Hey Buddies! Where are the Funk, Neo-Soul, Groovy beats and songs? I’m looking for something similar to Jamiroquai, Snarky Puppy, Lettuce, Roy Hargrove, Smooth Jazz.
if someone could help me get some beats or songs or better yet teach me how to create my own that would be wonderful. Thanks!
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I believe the easiest way to create beats is to copy them from existing midi files. Do a search for the artist you want and midi, I.e. “jamiroquai midi.” You will get several hits. Freemidi.org is very good. Once you have a midi file, open it in a DAW and listen to it. I note where verses and choruses begin and end and mark where I am going to split the file. You can also listen for transitions and fills. Once you have that, you can strip out everything except the percussion, and if you want, the bass. Assuming you just want drums, you can split the file into sections for intro, main loop, and outro. Then, export those files to a folder with names you can find, xxxxinto, xxxxmain and so on. At that point you can import the pieces into BB manager. Create a new song, click on the section you want to import and navigate to the desired file. Save your project. Make sure your tempo is good and that you have a kit that is General Midi compatible, and you should be able to audition your beat. And save the project again when you are satisfied. When you hear parts you like, examine them in your DAW to see how they are constructed. Then you will be able to develop skills at making you own beats. There are commercial midi beats available, and these are good, too. I find in many cases, I will start with a midi song, or a midi beat and then edit it. At times I do build them from scratch, when I know just what I want, and it’s going to loop over and over. That’s a quick overview. There are other guidance pieces in this forum. If you need a step by step on creating a BB with bass file from an existing midi, I have something written up that I could provide.
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Phil, Thank you so much for your time and answer. I appreciate and understand your guidelines, so if you want to share more tips I’ll be more than happy to read it.
This is the process I use with Logic Pro X. I wrote this up as a reminder to myself, so others may have suggestions on improving the workflow that work well or that may enhance this process. I am not very familiar with other DAWs, but I would assume that the steps are very similar.
How to Convert a Midi file to Beat Buddy using Logic Pro X
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Find a midi file you would like to convert. Some good sources are http://www.ajsmidi.com/docdoc/docblues.html and http://www.ajsmidi.com/blues/blues_1.html for blues files, and middy.com and freemidi.org for rock files. Note to self - You also have fakebooks in BIAB 2016.
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Download the file to an easily found location and open it directly in Logic. Logic will open the midi file and assign instruments to the tracks.
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Play the file and note where the sections break.
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Go back through the song and use Command T to break the song into sections. Listen for verse, chorus any bridges or transitions and any good drum fill sections.
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Save this file as [file name] tracks. You will be coming back to this file.
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You will generally only be using the drums and bass, although you could get creative and make a kit from some other instrument rather than bass.
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Pick a section to work on, verse, for example. Select just the bass track. Select all notes in the bass track and drag them up, such that nearly all of the notes fall between E3 and E5 (if using a 63_91 kit, other kits may have other mappings. Check the mapping by double clicking on the drum set name in the drum kit list). There may be some notes that are outside of the mapped range. In that case, select just those notes and transpose them up or down one octave as appropriate. You might also wish to transpose the bass track to another key using this process. If bass notes overlap, or are nearly touching each other, you may need to shorten them. The easiest thing to do is to select all the notes and drag the end of one note slightly shorter. This will shorten all of the selected notes. This has to do with the Beat Buddy’s lack of recognition of “midi note off.” This has been fixed to a some degree, but its still good practice to not have bass notes unintentionally overlapped.
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Save your file at this point as [file name]trans bass. This will help in the event you need to do more work.
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Check the drum track for non-compatible mappings and adjust as needed. Some tracks have a kick drum at B0 (Midi 35) and some BB kits do not have this drum. Also, some tracks have notes mapped to a location that corresponds to a handclap in Beat Buddy. Frequently, these are supposed to be a snare. Select all the handclap notes at the offending location and drag them to D1 which should be snare. If you have odd sounding drums when you audition the file, you can come back to this step using the file you saved in Step 8, and make adjustments. You also may find that the drum track has notes that do not correspond to an instrument in your kit. In those cases, use your judgement on where to move the notes to a similar instrument. Alternatively, find a General Midi w/Bass compatible kit, and use it on the Beat Buddy.
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Select the bass and drum tracks. Join the tracks (Edit>Join>Regions). Create a new track, and move the joined track to the beginning of measure 1. This is a Logic idiosyncrasy. If you don’t do it, you’ll have blank space at the beginning of the loop. It won’t work as intended.
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In Logic use Export>Selection as midi file. Give it a name like [file name] verseA and save it to a folder where you will place all you files for this song.
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You can now add the newly created section to Beat Buddy Manager to audition it. Open Beat Buddy Manager and select a folder that has less than 99 songs. Select a song, and the +song button above that song will become active. Press the +song button, and a new song layout will appear. Enter the BPM and song title. The BPM should match or at least be in the range of the BPM that was showing in Logic for the song.
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You can now add the newly created midi file to the verse section. Simply click on the verse button and navigate to the file. Select it, and it will appear in that section of the beat buddy window.
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Make sure you have a “with bass” kit with corresponding mapping selected. Then you can press the play button on the track to audition it in Beat Buddy manager.
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Repeat the process with the rest of the song sections. Save the Project when complete.
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If desired, export your song from Beat Buddy manager to your project location so that the song can be added to other Beat Buddy Manager Projects if need be, or shared on the Beat Buddy Forum.
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Oh Man thanks a lot! I don’t have Logic X yet but that’s on my list, so this is great. Thank you so much for doing this, I bet some other people will find it really helpful. I just got my BB last weekend and it really is a game changer in itself but this forum or community of buddies is what makes the BB even greater and more fun. If we the users or buddies take this product seriously and commit to sharing, helping, explore and give advice to the community we could make the experience and learning so much better. Thank you for your Kindness!
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