I’ve just bought a Beatbuddy to provide some rhythmic backbone for a new band I’ve just joined. I’m the bass player and just having a tambourine was driving me crazy!
We have two amazing ladies providing the vocals, with just me, a guitarist, and now the beatbuddy making up the backline.
I’ve been playing for years, but never learnt what all the different drum patterns are called, so choosing a suitable beatbuddy song is quite difficult. I’ve got all the cover song packages, which are brilliant and we are making good use of those, but the ladies are picking stuff that I can’t quite work out.
There are probably going to be quite a few requests, but here are a few to start off with. i would be delighted with near approximations from the standard songs, bit anything more specific would be greatly appreciated:
Exe’s and Oh’s by Elle King. The Original is incredibly distorted, but I can live happily without that.
This is the Life by Elelda May
Good to be Alive by Emelda May - Some sort of generic rockabilly rhythm would probably be OK for may of these songs.
Kiss me by Sixpence none the Richer
Black Horse & the Cherry tree, by KT Tunstall
Don’t Marry Her by the Beautiful South
Then, I download it, and load it up into Reaper. From there, I get rid of all the extra tracks I don’t need, and identify the drum track (usually ch 10) and the bass track. Then, I mark out the “verse” and the “chorus” etc, and whatever parts that can be looped, and the intro and outro if necessary. Chop the midi up, and import it into a new song in BB manager. Wallah! new song, without having to try to match beats. If you don’t ever vary the arrangement of the song, soon you won’t have to chop it up into loops–just hit start and it will play the song through. (Right now there is a 500 note limit on a part. When that is gone, you can have full songs as a part)
I use “with bass” drumkits, so the bb is my drummer AND bass player!
Thanks very much for these suggestions, I’ve got the tracks I need for the moment. The next challenge is getting to grips with the editing software. I’ve got a copy of Reaper and also of MixPad to try. Time for the next learning curve!
I took your suggestions Aash, I got Reaper and download a midi song (Crazy-Patsy Cline) from midiworld, I isolated the drums and bass, transposed the bass (I perform it in C) and made some edits on the bass track. How do I now chop up the midi and export (I split items at cursor and chopped up song, intro, verse, chorus, etc… but can’t figure out how to export the splits) Also, how in the world do I get the midi bass mapped out for BeatBuddy Manager.
i do it in two steps… I export as a 2 track snippet. Then, I edit the 2 track snippet, and move the bass where it goes, and merge to 1 track.
To export a 2 track snippet, highlight the drum piece and the bass piece, and hit Export Project midi. Now the options there are important. Select the option to Selected Items Only, and Export Multitrack Midi. Make up a naming convention… I use I=intro, L=loop, V=verse, C=chorus, VC=Verse Chorus combo, etc. So, this snippet is L_r2.mid (Loop, reaper export, 2 track).
Once you get your r2s, edit them independently. Move the bassline to it’s proper spot 64 or higher, and then when you export project midi select Entire Project, All, Merge to Single Track. Before you export though, make sure that the midi ends on the end of a measure. Sometimes exports will add a little bit of extra time after where you meant to end it. Just chop it off, or when you loop, you hear music, then a bit of silence before the next loop.
I downloaded the song, and it doesn’t seem too complicated. However, we usually like to have a “cheat sheet” that tells us when we need to press whatever button at whatever time, to make the song come out like we want it. I use the following notes:
[bb:intro: ] where i describe what the intro is… something like [bb:intro 4 bars of drums intro]
then [bb:loop:] something like: [bb:loop is verse chorus] or [bb:loop start] and [bb:loop end]
if you want to do a fill, i use: [bb:tap] or [bb:fill] or something like that.
if you want to transition to a different part, i use [bb:trans]
to trigger the outro, i use [bb:end]
If you posted a cheat sheet with that info, I’d be able to play your song tonight at my local pub!
It’s not too hard to post a song in multiple keys… I’d suggest posting in the original, plus the one you play it in,since only the bassline is what needs to change.
I do this on a mac using garageband. It is the same process as reaper to go to a free midi site to download a midi song, delete tracks, chop up etc… The only difference is there is an extra step in exporting the midi file out of garageband since it wont directly export to MIDI. I use a free program to convert the AIF file in garageband to a midi file instead. I have the beta software and I am converting entire songs to bass and drums like crazy. I have come to realize that the quality of the midi file is super important. What we need is a .midi file sharing thread where we can post and share the raw midi files that we have modified. Many times I need to move a drum to the right key so it plays correctly in BB. The reason I want the raw midi files is because I still like to chop up certain parts because I use my looper regularly especially for intros that repeat before I tap and start the beginning of the song with singing parts. I do this sometimes on the outra too.
I downloaded reaper and I am having issues with working with it. Importing midi and even opening up the editor. Does it go inactive after 60 days? Gotta read up on it I guess.
