending on the number of Tequila’s.
is a shaker possible at this stage?
Where’s the download link?
We only hope that this is not shipping with DHL 
Ok, for those that want to try it out, here’s the “unpackaged” version.
If you don’t have a Java JRE installed, install from here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html
(choose jre-8u31-windows-x64.exe after agreeing to the license agreement) To check if you have if you have it, and the necessary version, you can execute “java -version” in a command prompt window. You need at least Java 1.7
Download the attached BeatBuilder.cmd.sng to your desktop and rename it BeatBuilder.cmd (this forum forced me to call it a .sng file)
Download the BeatBuilder.jar.sng, rename it BeatBuilder.jar, and move it somewhere appropriate
right-click and edit the BeatBuilder.cmd modify the text “BeatBuilder.jar” to include the path to the file
the easiest thing to do is drop the BeatBuilder.jar file in a folder like C:\Program Files\BeatBuilder\ and then change the text to “%PROGRAMFILES%\BeatBuilder\BeatBuilder.jar”
To add notes to the track, double click on empty cells. To delete notes, double click them. Right-clicking on a note brings up the volume adjustment menu and right clicking on an instrument in the row header brings up the bulk volume adjustment menu. You can click and drag to select a range of beats for deletion or for copying to other parts of the track.
Top effort Charles. I downloaded and had a go. Im not gonna stop using reaper but this gives people somewhere to start with creating there own Midi’s
Cheers
Thanks Stu! Yeah my target user was the person who doesn’t want to learn about tracks and channels and MIDI instrument numbers etc. etc. etc… I’ve been working with MIDI for 20 years so all that stuff is second nature to me, and still, working with freeware/shareware MIDI editors to make a drum tracks, particularly for BB and it’s subset of instruments (and strange mapping of Latin percussion) is tedious. Downloading a MIDI file and merging channel 10 tracks and remapping bass, snare, and tom notes for BB is pretty tedious using the available freeware and based on forums posts, a bit confusing to people, ie. “why do I only hear the hi-hat and crash”.
Thanks!!!