Hands free is my usage for many years on arrangers and now your Beat Buddy. I use SongbookPlus app on iPad. Plug in the Mi.1 Quicco or Yamaha md-bt01 in midi out/in ports of Beat Buddy. Never have to touch the Beat Buddy to select next song. Can be configured to when a song is selected, the Beat Buddy will respond to the midi message and locate the correct song. Here is a demo using my pa1000 Korg arranger.
If interested I could show a More detailed demo on this with Beat Buddy.
I would stress in the future to have Bluetooth LE built in to these units to avoid buying the extra hardware.
Here is link to SongBook Plus: https://en.songbookplus.com/
I would think that most of the BeatBuddy users do not have an Aeros. I do not, and I have little use for it. It would be nice to see a solution perhaps using a smart phone or a pad. I like the Bluetooth idea also.
6 strings x N frets is a hell of a buttonboard at my fingertips!
I’d love to be able to use the strings of my guitar to drive the Aeros.
I don’t know how, but if Aeros displays the first 4 frets on screen, and if I can customize which action is attached to playing a such or such note, then there’s no need for remembering button sequences.
Could be just a stupid idea, but at least one to expand thinking?
@DavidPackouz Here’s a crazy idea that just might work.
Whether or not the Aeros is stopped or playing, holding down the lower left button will cause the bottom button labels to change to the options below:
Mixer, Save Song, New Song > (“Cancel” label pointing at Play/Stop button)
Pressing new Song changes the labels to: Song List, 2x2 Song, 6x6 Song
Scrolling down on the scroll wheel rotates the labels to “< Save Song, New Song, Delete Song”. Scrolling up on the scroll wheel goes back to “Mixer, Save Song, New Song”. Your foot after scrolling down is right above the new option should you so desire to click it.
Whether you are playing or stopped, the Aeros has a consistent way to bring up the navigation (or command mode or whatever you call it) and the the mixer. It’s also easy to see how this pattern will work on other screens or support more choices. Not bad to have a dangerous command like “delete” out of sight that requires “arming” via the scroll wheel before it can be pressed.
Left Hold is your navigation. The mixer is now Left Hold + Tap (and no longer just hold). It sounds harder, but actually it’s a pretty easy gesture (and just as easy as a hold IMHO). Nice thing is that if you accidentally want to go back, just tap one more time. (no change from the way it is now, but it might feel nicer as you just did a tap to get there).
Nice chart @Thovy64
There is something I do not understand yet. The very first screen you start from (the pink looper mode screen) assumes an empty song AFAIU.
So what about that screen after a song has been stopped ? I feel like it would go against something you (we) actually have voted for but I am not completely sure. Can you clarify how you would see the thing regarding the solo restart within that scope ?
Another point, even if minor (and I definitely would not consider that as a showstopper), is the fact that the upper left switch is the only one which unfortunately has a “harcoded” name printed on the case which says “Play/stop All”… (@DavidPackouz in any case, even if this is not implemented, I would strongly suggest future batches of Aeros should not have this… preserving potential usage of the switch for something else… That way we will have collector Aeros by having it ).
Been playing around with this idea while using the Aeros buttons as a mockup.
It feels really nice to use “hold” to change the actions on the footswitches.
More important, it feels nicer to have the jump to the mixer screen be on the tap (versus the current use of hold to jump to the mixer). I can’t explain it, but the rhythm of a (hold then) tap feels different than a hold. Perhaps it stems from years of computer use, with right clicking to bring up a menu of choices and a click to actually perform the action.
For some reason, I’ve always felt a little odd about blindly pressing hold to jump to the mixer. It’s like I’m not sure I’m doing the right command until I see the mixer screen. With the change of button labels and then the quick tap, you get that reassurance/reminder/reinforcement. It might feel faster.
Looking for major downsides/conflicts of this approach…
the pink screen (the main page) displays the last song we played on (when we turn on the looper).
For a restart of the loop the right button plays all tracks. the middle button plays the selected track (solo or overdub mode, it depends on the setting that there would be in the settings page).
Actualy there is a play / stop printed on the case. I find much more logical to use this top button to navigate the menus and leave the three buttons accessible for the musically necessary actions.
In my opinion using: simple tap, double tap and hold is a good way to open the possibilities with less button but the actions play/stop/rec/overdub have to be immidiatly traited (press mode)
Great vid I do the same thing with OnSong + beatbuddy + Aeros + HX Stomp. Looking forward to midi song selection to make my own backing tracks on the Aeros
What you find logical may be debatable as you would probably get as many answers as users there. One thing is sure, and this is what I just emphasized by my stupid joke to @DavidPackouz about collector Aeros, is that there is absolutely no reason for that button to be hardcoded to any specific action (Play/Stop All)… And I personally clearly agree to your approach which for me seems logical too.
Still about that looper mode, another thing that probably needs to be clarified is the role of the bottom left button.
You mention in the diagram that you can freely create parts and tracks there.
I think the behavior and boundaries should be a bit more defined, although I can see the power of the mechanism.
Another point about that button behavior, is that I guess this is only valid for an empty song, and becomes more a navigational thing in the scope of a stopped song, or do you imagine modifying “live” the TxP signature of an already recorded song (probably too complex) ?
Yes, I imagine be able to modifie “live” the TxP signature of an already recorded song. Each click on « plus » ad a new track or new part.
I don’t understand why the system limit us with 6x6.
I guess you probably mean increase as reducing TxP may actually imply deleting already recorded tracks/parts and introduces the need of multiple checks to be performed as well as potential user confirmation before deletion, then you may want as well the possibility to undo etc…
And even if you just allow to increase TxP, and actually do it “by mistake”, you may want to come back to the original state, thus implying the need for deletion or undo… Honestly it sounds far too complex to me and as such I doubt modifying an existing song TxP is likely to happen… at least in the flow you describe (we could imagine as part of song management that we could duplicate a song and change its target TxP at that time without then the need to provide undo mechanism)…
But it remains a very good idea and a way to define the famous already discussed “matrix” feature for empty songs… and that would already be great.
If you talk about T <= 6 and P <= 6, I fully agree, I see no reason why we couldn’t have this. But if you imagine expanding further than 6x6, then other considerations come to my mind:
Impact in the UI. more than 6 tracks or parts would imply a kind of scrolling in the UI, and this is not probably what we want.
Specs of the hardware. I have no idea what the specs of the Aeros are in terms of bus, RAM or CPU… and we may reach some limitations. @DavidPackouz: Do you think it would be possible that you disclose some of those characteristics of the hardware specs somehow (maybe it’s even already published somewhere, but I didn’t find this information, I mean beyond just the storage specs) ? Just at least to have an idea of what is realistic to expect from the platform ?
Honestly I never felt yet the need to go further than 6x6, but maybe someone else did. I would then be very curious… Is it still the a looper or is it a full-blown DAW that you need in this case ?
The Aeros is a pedal limitations are good, no limits makes a product confusing imo, this needs to be a pedal for everyone, not just the pedal/tech savvy.
You might want to keep “hold” to bring up the mixer fast. You could use “double tap” to change the labels to allow New Song, etc.
Ideally the gestures (e.g., hold for mix, double tap for extra actions) are consistent from page to page and whether or not you are playing. It’s pretty confusing and hard to remember if things change.
if we mistakenly create a track or a part, whatever, we don’t use it, no need to delete it.
For the number of tracks and tracks, I find the maximum number of tracks sufficient (6). for the number of parts, I do not see the interest of 6. Depending on the songs you can have a part or 10.Musically I do not understand to impose 6 parts.
I didn’t say that I liked everything in the proposal, far from it, but you cannot deny:
It’s consistent
It’s there !
As such it cannot be rejected as a whole. Of course the details have to be carefully studied and even if there are many things that I do not need at all in the proposal (like chaining songs for example. I prefer to have a quick and efficient navigation mechanism between songs. I mostly do not record anything apart from temporarily keeping an idea, and I use the looper as a looper and basically recreate all my loops live every time and if I want to use a backing-track then I just use a backing-track, not a looper), I can understand some of the needs and at least see the goal.
The proposal states a number of interesting ideas and some less imho:
EOL management is an interesting point. I don’t understand why this is not part of the song config in the proposal. It would just be an extension of the existing setting… I didn’t think to it myself as a song config, as I was only focusing on the possibility to fade out, and as such was more thinking about it as a live setting (during the loop session). Definitely a topic to address.
Hands-free song management is clearly a good idea, yet I think it lacks things like duplicate song, or save as. Basically I think being able to change TxP while duplicating a song would be interesting. It would address the common pattern which is: I started a song in 2x2 and then I feel like I need more tracks/parts…
I don’t have much to say about the mixer stuff apart from the fact I do not really understand the concept of mixing without the song actually playing… as you have no feedback… Nevertheless the routing/panning config is maybe important, but again this is more something I feel like should be done live more than prior starting looping…
Being able to quickly edit song config hands-free is a pretty good idea, although it will definitely require to change the wheel sensitivity when scrolling, because scrolling to the bottom of the screen takes ages today if you just use the wheel and not the touch screen…
Having the main screen acting as a router to different screens is clearly a good idea, but direct access to a number of features from this screen have to be preserved (current song reset for example, here in the proposal afau, it requires to navigate to to song management to do it…).
I never requested more than 6x6. Honestly I think that if you need more than 6 parts in a song, you’d really better consider doing that in a DAW (ableton live + pads and midi switches for example… or ALK2 from zenaudio which seems pretty interesting) yet the idea of being able to define a matrix from 2x2 up to 6x6 has been proposed numerous times on the forum and it definitely sounds like a good idea… I will try to issue a consistent proposal on this specific subject, as I would like to see something a bit more dynamic than just a song setup parameter. Stay tuned
).