Yeah, I totally understand what you are saying, and I think you are correct overall. A midi extension pedalboard would probably be cool, yet it would indeed feel like an overkill
So, I am going to experiment with binding pedal settings to the song parts. You have 3 pedals - main and 2 footswitches, so you could define their meaning on a per song part basis, not only on a per state basis (when played / when paused of stopped).
Having something like that:
song part 1 : left FS - pause, right - accent hit
song part 2 : left - transition backward (to 1), right - accent hit
song part 3 : left - outro, right - accent hit
How about adding to the footswitch a shift-type button with an LED that would change the functions of the buttons while on and return them to normal when off? It would maybe be easier to keep track of all those functions if you had an LED telling you what mode you’re in, and there’s enough room on the footswitch to add a small switch & an LED.
In order to make that work, the footswitch should somehow tell BeatBuddy different commands for every state it is in.
Yet each footswitch (left and right) uses one channel of a stereo audio cord to simply signal its state.
Either a special protocol should be used (that will lead to problems like latency and such footswitches would not be compatible with pretty much anything else aside from the BeatBuddy). A decision that is hardly popular.
A programmable MIDI pedal board would probably be much better. General MIDI protocol is very well documented, so adding advanced pro support of special MIDI commands to the BeatBuddy will allow for easy controlling the BeatBuddy even via your iPhone app, for example.
You’re right, I didn’t think about the connection. Yep, MIDI is the way to go. Bluetooth is a possibility, but if I’m playing and I decide to skip a part or return to the previous section, I can’t really fiddle with the phone.
