There is a little bit about everyones comments I agree with. Have had mine for 4 months. Have given it my best shot without making it a full time job. As someone who plays occasional gigs but not as a money maker, having a background drum set system made sense to expand the enjoyment of playing as a singular guitar player. what I found from the outset was the “training videos” were out dated and needed to be compartamentalized for better viewership. And slow down on the descriptive and mouse movement. Second the training manuals need to be reviewed. Those that are outdated…get rid of them. Get them off the forum and those that are current get them into the web site with a better descriptive and location title. Also break them down. The basic is ok but leads one to believe that is all that is required. The Advanced needs to be bette set up like the “>>>>> for Dummies” books are. Be more descriptive on how to modify the midi files to modify some of the drum beats. I agree many are way to harsh. Bottom line I think BB could do better to show us how to create drumsets or modify them. I am reluctant to buy their advanced library when there are so many deficiencies with the basic library. I would be happy to be a Beta tester as someone who has limited IT experience and would show how functional it would be for the basic JOE hobbiest musician.
Thanks for your comment Terry.
I agree, not everything can be done in a box like this, it’s far too vast an area to cover. Just looking for some action from the developers of this product to improve the product for those of us who are NOT programmers.
Do you remember DOS on computers? Most of us could not do much with that, thus, Improvements were made so the average person could make use of computers. That’s all I’m asking for. As DOS had lots of potential, so does Beat Buddy, it just needs to be easier to use. Don’t tell me that you developed the GUI interface yourself because you didn’t expect everything to be done for you.
So this is what I and many others are talking about. Improvement. Starting with a solid set of useable beats would be a really good start. If the beats and fills were very useable out of the gate, we would not need to do so much programming. We could get down to what we really bought BB for, making music.
Wayne S
Thank you Brent for your comments. Well put and very good suggestions. This is becoming very productive and should be helpful for Singular to understand what users are looking for.
We bought our Beat Buddies largely based on its potential. It took time to discover what was lacking because it’s a steep learning curve on this unit. Not very conventional at all. I’m not new to computers or recording software or music hardware, for that matter, but this unit is not easy to learn. I gave it a good try but just could not get it to where I was really happy.
So I agree with Brent, can there be some better how to instruction? This, in my opinion, should be done by Singular Sound rather than relying on users to post such instructions. A good example to follow would be checking out the users manuals for such programs as Reason or Cubase. They are very detailed well written manuals.
Wayne S
These comments about needing simple beats have been around for a couple years. GrooveMonkee produces some good beats. Some are ready to go for BB. I put out a package that emulates the Alexis SR-16 on the BB, the LBDM 4BB.
The BB Manager that we see to manage song part, songs and drum kits, is really pretty simple to use. The drum kit editor is more complicated, and getting or creating good usable wav files can be a challenge. The BBManager has numerous shortcomings, but all in all, it does a very good job.
The built in midi editor is very difficult to use, and most folks who do editing to create midi parts use a third party DAW.
While I like the idea of having a standard editor for everyone, I have seen this cause problems both with this unit and with other units. I am in a Forum for the Digitech GNX4, and I still see people craving or demanding the now outdated Bias editor that came with the unit. Learning a 3rd party DAW really opens the BB up to you.
It’s a real cop-out to say that the midi editor isn’t a BeatBuddy product. It’s a necessary feature and BeatBuddy included it… it’s crap.
I too have used my BeatBuddy with a duo for many many outings. It works but it could be so much better.
As to Apple, there are now numerous iOS apps that can do what BeatBuddy does and better. I wouldn’t underestimate iOS devices.
To be fair though the BB does have MIDI, it doesn’t need BT and you can add it yourself easily. So why not an update to firmware that allows a MIDI song upload or record function? It would need to conver the instruments of course, but a simple app to drop in a MIDI beat, preview it, then if necessary map the drums and upload it to BB would be awesome and totally remove some of the annoyances with BBM in my opinion
Also I’d get one thing right before starting on something else tbh. Sorry if that seems harsh, but where is the midi maestro? I think you risk spreading yourselves too thin.
Why not work with someone already app developing who is trying to integrate BB with their iOS and Android app? Arlo with BandHelper springs to mind.
Seeing as I posted a couple of things above that seemed on the negative side I want to balance this out with something positive. Although I agree with the point on ”finesse” some careful volume adjustment and balance with Other instruments usually sorts that out.
I use BB in a church situation and wouldn’t have dreamed of using anything else prior to stumbling across it. I really do love it and anyone slightly musical tends to comment “how did you do that?”, “the drums really lifted that song!” I use it almost exclusively with stock beats but selecting different kits to standard usually. It gives me the control and dynamism I need and whilst is more “human” it is a game changer…as a keyboard/piano guy when I use the BB I just feel like I’m no longer fighting the loudest person in the congregation to keep the pace and feel of the song in check. I do sometimes use GarageBand on an iPad to complement it, but only if I have to since I prefer the freedom the BB gives rather than a fixed backing track and song structure
I totally agree! I paid for my BeatBuddy years ago prior to it even being released. I got in on the ground floor and was so excited when after many months of waiting it finally arrived. I’ve never been able to put this on stage with my band. It basically has sat in a box all these years.
I also drank the Kool Aid and jumped on the BB bandwagon thinking this was going to be so hot. It’s not! It’s cumbersome, difficult to use not to mention the learning curve is huge. The MIDI editor was indeed created by someone else and not by BB however, it too is basically useless. The fills are way to busy and unrealistic. The major beats are also unrealistic sounding. The song intros and endings are ridiculous.
As I’ve mentioned numerous times over the years here, I can create drum beats faster on my two Alesis drum machines and make them exactly the way I want. I am no stranger to MIDI and have performed professionally since the late 80s with racks of keyboards, sound modules and drum machines. I’ve also performed over the years in numerous dance clubs as a solo which typically hire 4 piece and larger bands. I’ve tried numerous times to take the BB out again and see if I can make some use of it but always end up frustrated and disappointed. Perhaps now that I am finally retiring from my day job I might try it again.
So, clearly, there are (perhaps shades of) two camps here: The “It has to approach perfect out of the box” group, and the “It gives me the ability to build what I need, so it’s fantastic” group.
Obviously, I am in the second group, and I think you have to acknowledge that there are a lot of people in the first group who DO use it as-is or buy additional beats and use them as-is.
So here’s the thing: If you want the beats to be just-so, you have to work with them. The fact that the BB is a MIDI-based open architecture means the world is your oyster when it comes to how you work with it.
I also think it’s worth remembering that the “crap” MIDI editor that comes with the BB was developed by a user here out of the kindness of their heart, and, in the spirit of “no good deed goes unpunished,” Singular included it in the package in response to the people on this very forum who were screaming that they needed to do so. Most companies would not have included the editor to avoid exactly the discussion that is going on here, but Singular did it because people asked them to.
So it seems unfair to bitch about a limited piece of software that we demanded they include.
I actually agree with a number of the suggestions for improvements, especially the ones here that are specific about what you want, rather than asking for reasonable-sounding, but deceptively vague and difficult suggestions about making some unnamed improvements.
It is not unusable out of the box. It could certainly be easier – or maybe more broadly appealing – to use out of the box, but people ARE using it as-shipped, so it is not a toy boat anchor. The fact that it’s MIDI-based and supports third-party software and tools is both a blessing and a curse, because there is so much you can do with it, but you might have to learn some new tools to make it happen. And actual MIDI – beyond PCs – has always been black magic to most guitar players.
In the end, my stance remains the same: It’s an excellent tool that can work as-is, but, because it’s an open architecture, it can be so much more if you’re willing to put in the work. You only get out of these things what you put into them.
Its great to see some dialog happening here. I appreciate all the comments. They are quite revealing and informative.
Beat Buddy may be usable out of the box for some people. I do like it as a jam tool. But, what I meant by usable, is to use it live, to perform. That was my reason for buying it. For me it is far from ideal out of the box. I understand that some people have spent a lot of time tayloring it to their needs. That’s great if it’s working for you, all the power to you. However, for many of the rest of us, it is not working so well yet. We are hearing similar comments from many Beat Buddy owners. These comments should not be ignored or belittled.
We are just making suggestions on what we think it needs so that we can reel it in again and salvage it from the seabed. I would much rather bring beat buddy to a gig for drums than a huge keyboard.
So, rather than squabbling over who’s opinion is right, let’s work together toward improving the Beat Buddy for everyone. We’re not all midi gurus.
I am, I am quite sure, one of the people who may seem to be belittling, and for that, I apologize. All dialog is good dialog. But I do absolutely rail against the “boat anchor” comment, because I think it sells both the device and the people who do use it out of the box very short.
To your point, though, a version of the drum kits that includes the toms all turned down by 10-20% would actually resolve a bunch of the objections on this topic, because a lot of what people are interpreting as badly overplayed fills is really just overmixed toms. Have a listen to any of the Blues or Country songs (which provide the basis for about 75% of my duo’s songs) and see if you don’t agree: Turning down the toms would go a long way towards taming the issue. While you’re considering that, keep in mind that the fills, while programmed a full bar long, very seldom get more than their last two beats played in practice (depending on when you press the pedal for the fill/transition).
Something else that might be worthwhile is a new collection called Blues and Country Basics (again, because they make up most of my setlist 
), which essentially revisits the existing progressions but leans out the fills. Maybe adds a few new shuffles (east cost shuffle for Acadian and Irish tunes, anyone?) and maybe a swing variation or two. Thing is, if I wasn’t willing to program, I would pay $10 for that (or whatever the collections cost) if it expanded the usability.
Thanks Joe for the positive suggestions. You appear to have a lot of experience with editing the basic offering. Your comments are valuable to the rest of us and hopefully Singular can incorporate your suggestions to make it a better experience for all of us.
Sorry as well to sound a little harsh, sometimes text does not portray inflections in speech very well. I truly hope that Beat Buddy can become what I was hoping it would be for me.
I personally would love to see Singular Sound invent and release something new along these lines - a BeatBuddy drum machine (not pedal) along the lines of a Boss DR-3 (which is great for on the fly arrangements but does not have multi-samples or MIDI so doesn’t sound great) but with multi sampled drum sets which use more memory than BB drum sets (maybe up to about a GB rather than BB’s paltry 100mb).
The ‘current’ drum machines (not dance music type products) from the big manufacturers are the Alesis SR-18 (released in 2008) and the Boss DR-880 (2004!). Honestly, they’re way out of date now and someone could make a killing here if they released the right product!
Lots of good ideas.
I was the one who started this post because I want to see some action from Singular Sound on the software capabilities.
If they cannot do it themselves then maybe think outside the box.
Possibly partner with someone and come up with a strategy to pay for the build. I would pay a little for a good tool.
I don’t mean to be negative. I love my Beatbuddy but find I spend more time programming it than playing music.
I am a technical guy with lots of midi experience.
I use OnSong to trigger my Beatbuddy through a Bluetooth midi connection to it.
I can build my midi with Sonar/Cakewalk in Windows or on my iPad using Auria Pro or Cubasis.
The challenges specifically for me are:
-I have to be on windows to program the Beatbuddy.
-I have to use the SD card to transfer the content to the BB.
-The only way to get midi into the Beatbuddy (intro, main, fill, transition, outro) is with the BB Manager so I need the software to be more robust and available on different devices.
That’s what I am hoping for.
One of the first things I did after I bought the BB was to lower the volumn on the toms. Second thing I did was buy some of Groove Monkeys stuff for BB. Less busy fills. As far as the BB manager goes it took some learning and some mistakes but I can now use it in a very limited capacity. Like to take those silly crash cymbals out on the first beats of some measures. If I had a drummer who did that all the time I’d fire him. LOL. I Don’t use the intros or endings as I they are not very good for the most part. Especially the endings. So I use the count in instead and end with the crash cymbal. I figured out how to import and export songs to and from the BB manager and on to the SD card. A decent BeatBuddy manager it a must and along with some functionality tweaks would put BB over the top. I have four sets ready to go for my band on my SD card. I would have liked to buy the everything pack that was offered by Singular Sounds but I’m afraid that the download will erase the sets and all the hard work I put into the songs for those sets and the drum kit settings I now have. Don’t really trust the software. Can anyone shine some light on this? Anyway, overall I think the BB is a great idea and not that far from being a great product. Oh, and BTW. I don’t like to hear about the BeatBuddy 2 with Bluetooth etc. It sounds like us BeatBuddy 1 people are going to get left behind somehow.
I hope not!
A couple of thoughts to allay your concerns:
- you’re probably already doing this but when you have four (gig) sets on your SD card, it’s important that you have another SD card as a backup for those “just in case” situations
- you can (and probably should) also back up the project from your BBM that contains these four sets and store it outside of your bbworkspace
- if you are concerned about losing or corrupting the contents of your gig project by downloading and using the Premium Library Complete Collection 2019 (PLCC), you can reduce your risk by opening and saving the PLCC as a separate project using the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM). In this way, you can export content from the PLCC project, open your other project and import the folders or songs you need. You can also activate the drum sets so that they are available to all projects in your BBM
Other users have figured out how to successfully manage their projects using the BBM and they’ll probably chime in here with what works for them as well.
Thanks Persist. I don’t have a backup SD card yet. Which SD card should I buy and use as a backup? I’m using a Mac with my BeatBuddy manager.
The default that comes with the pedal is a 4Gb SDHC Class 4 and that would be the smallest you should get. The pedal can use up to a 32Gb SDHC Class 10 card so a 16Gb SDHC Class 10 can handle most any future growth in your projects (the Class 10 cards are just a tad faster).
I’ve bought several of these for a couple of recorders as well as for the BeatBuddy and they work well…