Hey all, Fred here. Brand new to Beat Buddy, and I got a question I hope someone out there can help me with: I play out solo, acoustic guitar & vocals. I’m wanting to make my own kit using my actual guitar as the percussion. I don’t mind using other sampled sounds to get a good sample. For instance, there are some awesome Cajon Kick sounds I can use to sound like I’m hitting the kick sound on my guitar. I’ll want to replace (or make from scratch) any Cymbal & crash sounds with a guitar strum sounds. Same goes with those bongo & tom sounds, to replace them with a different placement strum.
The results is to play the BB beats and have them sound like all the percussion is coming from my acoustic guitar.
Does anyone have any kind of suggestion as to what I can do? OR should I just start recording and sampling tons of live guitar tracks? Ant tips on the best way to do this??
Thanks, Fred
Just start recording the guitar sounds that you want to have. Try to record at least three samples at each of a soft, medium and hard volume. You might want to take a look at my Coffee House Percussion kit to get an idea. That was done using a variety of oddball instruments, but all the recording was done by me. I helps to have someone do either the recording or the playing for you. Once you get your recording done, decide how you want to split the sounds up into velocity groups. Then, you will have to prepare the samples at 44,100hz 16bit waves for Beat Buddy to use. Also make sure the sample have no meta tags, as that seems to keep BB from using them.
And remember, you only get 100mb for a kit, so be prepared to use fade outs to keep you samples relatively short.
Thanks Phil!!
I tried to find your drum kit, where is it?!? So, I took your advice and went for it. Thanks again for the reply. I spent all day recording tracks to now splice them up into sampled wave files. Quick question please:
Should I record them all at the same relative volume, then change the velocity on the midi end?, or do I record the softer sounding hits with less volume and still adjust it on the midi part?
Looking forward to checking out some of your tunes, I’ll get back to you with some positive feed back! You can hear what I sound like on my website, fredsacoustic.com
Catch ya soon,
-Fred
http://forum.mybeatbuddy.com/index.php?resources/coffee-house-percussion-kit.2181/
Record the softer sounding hits softer. The midi velocity will add its own softness or hardness, but you want the effect of the softer or harder hits to be available. If you think of the 128 velocity values as ranges, its good, if at minimum, you had samples for something for the 0 through 43 range, something for 44 through 86, and something for 87 through 127. If you can have more than one sample at each level, it introduces a level of realism to the kit, and keeps it from sounding like a computer generated drum machine.
Hey Phil.
Thanks again for your help. 2 days into it, and I’m kinda stuck. I got my wave files made, and they sound fine when I click & play them.
Somethings not right when I try to import them into BB. It gives each wave file a name, I adjust the perimeters, but what do I need to do to finalize it? I’m trying to do just the Kick drum to see if I got it right before I go ahead with everything else. I attached a screen shot, can you see what my problem might be?
Thanks again for your time,
-Fred
That looks like what happens when there is some meta data with the wav. Some guys have used a tag stripper program to get the waves cleaned up.
Yea, looks like I’m stuck. I sent the question to BB to see what I can do. I tried a few tag strippers, no luck.
I recorded them in Logic Pro X. Attached are two of the Wave samples.
Thanks for your help.
-Fred
I’ll take a look after the Iggles game.
Thank you!
Go Iggles!
Try these. If they work, then, yeah, there is some sort of artifact problem that Logic Pro X introduces. I always have the same issue. To correct it, after I make my samples I run them through NCH Switch, just converting them from wav to wav.
I could not get my first drum kti to work, and the other Phil on here told me about Switch. I got it, and I have had no problems since.
Hey Phil
Thanks again, I know once I get this conversion working I’ll be good to go. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me again. I downloaded the Switch program, and ran it through the converter and still no good. I even exported it again from Logic in another format (.aiff) and let Switch “Switch” it and still no good.
If those Wave files I sent you looked and worked normal to you, then I have no idea what is wrong.
Thanks for your time and effort,
-Fred
[ATTACH=full]7396[/ATTACH]
Very odd. Instrument 0 is your wav after I Switched it. Instrument 1 is your Wav without Switching it. I entered both into a drum kit, and saved the drum kit, and both wavs play no problem. What version of BB Manager are you using?
Aahh! Then it might just be a setting thing I have wrong. So glad to her that the Wave files are fine the way it is. I have version 1.64
I just got it last week. So, if the Wave file is fine just the way it is, then it has nothing to do with the way I recorded it with Logic then??
And I imported the files (same ones I sent you) in a folder, then just had t4he folder & BB open and just dragged & dropped into the BB the way the screenshot showed you earlier… what do you think then?!?
Use the BROWSE feature within the instrument to navigate to and then add the wav to the intended velocity section within the instrument. I think the Drumset Maker is not liking the drag and drop.
Yes, that worked!! For what ever reason the drag & drop doesn’t work for me, but no problem with the browse method.
I’m very excited, thank you for all your help! I’ll let you know how my final results turn out. I’ll try it out tonight.
Thanks again Phil!!
-Fred