Hi guys, and thanks for a werry good forum. Im a New BB user, and are werry pleased with the sound, and abilitys the Box and software perform.
But I have a “novice” question. How do I combine all tracks into one using the “MidiEditor”?
I stripped a general midifile to contain only 4 -5 intruments. But I only hear the bass. Then I take away the bas, and only hear the basdrum. Take away the basdrum, and than the snaredrum appears… So im pretty sure this has to do With combining the tracks… But how ?
I tryed to “Select all tracks” and copy them to the bas-track, but it dont seem to work.
Hope for an answere.
BR. Erlend Olsen
Hi! I am a newbie too, may be my simple words will help. The BB uses drumsets which are a collection of wav-files. The wav files are stored to midi channels. Maybe snare is channel 39. The songs on a beatbuddy are midi files. If the midifile has a note on 39, you hear a snare drum when it comes to 39. Normally BB drumsets only contain drums or percussion, but you can store other wav-sounds like bass or keyboards on midi numbers you don’t need for drum-patterns. What you describe sounds like changing the midi notes of a midi file. If i were you, first I would view my drum set by double-clicking. So you can see, what midi channel belongs to important drums (snare, bass, hihat). Then view your midi-file and compare, on which midi-channels these instruments are. If they are on the same numbers, you can be shure, that they sound correct. But if the snare in the midi-file is on 38 or 40 - you may hear a rimshot or electric snare (depending on what the drumset-creator has stored on this channel). It is the same with all other instruments. If the midi-file has a note on 8 (maybe a bass note), but the drumset doesn`t have a wav on this channel, you will hear nothing. If the drumset has an organ-sound or a gunshot-sound there, you will hear organ or a gunshot instead of bass, haha. Greetings from germany.
Thank you for answere, but its not that. First I also thought that this was the problem ( in fact was…) but after moving up and down, I sunndenly discower this, and go into the drumset, to located all the instruments number. So im sure that I has the correct number for the instrument. I get sound for the instruments in the midifile, but only one at the time. If I have the bass, I hear nothing else. If I take away the bass, The kikdrum comes in, but nothing else… So the number are correct. I think its somthing about combining the tracks into only one track, that I dont know how to do… But thanks again…
Hi Erlend, the simple answer for how I do what I think you’re asking is I select all the song’s events with a Ctrl-A then go to the “Tools” menu, then I go to the “Move events to track” menu and then I select a track. It can be any track, I usually just use track 0. I then delete all tracks in the song except that one and save the file. Hope that helps.
Part of the problem comes from trying to use the BeatBuddy Manager Midi Editor which can’t do the job very easily. You can try Beat Builder (free) to see if that makes it easier http://forum.mybeatbuddy.com//index.php?threads/free-midi-editor-designed-for-beatbuddy.2545/
The process might be easier though if you use a DAW, which is ideal for creating one-press bass (OPB) for the BeatBuddy. There are several choices: Reaper (Mac or PC), PreSonus Studio (the free version), Logic Pro X (Mac only). Some users have used Aria Maestosa.
For example of what to do using Logic Pro X, you would click and shift-click on the edited drums and bass MIDI regions, Join the two regions and then export. In Reaper, you would select the drums and bass regions and then export to a single track. There are a couple of “tutorials for dummies” on the forum and although the screen shots are missing, the narratives might still be helpful. The takeaway is that the two regions (or tracks) have to be joined or merged into one for the BBM to be able to recognize it.
LOL! I thought maybe he was talking about the MidiEditor open source app but BBM really does need a better editor. More importantly, a good midi export function.
Maybe you can answer my question since I still use BBM on Windows and don’t know if the Mac version has this problem… still haven’t saved enough to get my Mac 
All I have are iPads.
To this day the only thing I can export are parts. Anytime I try to export an OPB song it fails miserably. Unfortunately some songs on the forum don’t include the original or manipulated midi file so I’m out of luck if I want to use the song but need to transpose it or adjust velocities.
Is there any other way to export an OPB to midi? Are they maybe somewhere in the file system I can get them from?
^^^
Check your forum inbox.
This one didn’t have any pictures, and it still works:
How to Convert a Midi file to Beat Buddy using Logic Pro X
Find a midi file you would like to convert. Some good sources are http://www.ajsmidi.com/docdoc/docblues.html and http://www.ajsmidi.com/blues/blues_1.html for blues files, and middy.com and freemidi.org for rock files. Or, just Google, Song name midi.
Download the file to an easily found location and open it directly in Logic. Logic will open the midi file and assign instruments to the tracks. Logic sometimes assigns a piano to what is clearly the drum track. Switch the piano out for a drum kit, or it’s gonna sound real bad.
Play the file and note where the sections break.
Decide how you want to present the song on the Beat Buddy Forum. Is it an OPB* or OPBk*; is it a song with a single jam section, or do you want to have many parts? Once you decide, Go back through the song and use Command T to break the song into sections. Listen for your sections, verse, chorus any bridges or transitions and any good drum fill sections; or prejam, jam and outro.
*OPB - One Press with Bass
*OPBk - One Press with Bass and keyboards
Save this file as [song name] tracks. You will be coming back to this file.
You will generally be using at least the drums and bass. If you want to add a keyboard section, figure out which part or parts will lend themselves to making a good keyboard part.
Pick a section to work on, the jam, for example. Select just the bass track. Select all notes in the bass track and drag them up, such that nearly all of the notes fall between E3 and E5, if using a 63_91 kit, other kits may have other mappings. Check the mapping by double clicking on the drum set name in the drum kit list. Phil Flood kits and GarryA kits, usually use 0 through 31 (C-2 through G0). For those kits, you will drag the notes down, so they fall between C-2 and G0. Standard Pro bass starts the bass at E5. There may be some notes that are outside of the mapped range. In that case, select just those notes and transpose them up or down one octave as appropriate. You might also wish to transpose the bass track to another key using this process. If bass notes overlap, or are nearly touching each other, you may need to shorten them. The easiest thing to do is to select all the notes and drag the end of one note slightly shorter. This will shorten all of the selected notes. This has to do with the Beat Buddy’s original lack of recognition of “midi note off.” This has been fixed to a some degree, but its still good practice to not have bass notes unintentionally overlapped, as they will appear to drop out when the song is played.
Its good practice to save after you make significant edits or complete a section. This will help in the event you need to do more work.
Check the drum track for non-compatible mappings and adjust as needed. Some tracks have a kick drum at B0 (Midi 35) and some BB kits do not have this drum. Also, some tracks have notes mapped to a location that corresponds to a handclap in Beat Buddy. Frequently, these are supposed to be a snare. Select all the handclap notes at the offending location and drag them to D1 or E1 which should be a snare. If you have odd sounding drums when you audition the file, you can come back to this step using the file you saved in Step 8, and make adjustments. You also may find that the drum track has notes that do not correspond to an instrument in your kit. In those cases, use your judgement on where to move the notes to a similar instrument. Alternatively, find a General Midi w/Bass compatible kit, and use it on the Beat Buddy.
Select the bass and drum tracks. Join the tracks (Edit>Join>Regions). Create a new track, and move the joined track to the beginning of measure 1. This is a Logic idiosyncrasy. If you don’t do it, you’ll have blank space at the beginning of the loop. It won’t work as intended.
In Logic use Export>Selection as midi file. Give it a name like [file name] verseA and save it to a folder where you will place all you files for this song.
You can now add the newly created section to Beat Buddy Manager to audition it. Open Beat Buddy Manager and select a folder that has less than 99 songs. Select a song, and the +song button above that song will become active. Press the +song button, and a new song layout will appear. Enter the BPM and song title. The BPM should match or at least be in the range of the BPM that was showing in Logic for the song.
You can now add the newly created midi file to the verse section. Simply click on the verse button and navigate to the file. Select it, and it will appear in that section of the beat buddy window.
Make sure you have a “with bass” kit with corresponding mapping selected. Then you can press the play button on the track to audition it in Beat Buddy manager.
Repeat the process with the rest of the song sections. Save the Project when complete.
If desired, export your song from Beat Buddy manager to your project location so that the song can be added to other Beat Buddy Manager Projects if need be, or shared on the Beat Buddy Forum.
I now answering my self !.
I downloaded another program with midi editing capability, (Reaper) and managed to merge all the tracks. Then every sound come in the beat. So its the merging of tracks I cant figure out in the “MidiEditor” program. Improving midi editing capability is something I think will gain werry many users of the Beatbuddy.
Its like “shooting sparrow with kanons” (as we say in Norway) to have to use a big DAW program just to merge tracks, or simple stripping and tuning intruments… The “Beatbuilder” looks nice and easy to use, but it has to few drums for my need. If this program have the capability to load the drumset that you intended to use the midifiel for (including bassnotes), than this program might be super. So thanks for every answeres you buddys. Keep on beating !!
Hello Raymond, and everybody else…Just an uppdate…
Yes, You were totally right. It was just to “copy all tracks” ( in EDIT) and og to Tools, and “Move events to track” - But DONT delete all tracks. Silly me, I dont konw what Iv done..Thought Iv tryed that…
Just save, and you are “good to go !” Its a good idea to save the file to another name before you “merge”, Cause after “merging” you cant manipulate the instruments, since theyr "all in one bag". Then you habe the original, and can adjust numbers later So Im superhappy. I can use only the free “MidiEditor” for all my simple stripping and manipulating instruments Codex.
But its always important to check the intruments number in the drumset, so it correspond with the midifile. If the number are mismatch, there will be no sound, or false sound…And the different drumset might have theyr spesial, individual number codexes for some intruments.
So tonight its gona be "Rock`n Roll, with New beats, bass and the lot ! Thanks!
BR. Erlend
Glad to hear about all the progress you made! Can’t wait to hear any songs you might want to share in the Resources section. 