I have managed to do this a couple of times but to honest it has been kind of hit and miss. What is the correct way to create midi drum parts for song? For example if I am creating an intro part what is the ideal length and minimum length (assuming we’re talking 4/4 time)? If I create an intro that is more than 4 beats what would happen? What is the ideal length of a fill part? Should any of the parts have quiet sections within them - for example if a fill covers only 2 beats should there ideally be 2 beats of silence that precedes the last 2? Perhaps the BB strips out blank space? Does the BB do any other clever adjustments in case the part submitted is not chopped up in exactly the right place?
Sorry for all the questions. I am running the clunky Mac version which doesn’t respond quickly or accurately at times and that makes testing these things quite frustrating. Any advise would be much appreciated.
Rule 1. Never start a MIDI pattern with pauses. Currently BB parser will simply trim them, and this could potentially kill your overall alignment. Like [pause - pause - 36 - 42] 4/4 bar will get parsed as [36 - 42 - silence - silence] bar (which is totally not what you wanted!). If you need that, use an unsupported MIDI note instead - like in [0 - pause - 36 - 42] will be okay.
Rule 2 (MIDI sync related). Always be sure to have a song part to consist of a whole numbers of quarter notes. 3 bars of 4/4 is great (12 quarter notes in total). 3 bars of 5/8 is not (7.5 quarter notes in total) - you may be unable to record a track on your looper of such length, or you will need to record two cycles of your song part (15 quarter notes).
Aside from that, you are probably good to use any number of bars for your song part (mind the overall 500 MIDI notes restriction).