Half time - outside of BB approach

BeatBuddy Help, Questions and Bugs
1

Hi All,

This might be something which was discussed, and there could be an existing solution, in which case please point me towards it:

I have a song, which needs half time in the chorus. Since I am playing the guitar, BeatBuddy-ing and singing, it is not an option for me to go with the MidiMaestro Half Time, since I also need to switch the guitar tone, so I would need to do a transition, a guitar tone switch and a half time. A lot of things to do in time.

So I managed to edit the Part2 of my beat with the built-in editor, I made it two times in length, moved all the MIDI notes to 2x, where x is their original timing. This was done with the internal MIDI editor of BBManager.

However, the transitions are not editable in the same way, the BBManager MIDI editor is unable to recognize them well, even if I quantize them, when I increase the length to double, there will be only one long continuous MIDI note for each pitch - sorry if I am not right with my terminology, still new to MIDI.

Anyways, internal editor is not an option. Tried MuseScore, which has a DoubleTime Plugin, but MuseScore will not recognize all the transitions, complains about MIDI file format.

TLDR: Is there a nice, easy-to-use MIDI editor for Mac in which I could achieve this single workflow?

  1. Load a MIDI file exported from BBManager
  2. Make it Half Time
  3. Save the MIDI file

Thank you,
Attila

2

I don’t think any DAW is “easy” as most require a learning curve.

The Export to MIDI has been reported by some users as being “wonky”. You can get around this by using some of the MIDI source files available from Singular Sound.

I think Apple still offers a trial version of Logic Pro X. Reaper is very good trialware. There are several other DAWs in use by forum members and several tutorials on using those first two. There are many worthy free DAWs as well.

3

I think it would be easier to program a custom page on your MIDI Maestro where you have a next part button right next to a half time button, so you could mash both at the same time. Beatbuddy would transition, and then switch to half time at the end of the transition!

4

@Ed1970 : Thanks for this suggestion. I think - I am pretty sure - I can put several actions onto the same button, so I could make two buttons, one for Part1 with Normal time, and one for Part 2 half time. That is a pretty cool solution, so really thanks for it.

Although I will still try to work on the “editing the MIDI” solution as well, it might come handy in other situation.
@persist : Thank you for the DAW suggestions.

Thanks!