Great tool, more an interactve drum pedal than any sort of play on auto unit. Many create actual songs that can be loaded into the BB and played to you just have to use the footswitch trigger for fills, transition to part, pause, and outtro fill.
I have a DR-880 which melts my brain trying to program patterns to create songs, sound is amazing but my brain hurts.
The good thing about the BB is that those who can create good drum beats and songs offer them up on the user library beats so those of use who cannot do what they do get to bask in their glory. (…kissing up for more Zeppelin songs).
I look forward to getting the new TRIO and messing with that as well, promises to be rather amazing to have drums and bass created to match your playing. This new breed of drum machines made for the player are going to change the whole paradigm of playing guitar by yourself which no longer need be boring without something to play in the pocket, behind or ahead of the beats.
I love improvisation and these tools advance that art.
Paul, glad you like BB - check out my Digitech Trio review here - http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?threads/beatbuddy-and-digitech-trio-linked.3862/#post-13584
That sounds great aashideacon, how did you mange to integrate the bass? Something I’d consider myself if not too complicated.
Cheers
Guitar Stu took a regular drum kit, and for midi notes 64-88 added in two octaves of bass samples, E to E. So basically what I do now is find a midi I like, and split it into basic parts (verse, bridge, etc), and remove all the tracks but drum and bass. Then in Reaper, I move the bassline up a couple octaves and make sure it’s all in that 64-88 note region, and export it as a single midi track. Then I construct the beatbuddy “song” in BB manager. I’ve posted 5 or 10 in the Beats section of the forum. I’m obsessed with this, so I’ll be posting songs until every song I play live is beatbuddy with bass 
Guitar Stu has several posts (and a ton of songs) about how he does this process, and some caveats and lessons learned.
Thanks for that aash, to be honest my midi is a bit limited, I’m a little lost with what your describing. I’m not familiar with Reaper, using cubase myself as a DAW. So are you saying that you can transfer bass samples to the BB & trigger them to play using midi? I’ll check out your songs in the Beat section.
IF
The thing about midi is that it isn’t the sound itself, but a description of it. Instead of being actual sound, what is encoded is something like “play note 45, with a velocity of 80, and a duration of 1 bar”. The midi system has to interpret that and figure out “what instrument is note 45?” “what does it sound like with a velocity of 80?” etc etc. So the way the beatbuddy works is that it reads these midi loops, and plays the notes that are in the drum kit. What Guitar Stu did was add bass notes to the drum kit. So basically what you have to do is copy midi drum loops, and use some midi editor to copy a bass line into the midi loop in the appropriate way. (which is from notes 64 to 88). BB Manager has a drumkit editor that lets you see what’s in the kit, and checking that out will make what I’m saying make more sense. You can see a particular note is “snare”, and with different velocities, it will trigger different samples. As a side note, not all midi systems trigger samples. Some create the note in their own way based on the way it interprets the midi note.
Yes aash I understand the basic principle of midi it’s just when it gets very technical I’m a bit skimpy on it, but thanks for that explanation, I might try it at some stage, but my main priority at the moment is to set up a gig folder in BB manager & create & transfer drum tracks for all my original songs & a few covers into it. I’m doing ok jamming them on improv, but I want to use different drums sets & tempos so will save me time having to change these during a gig if I have preset songs set up & just have to flick through them using the footswitch.
IF
To be honest, I liked the BB at first but as I used it for a few days the newness wore off and I realized it was not the deal for me.
I returned it. I just got the Digitech Trio and look forward to seeing if that is not more suited for my use. Biggest let down for me was the whole “song” thing, most are just 2 parts and a monotonous loop which I just do not like, User songs while often dead on in song mimic are fun a few times but how many times are you going to play the same song, tight and on to the same version? I am more an improvising jazz fusion player so having to be confined to boxed in songs or short drum loops was not the direction I want to go. I think the Trio and the promising technology to drums fitting to what you play is a marvelous idea.
The Trio will not sound as good, though more instruments. Keep in mind with the Trio you need to have a chord progression in mind before stepping on the pedal. One of my favorite things about having the Beat Buddy is how it encourages improvisation.
My own update: I uploaded a full length video to youtube using the EHX Nano POG in a metal musical setting, the Beat Buddy does my drums.
Simple: Yes! Get it! Changed my life!
I also had the digitech trio - it was nice, but i sold it since you can not fool around with new sounds, songs, rythms, etc.
Yes, love it!!!
It can be a very powerful musical tool or just a great practice tool… or both. I love it!