How does BB interpret length of intro/loops/outro midi files?

BeatBuddy Help, Questions and Bugs
#1

I’m trying to create my own midi files for some songs and having a hard time understanding how BeatBuddy interprets the various lengths of its midi files. I’ll see some outtro files that have the first 2 beats silent, yet I never hear the silence played. And I’ll see some intros that are 5 or 6 beats long, yet they fit into a 4 beat intro when played.

Is there any documentation as to how these midi segments are overlapped into a song, why some are odd sizes, and the effect of triggering them at various places in a song?

#2

For all transitions, if the first beat (or two or three or…) are blank, the main part plays under those empty beats and the fill kicks in where the fill has content.

I am not aware of any 5- or 6-beat intros, so I can’t interpret what’s going on there.

As for what happens when you trigger, same rules apply, regardless of the content of the fill, I believe.

1 Like
#3

Here’s a couple of midi files that illustrate my point. For the Blues 1 song there’s an intro that is actually 6 beats long with 5 beats of content and its outro is 5 beats long too but starts on the 3rd beat. I was hoping to find some documentation on the actual programming of the algorithms before I spend time just trial and error in making my own midi files.

blues midi

I wanted to create an outro with just a cymbal crash on beat 1 after the last measure of the song with no fill before it. I tried creating a 1 bar midi file with a cymbal on beat 1. No good - it kills the output as soon as I trigger the outro but then plays the crash about 5 beats later. So I created a file with 3 bars and the crash on the 5th beat. It doesn’t play anything.

#4

Ah, okay, forgot to mention that. The fills include a 5th beat that is just the cymbal on the 1 of tyhe next bar so your rolls work properly. It mutes any brass in the first bar (like a hi-hat, for example) but the rest of the first bar of the part plays normally.

Pro-tip: The kicks are not Mute-Grouped, so if you leave that kick in place, you’ll get two kicks essentially right on top of each other and it sounds weird.

The six beats is weird, should only be five, but it’ll work the same way.

Joe