Drum Fills

BeatBuddy General
21

I’ve just tested that I could play that song with the following BB SNG:

[ATTACH=full]4324[/ATTACH]

That’s an eight measure 6/8 Intro Fill, then a four measure 6/8 Main Loop with a single measure 9/8 Drum Fill to give me the extra three beats or “half measure” at the end of the appropriate phrase. The only trick is that you have to practice quick-tapping the BB on the first beat of the long measure, not the end of the previous measure, but the first beat of the long measure. When you tap on the first beat of the long measure, which should be the last measure of the four measure pattern, BB will make THAT CURRENT MEASURE the 9/8 fill. It will play 9 beats, then return to the first measure of the four measure 6/8 pattern. I have tested this.

You can improve this by adding another section with a different main loop with hand claps and such, but you will need the 9/8 fill there as well. You can also add the instrumental sections without the 9/8 measures and duplicate the 1st and 2nd sections again after those. It sounds like the instrumental sections are very close to the Intro Fill, so you can duplicate that one to save some time.

22

Ok, the handclaps. That’s something else. I use World Percussion which gives me the cajon bass & snare but does not support handclaps.
Any ideas on how to add them?

Regards,

j

23

Thanks for this, I will give it a try.

24

Also, I thought I’d go back to basics & try something else so had a go just using the stop pedal at the end of the extra bits, followed immediately by restart. This works & while it takes a little thought to click stop after the last beat, it seems so much simpler footwork than anything else I have tried.

Need to incorporate this song into my set for a gig asap so I’ll go with that but I am still very interested in this thread for future reference.
When I get time, I’ll get back to experimenting.
I agree, having the TransFill as the only one that can’t have a different time sig seems to be something that should be addressed for upgrades.

Thanks for all the help & patience with my ignorance so far & I await all future suggestions eagerly.

Regards,

j

25

From another response I made:

…you can use the built-in Drum Set editor to create, copy, and modify drum sets. You can either use a WAV file from an existing drum set or find or create your own. To use an existing one, poke around through all of the drum sets in your project until you find one with a hand clap. I know for instance that the Standard Pro drum set a hand clap on note 39.

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Click on the Browse button to find out where that WAV file exist.

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To find another one just do a Google search for “hand clap WAV file”. To create your own, you can use any audio recorder, such as Audicity, that will save in WAV format.

Now select a drum set that’s already close to what you want and do a “Save As” and save it as something like, “Drum Set with Hand Claps”. You will now be editing your new drum set. Select “Drumsets → Add Instrument” from the drop-down menu. This will add a new instrument at note 0 like this:

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Select the Browse button and navigate to the WAV file you either located, downloaded, or created from the first step above. Select that file. Click on the instrument name to edit the instrument details. The main one you’ll probably always want to change is the name.

After you’ve saved your changes, go to the pattern that you want to include the hand claps. If you want to add them to an existing pattern, you should first export that pattern to a MIDI file, then import it again with a new name. That way you won’t be changing it in every other song that uses that same pattern…unless or course that’s what you want to do.

After you’ve imported the pattern, select the song that you want to use your new pattern using your new drum set. Change the default drum set to your new drum set:

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Change the pattern to the new pattern to which you want to add the hand claps - the one you exported to MIDI above.

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FINALLY, you can edit that pattern to add the hand claps to it.

It’s a lot of steps, but it’s pretty straight-forward. Songs use patterns and drum sets. Patterns use instruments. Instruments use WAV files.
[LIST=1]
[]Create or locate the WAV file for the instrument that you want to add.
[]Create or locate the drum set to which you want to add the instrument.
[]Create or locate the patterns to which you want to add the new instrument.
[]Create or locate the song. Switch to the modified drum set and edit the patterns.
[/LIST]
Got it? If you use an existing WAV file, this whole process should take less than 5 minutes.

26

I can’t think of a musical reason to prevent this. I think it’s currently a programming issue. Because transition fills end up replacing the last bar of a main loop, the programmers are picking up the time signature from the main loop and using it for the transition fill, even if there is a different time signature defined for the transition fill.

I know that the programmers lurk these fora, so hopefully they will take note of this and put it on their to-do list.

27

Sorry guys, I completely missed answering your questions from above (and I haven’t read the entire thread, so I apologize if this was repeated). I don’t mess with time signatures if I don’t have to… you can definitely add 1/2 bars in a fill… well to be accurate it’s actually a bar and a half. I use MixCraft7 to make my loops and so what I do is to take the main loop and just place the midi notes inside a full bar and another half bar. The beat needs to be repetitive so that you don’t notice the splice between the fill and the main loop. I save the midi file to play the loop once through. Then when I add it to the BB Manager into the “Fill” field, I simply press the fill during the main loop. It will play for a bar and a half and then start the main loop over again. The difference is that the main loop starts a half bar later than normal which allows you to use your other fills or transition fill at the appropriate time.
I’ve attached a screen shot of the midi editor showing a bar and a half. I simply save this as a midi file and add it to the fill section in the BB song.[ATTACH=full]6458[/ATTACH]