Anyone have Three Days Grace, Seether, Incubus or other things like that ready? I’m working on some (2 Highly Suspect Songs and 1 Halestorm), but it takes time.
Some of those groups’ songs have been posted to the forum.
Ya…one version of I Hate Everything About You that just doesn’t work. I have two Highly Suspect songs done that I will post.
There are quite a few Incubus midi files available. I made up versions of Pardon Me from one of those. I’ve seen you have very high standards, which I respect, so I doubt that this will suit your needs. But, it may give you an idea of the quality of the available midi files, and you may find with some editing that you could make something that suits your needs.
It wasn’t so much about “editing” with the Three Days Grace…it wasn’t in the same zip code. I have no idea how to use it as the grooves didn’t fit the song. I’ll look at the other Incubus stuff and see if it’ll work.
Mark Zanoni, looking forward to your getting the BeatBuilder working (or finding a DAW that works for you) and listening to the songs you’re going to be working on and sharing with the forum.
I’ve actually been editing and creating songs for some time. I have everything working on another computer. Been using it to record and have started doing some live drummerless shows for smaller venues with my bass playing wife. If you go to www.soundcloud.com/markzanonimusic and scroll down to Why Don’t You (Stand by Me) you can hear the first song there I used the beat buddy for drums on. It works fine. That track was partly edited with the free midi editor.
This peaked my interest as a diehard Incubus fan :-).
For a newbie like myself, could you help me understand how this would work? If I found a midi file online, could I import that to the BB manager and then use a higher quality drumset/instruments? The files I have found sounds extremely cheesy.
Most of us that create content for the Beat Buddy and present One Press Bass songs, and even those of us that just offer up drum beats, like to start from an existing midi file. It saves the work of creating something yourself. Of course, if you have a set of midi drums handy and a good drummer, you can create the mid files from scratch. Midi files that are type 1 mid files, those with a single part for each instrument, usually will already have a usable drum track in them. You could export that track only and save it as a new midi file. That midi file can then be directly added to a Beat Buddy song in Beat Buddy Manager. You simply copy and paste the midi drum part into the song. Some songs will need remapping of some instruments. Stock Beat Buddy kits have the kick drum at C1, midi 36, and snare at D1, midi 38. Stock Beat Buddy kits have toms at 50, 48 and 45. Often midi files that you get from the web have a kick drum at B0, midi 35. Sometimes there are snares at 39 and 40. An additional tom at 41 is common. You need to transpose those parts of the midi drum track to match the location of the instruments in your kit (or renumber the instruments in your kit to match the midi file.) But, yes, you can use the midi drum track found in on-line midi files with Beat Buddy drums once you’ve made those adjustments.
You may have noticed that there are “with bass” kits and also kits with keyboards, etc. Midi file found online are also used for these parts, although in those situations rather than transposing notes, you are transposing parts 2 or more octaves, and then merging those parts with the drum track to create a Beat Buddy compatible song. Samples used for Beat Buddy basses and keyboards are generally one sample per note, so the quality is not a high as a good studio midi keyboard, but, for many of us, it gets the job done.
Also, with respect to cheesiness, I have noticed the worst part is generally the instrument used to play the melody or vocal lines. If you eliminate those parts, often the midi files can sound quite decent. Midi authors often also have awful sounding guitar parts, with overuse of midi distorted guitar and pitchbending. Again, if you focus on bass and drums, the parts can be quite good.
If this whole transposing of notes wasnt over my head, I would be able to contribute making more songs for the BB but Im not a MIDI master sadly. I got lots of ideas and would love to be able to port over a good MIDI file from the net and make it into a BB file but it seems its a lot of work for a hobbyist guitar player like me who likes to keep things simple so…sadly as much as Id Love to contribute, unless someone makes a step by step walk thru video showing this process on an easy MIDI song from the web and transforming it into a BB song, with UP CLOSE PC screen so we can see EXACTLY what is being done not 20 feet away, its just too much for a basic user to try and create these song files, IMO.
Wish it wasnt the case.
Will have to stick with the basic stuff and the stuff everyone here creates.
@Phil - wow thank you so much for sharing such a detailed response! I did spend some time yesterday playing around with MIDI files. I do echo the sentiment of kinglerxt here. I have a pretty solid foundation of music theory knowledge and work in computer terminals for a living…and I still struggle with some of these “basic” ways to utilize the BB.
I grabbed some midi files online and you were right, once I removed the vocal and guitar parts, the bass and drums sounded plenty fine for just jamming around.
However, I’ve tried a bunch of free tools to edit MIDI files and they are just not intuitive. Tracktion didnt really work at all. I tried Aria Maestosa as I’ve seen others recommend it…but I was struggling to perform pretty basic tasks. I couldn’t even change instruments in an existing midi file…so I didnt even try remapping to match my drum kit…and forget about merging tracks to create a BB compatible file. I spent about 5 hours on this yesterday and feel nowhere close to having a working/useful track.
Are there better free tools? Do I just need to pay for a better program? I don’t have much confidence I’ll be able to invest this kind of time for live performances or sharing my songs on the forum. :-/
Yeah Im a technie nerd PC literate Engineer guitar hobbyist but MIDI and drum creation is a WHOLE 'nother world that seems way over my head and I have other more important stuff to do than trying to figure it out. better to spend time practicing guitar than trying to create beats. 
I’m a Mac guy. I use Logic Pro X. When I did midi on PC, I used Sonar, which eventually became Cakewalk, which Gibson killed off. I think it’s just a matter of picking a good full-featured program. Try finding one with a good support network, especially one with a good User forum. I get lots of insight from the various Logic Pro X forums out there.
Don’t be afraid to throw out requests for songs. I’ll be getting back into the song creating process in a couple weeks. Just don’t give a whole setlist. No one wants to tackle that.
Seriously as a PC literate Engineer, this should not be over your head. Example - transposing a kick drum at b0 to C1. You open up the track for the drums select at the notes at B0, move then up one space to C1. They are then “transposed.” Transposing a bass part - Open the bass track. Select all. if you want to use a kit where bass is a 0-31, move the selected notes down, usually two octaves, i.e. 24 spaces. is you are using a 63-91 kit, you are usually going to need to move the bass up two octave. That is transposing for the BB. I think sometimes terminology gets one confused. With drums, it’s usually select all the drum notes shown at position A, which is not in the BB drum kit, and move them to position B, which is in the BB drum kit. There can be more to it than that, of course. But that is the essential gist of it.
And, as you state, there is better stuff to do, so if you don’t want to learn it, you don’t have to. People create songs for free of for a fee. I love my computers, but I don’t want to learn to program them. People make software.
Yes but KNOWING when and when you need to transpose and not to is half the battle. you can look at it and in 5 secs know exactly what needs to be done. for me…ouch no idea where to even start and what to keep or remove…so …yeah its easy once you have someone show you STEP BY STEP. Im a very fast learner but unless youve done it before its not intuitive