Editing a Persists .sng

Whilst we wait for auto pilot to be rolled out, I’ve downloaded one of Persists many free tracks (thats amazing by the way to do it for free ) but since it’s all very new to me I have a few questions if anyone can assist or point me in the right direction?
I have understanding of MIDI but that’s about 25 years behind me so it’s been while and I am sure there has been improvements since then :wink:

The best way to explain myself I suppose will be to use one track as an example.

Track - Elton John_Rocketman v4.sng
Drumset - Motown piano and brass

I’ve downloaded, imported both song and drum set. I can play them fine in the BBM but… I am a pianist and I want to mute/delete the piano tracks

What is the best working method?

I right clicked on the 'song v4c\ and *edit… but I’ll be honest and (to me) that just looks a mess, slow and non intuitive.

  • I don’t have any professional DAW so I downloaded Mixpad & Musescore3 as a MIDI editor and opened the .midi file that was included with the download. I can see the piano section, mute/delete it but when i export it, it clearly doesn’t have the right midi channels programmed as it’s the original file?

  • next thing I tried. I right clicked on the BBM section ‘Song v4c’ and *exported the midi file.
    Musescore3 wouldn’t open this file so scrapped it.
    Mixpad opened the file and told me there were 16 separate tracks

  • opened the MIDI editor and saw the C-1 to G9 layout.

According to the accompanying .PDF with the drum set the piano is on C2 to C4 however in my editor this is not case and I can clearly see the piano parts on C4 to C6.
It’s easy to see because theres only a hi-hat playing at the same time.

I deleted C4-C6 notes and saved the midi file. Loaded that in place of the original ‘song V4c’ and it looks liked its worked in BBM. I exported the file as a new v5.sng

I haven’t had chance to load it into BB because I wanted to check here first.

  • Is there a better, faster way than what I done?
  • Is there something that went wrong that caused the MIDI data to not match the pdf so I can identify the notes in a more complex track?

Thanks in advance… if it all made sense anyway?

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Agree that Persist is amazing!
Also, nice to have another piano player out here!
I’ve done what you’ve done (deleting piano file on .sng)
I also sometimes just use a different drum kit that doesn’t have piano on it. You’ve got to experiment to find the right kit sometimes but it’s easier/quicker than opening the file.

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Several ways to get this done:

  1. You could use the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM) MIDI Editor to clear all of the piano notes. It is kind of tedious as you would have to repeat the step 18 times (but it took me less than five minutes to remove all of the piano notes using the BBM MIDI Editor). It could be much easier if users could select the range of notes from 60-C2 to 84-C3. After you’ve cleared all of the piano notes, press Apply and then Save Project.

  2. Another method is Export to MIDI (but you’re taking your chances that the BBM will do so correctly and accurately as some users have reported that the export to MIDI is not very reliable). Anyway, if you Export to MIDI, take note of the range of piano notes (60-C2 to 84-C3) and then select and delete that range of notes. I use either Reaper or Logic Pro X to do so. Here’s what the selection in Reaper looks like—the selected piano notes are displayed in a light blue highlight; I just press the Delete key, save the project and then export the file to MIDI; then I just replace the section in the BBM

  3. The other method is to transcribe the song from scratch from the MIDI source file. Not easy the first time but once you’ve done it a few times or so, it becomes easier and you can work up (and maybe share?) your own efforts with the forum.

  4. The easiest method sometimes is to just send a PM to the user that posted the song and ask to have the piano (or whatever instrument) notes removed from the song.

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Thanks guys.
So it seems I did it method 3.
Well the process wasn’t that awkward but I’m curious to know why the midi channels didn’t match up to the drum set pdf list?

Is this the kind of midi export error you mentioned?

My BBM midi editor looks nothing like that.
I was looking on a Mac but my studio has windows 10 so I might try it on there to see if it’s any better.

As for option 4… well I’d love to message you to alter a load of files for me but you’ve done enough free work already without every Tom, Dick and Harry PM’ing you to do things that are possible yourself with a bit of effort.

Thanks again… now bring on the AP update!

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just an update close this thread.

BBM on OSX is awful compared to my windows 10 version.
Yes i’d rather sit in my office on a nice comfy chair and do my midi files but the interface on windows is ridiculously better.
it might still be slow and cumbersome but it gets the job done.

Also the midi channels remain labelled in BBM so easy to select each part.
exporting the midi did not drag this data so a bit of work needed.

Thanks all

I found some very good tutorials of how to use a DAW to come up with the drum beats and then export it to a midi file and then to BB Manager I think it was and how to get the drum beats into the beatbuddy to actually play the beats (intro, verse, fills, chorus, outro). Very good tutorials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToJospXvSmo His YouTube channel is Municipal Man Music & Media but you will see that on his tutorial #1 that I linked. I think there are something like 12 tutorials, very well laid out and easy to understand and follow. I used it with a song and it worked well.

There are others out there where someone connects their laptop to the beatbuddy using a midi cable and play or download through the DAW on the laptop. Not sure exactly how it works but some think that is simpler/more direct.