Hi, thanks a lot for providing this nice editor for us. One request I would have, if you’re still able to spend time developing - can you add a play repeat function, to repeat play a selection? The first thing I tried to do when loading a pattern into the program was to select a portion of the beat (a measure or two) and tried to loop play it, to get an idea of the groove on that particular section. Right now, you can select to play just the selected portion, but it just plays and stops - I really need it to loop. What’s the chance?
A huge thank you for BeatBuilder and with your huge patience with all the queries about it. I need to edit Latin beats. What tool/s would you suggest for Mac? I assume I would need WAV samples to create a kit in BB Manager Drumsets, but I would currently have no way of editing the beats.
Yeah this is quite challenging and for myself I’ve had to rely on trial and error, editing in a general-midi editor that includes the full 128 note range, listening to the result in BeatBuddy Manager, and repeating until I got the track right. I’ve been putting off making enhancements to BeatBuilder because the BeatBuddy engineers have been working on a track editor and I’m anxious to see what they’ll provide
I’m new to all this, but have had success with beat builder (a great tool, THANKS) in taking downloaded multi-instrument midi song files and creating a usable beat buddy version. What I haven’t had success with is in adding bass back into these beat builder files. I’ve tried reading them back into Anvil studio and merging with the original song, but this seems to mess up the drums again. There must be a work around, but I’ve not found it. Any suggestions?
I use Reaper to do this. I take a full-song midi file, and identify the drum and bass tracks. Delete all others, then merge the two into one. You have to move the bass lines from it’s original place up into the 64-88 notes region though. They are removing the 500 note limit with the next release, so you can actually have the entire song play without having to chop it up into pieces.
Thanks for the quick reply. I tried to do the same thing with Anvil. I deleted all tracks but bass and drums. Change the Bass instrument to instrument 74, merged the tracks, deleted the drum track and converted the merged track to channel 10 (drums) and instrument 1, saved this and loaded it into beat buddy manager. This all worked, but the bass line in beat buddy was not the original base line–if that makes any sense? I suspect I did something wrong in changing the channel or instrument?? Any thoughts?
I’m trying to attach (upload) the midi as used by Beat buddy, but Midi files are not showing up when I browse to insert them> Never seen that problem before. Are you aware of another way to get the midi to you?
I found that Firefox was the problem in uploading the midi file. Anyway, I’ve now attached the file that seems to have the wrong bass line when played in Beat buddy.
Ok, I see what happened. There are several issues! The main issue is that you need to transpose the bassline up 3 octaves before combining the two tracks into one. Make sure that a low E is note 64, The bass notes are 64-88. 65=F, 67=G, etc.
However, there are a few other problems. This one uses some latin instruments: congas, clave, cabasa. Those notes are normally up in that range where the bass notes are now. I created a new drumkit that adds in these instruments in a different place, called Superbass. http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?resources/super-bass.192/
WIth your midi editor, you will have to move the high latin instruments to their new locations. Those new locations are described in the Description of the resource.
Another thing: see that the general midi kit has two kick drums? Only one is implemented in beatbuddy drum kits, so you’ll have to move those note 35’s up to 36.
So, the bass “notes” you hear are actually being triggered by the conga/cabasa/clave notes!
Thanks so much AGAIN.
I’m getting a better understanding of what I need to do. 2 new questions.
First, if the transposed bass note would go above not 88, do I simply transpose 2 octaves instead of three.
Second, When I look in my editor, the drum track is all merged into one track so that I can’t tell what is being played when. Are you aware of a way to separate the drum instruments? Or is this something that’s editor specific? Or can’t be undone?
Yes, all the bass notes need to be from 64 to 88. if you have a bassline that has a few notes above 88, I usually just move them an octave down.
Editors all treat midi differently. I had to try a bunch of them before I got one that I could use and understand. You’d think that it would be simple to read and write a midi file, but each editor INTERPRETS them differently! Once you get used to it, it will make more sense. I can actually read piano roll better than staff now! Usually I can tell by the patterns what the instrument is.
I’m afraid I’m back again. I’ve created three versions of midi file and can’t get any of them to play both bass and drums. The first contains only drums and works great with Superbass drum set. I then added the bass line and only the bass line plays. I thought I’d tried splitting the bass line to see if any instruments needed to be changed, but that also only plays bass. I have to have missed something simple in adding the bass, but I’m totally at a loss.
