If you want a quick listen to a midi, use Aria Maestosa. It uses a general midi. Reaper frustrated the heck out of me, cause you have to set the sound for each track… by default it’s nothing!
Google and download the plugins for 4front bass, 4front piano (and other 4front instruments) and “manda powerdrumkit” and install them.
Then on the midi track itself you’ll see a tiny button that says F X with a little power button. Click it, and select the instrument to play for that track.
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Since i do drums with bass primarily, i usually find and enable the bass and drum tracks, then find the vocal track and enable a built in synth for that one, and sometimes enable a piano track, then delete all the rest.
I attached a list of Reaper instruments in my setup.
Yep I use reaper. It took me a while to workout how to use it. It is very powerful with midi though once you know how to use it. The amount of options in the menu’s make my brain hurt just thinking about it. I have my routine set now when making a song and it’s very easy.
I still stumble on to new stuff all the time with it though and it amazes me just how complex it can get.
I did get the sound going last night… I had to add an Audio a Output device since it wasn’t sending the signal through my computer’s sound card. It’s ok now. The next thing is that the sliders on the “mixer” do nothing. I think it’s because I’m playing a MIDI and its digital. Mi read somewhere in the 344 page manual, that when playing midi, you have to lock the midi signal to each volume control… That artificially creates midi volume. From my limited understanding, midi doesn’t really have any volume encoded.
Re the plugins… Is there any particular location (folder) that I need to put them in? AND, so I don’t have to click around randomly, where would the installation option for the plugins be within the reaper software?
For basic rock-pop kit sounds in Reaper I use MT PowerDrum Kit 2. For other percussion sounds I stumbled upon Drumcore 3 by Sonoma Wireworks. Both plugins are freeware.
You know I’ve spent hours trying to get sorted with something like this (Im a complete noob with very little free time), I havn’t tried this yet Charles but it looks like a massive thank you is in order
Were you able to install the Java environment successfully? In theory it should work on any Windows version that can support Java 1.7 or higher. So far I’ve tested Windows 8, Windows 2003, Red Hat Linux, and Mac successfully.
So I am trying to edit one of aashideacon’s files using Beat builder… The drum set is Rock with Bass…The mapping is off… Bass guitar in particular… Can someone point me in the right direction? Can this be done…? thx
At the moment you can’t use that editor to edit my songs, because I have notes that are not in his soundfont file, so it seems they are just ignored. I mainly use Reaper. I have created a soundfont and a mapping for Beat Builder, so hopefully soon we will be able to use it with my songs.
BTW, what did you want to edit? I could probably do it for you, especially if it’s a significant improvement, I want to know!
Hello Charles,
I downloaded version 2.1 and any edit I make to any of the Latin files result in the new saved file missing many of the instruments. Can you tell me what I am doing incorrectly. I very new to midi editing and don’t have another midi editor on my PC. I am just experimenting with taking the existing “LATIN- Beat 14- Marengue A 3-2.mid” and adding a simple cowbell. after I add it and save the file, I only hear bass drum, cowbell and conga without tany of the other previously recorded sounds. Also, they don’t sound very good anymore they sound very “generic” as if I played them thorugth the windows media player. please advise.
Yeah unfortunately I intended to keep the app simple by supporting the more basic kits and didn’t tackle the Latin kit. I myself use Anvil for the Latin kit tracks, however that’s pretty painful because the Latin kit isn’t anything like the standard MIDI mapping. The BeatBuddy engineers are working on a track editor of their own and that’s probably going to provide a kit-based view rather than my one-size-fits-most version.
Let me tell you how absolutely happy your hard work and efforts have made me! I have been able to monkey around and create some much needed beats that I haven’t been able to find via MIDI sites. I do however, have a huge favor to ask. It would be fantastic if you could create/program a feature to add triplets and sextuplets. If there was a drop down box that would automatically import those rhythms into the program it would make it much easier to add complex rhythms, while the accuracy would allow them to sound more organic. The sextuplets are killing me.
I’ve been playing around with BeatBuilder. After importing the attached Midi File for All I Want For Christmas Is You, the BeatBuilder doesn’t play the Tambourine, Hi Tom and a couple other drum sounds. How do I get BeatBuilder to play these drums sounds? The midi file plays fine in other midi players.
If I am on the right track here, the Beat Builder will not play these instruments but it’s because of the sound card that’s in your PC itself. It’s not a “Full Compliment” of all the sounds. It just simply doesn’t have them all. I am having the same problem where the items are there but they won’t play. Everybody seems to be working on it to come up with an additional “Sound Font Bank” that will play everything. That would be nice. I know this doesn’t help but I thought I would give you some info that I know about.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.
Charles, I think I did mention this before. Is there anyway to program the Beat Builder so that a person can achieve a higher definition of the Notes. It looks like the accuracy is down to 64 divisions per measure. Are you planning to make this “Finer” like 128 divisions per measure? The timing is difficult to get it “Right On” the beat. Either the spacing is too far or too narrow, not anything in between to get the fills accurate. It throws the timing off and it’s hard to get a good sound out of some of the beats.
Also, have you heard any news on someone putting out a “Quatized” version of the default beats that come with the Beat Buddy? It would be nice to have, to cut out some of the time wasted to correct the timing on the beats. It really is getting to be a pain. I spend hours doing this just to get some decent drums that are “Tight” and “On The Beat”. Thanks for you time.
Sincerely, Fingerstylepicker.
hmmmmmm… that doesn’t sound quite right. If the MIDI file plays all the correct instruments in all of my other MIDI programs but not the BeatBuilder, something is missing from that app I would believe.
