Here’s something to whet your appetite to make new pattern based songs. Awhile ago, I was thinking of doing a DR-880 port to BB. One kind user gave me a file of the basic 500 patterns in Aria Maestosa format. I have converted those to midi. You can try them out in BB songs. The categorization was done by me. These are raw conversions. I have not worked through manipulating them to make sure they loop properly in the BB. So, you may need to take look at them in your DAW if you run into problems. But, they’re here, they’re free. Try 'em out if you want to.
DR 880 Midi Patterns.zip (484.7 KB)
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Thanks Phil, I have a DR-880 that I’ve occasionally connected to the BB via MIDI to use the sounds of the BB, but having the MIDI files will make using the 880 patterns a lot easier.
Thanks, Mark. If I had recorded these myself, I would have been sure to line up the downbeat with the grid a little better, and I would have gotten the fills recorded. But, I really appreciated someone giving me the files, and they’re a real good starting point should I ever go deeper into porting the 880’s patterns.
Hi Phil, thanks for uploading these files firstly, you did me personally a huge favor. May I ask how can I edit these beats with a DAW, this is the only thing I haven’t tried yet. The Beats sound great when played on windows, but on BB they sound kinda lame 
thanks again.
There are a couple things you can you do:
- Open the pattern in a DAW, with a track set to the proper time signature for the pattern, and make sure you have a looping pattern. Example - Here is how the EDM Disco pattern looked when I open it in Logic:
Notice how the pattern doesn’t fill the grid and how the ending notes look like the bass notes of the beginning. These notes are actually the start of new measure. Cut the pattern there, so it looks like this:
This is exactly two bars long and will loop nicely.
- Be sure to try the pattern out with a fairly robust complete kit. Look at the DR-880 manual. You can get it online. It will give you listing of how kits are mapped for the pattern sets. You can build a BB kit to match a mapping, or just use a fairly complete kit. Try Singular’s Standard Pro, or my Sub-Standard Pro kits. Those kits have a fairly complete mapping. I tried this pattern with a stock Logic kit, and didn’t like it. I tired it with Native Instruments Abbey Road 80’s Drummer, and it sounds great. Experiment with the kits, but realize that the Singular Premium kits probably have a more complete mapping than the stock kits.
Thank you very much, this was much much needed, I will try as soon as possible.
All the best from Kosovo, cheers!
Hi Phil,
Before I got the BB I extensively used (and still have) a DR880 for accompanying my chords melody guitar. I recently had the idea to transfer a few DR880 beats across to BB, did a quick search and found your wonderful thread. Saving me I don’t know how much time and effort.
Can’t thank you enough for this great work.
Kind regards,
Carl.
Thanks for the kind words. Stuff like this helps me to keep contributing.
