Half bar fills

BeatBuddy General
1

Sometimes in a 4/4 song there are half bars (2/4). This can be disconcerting when you are following the visual metronome. Is there any way to put in half bar fills to allow you to track the visual metronome correctly right through a song?

1 Like
2

Hi I’ve encountered this problem too.
I have an idea but it might be based on a wrong understanding…

CHALLENGE
Lets say you have a 2 bar, 4/4 main pattern
When you encounter a 1/2 bar musical phrase, there seems to be no way to get the visual metronome back in time.
There also seems to be no way to have your fills end in time now either.

IDEA
(not tested)
What if about if we managed to change the time signature on the main pattern to 2/4, but with the same drumming (now its 4 bars of 2/4)
For the fills we could use single bar of 2/4

So if we were out of time with the visual metronome, we could do a short roll, to get back in time, indeed these rolls might keep the whole scheme in time. What do you guys think? Am I missing something? could this be done with the BeatBuilder.jar ?

Thanks

3

That absolutely could be done in the midi editing process. Just realize that then you have a 2/4 visual metronome, so measures go by quickly.

4

Thanks Phil.
will test how I go (on a moderate tempo ; ) )

Cheers and thanks!

5

I’ve tried this for two songs now, Pancho and Lefty and Youre so Vain, IT WORKED
These have half bar segments in them and now seem to play ok.
I got used to the short rolls fairly quickly, the tempo was 117bpm.

I used “BLUES- beat 2a straight 8 x_stick.mid” and opened it in BeatBuilder.jar (massive thanks to CharlesSpencer)
I did nothing but changed it to 2/4 in the drop down, resaved and reimported.
The transition I left at 4/4.
Also I used Bestbuilder.jar to make a bunch of single bar 2/4 fills which worked fine with a bit of practise.
This is a great approach in my opinion, more fault tolerant than constructing complex “whole verse” structures, say.

I experienced an issue when I tried to convert the main file “BLUES- beat 2a straight 8 x_stick.mid” to 2/4, using the built-in midi editor.
Bestbuilder.jar is rock solid and the way to go for the moment for me.

Thanks