Is there a way to get the song to just end ?
Yes: Delete the Outro. A double tap ends the song at the end of the current bar.
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Triple Tap Stop - When enabled, allows the function of stopping the song
immediately with a quick triple tap (Please Note: When Disabled, a tap during the
outro fill will cancel the outro fill and continue playing the current song part).
o Enable/Disable*.
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Thanks for the info, is it possible to get the song to end automatically at the end of the song. It seems strange this isn’t the default behaviour?
Ok, a BB song is structured with 3 main parts: an intro; one or more main loops; and an outro. Upon start, the intro plays. If there is no intro present, or if the intro is disabled, the first main loop plays. The pedal continues to play main loops until it receives a command to progress to the outro (double tap), or end immediately (triple tap). With a double tap, it plays the outro once and then ends the song.
Many user made OPB songs are structured with the entire song body as the intro. When this intro finishes playing, the pedal progresses to the main loop, which is usually a soundless “null” loop. However, the song does not actually end until the double tap, which goes to a blank outro.
In short, once you start a song, there is no way to end it automatically without entering a command to end the song. This is typical behavior for any drum machine or looper.
I suppose someone could develop something that says, “upon receiving no midi command for X number of clock ticks, end the song,” but I don’t see this happening with the BB architecture.
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Thanks for such a comprehensive answer.
I’m starting to think I bought the wrong thing, unfortunately I didn’t see any of this information when I was looking at buying it. I was disappointed when I found out it wouldn’t just play the whole song as i purchased a fair amount of premium songs.
I watched lots of YouTube etc before I purchased it and no where did I get any information on it not just playing a song and stopping at the end. This just feels like such a basic feature I never imagined it wouldn’t be there.
I didn’t want a drum looper I have the RC10r which is really good for messing around and improvising.
I wanted a drum machine to play the drums like a drummer, when I saw all the premium songs I thought that’s what it did, or at least it had a song mode that just played the song. I expected next/previous song and start/stop functionality as a basic feature !
I’m in a three piece cover band and this looked like it would be a good option for the drums, but I’ve had it a year now but gave up with it after a month of trying to manually transition and mainly failing.
I just don’t want to learn another instrument which is essentially what I’d be doing. I’m just not interested in interacting with it, I just want it to play the drums.
I recently created some midi files in the DAW and they sound ok, they are all one file and I put them in the main section. But then it just kept on going when I expected it to stop at the end.
I honestly think this information should be on the Home page so people know before they buy, if I’d have known it couldn’t play the songs in the place of a drummer I wouldn’t have bought it. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who bought the BB believing it would be a good substitute drummer.
I know there’s been promises of a feature that would do the whole song but it’s been talked about for a long time so it may never happen. And the info about it didn’t say it would play then stop at the end, but let’s hope if they ever do add the feature they allow you to choose to finish at end of song. An option to automatically move to the next song in the playlist ready to start would be good to!
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am, it’s really well built and sounds good plus has a good library of premium songs, but I have a hard time believing this was developed by guitarists.
Most of us want simple start stop type functionality, unless your into live looping, but I would imagine the ratio of guitarist that live loop to none live loop would be something like 70% of players don’t live loop and wouldn’t want to be interactive with the BB live.
That’s a large market that this pedal doesn’t support, Please don’t think I’m knocking those that like interacting with the BB I’m genuinely not. And I’m only guessing at the percentage based on my experience playing guitar over the last 40 years.
While Im not into looping myself, I love watching the guys that do. It’s a really great skill and very enjoyable to see and listen to.
I’m really not sure what to do now, there’s no real guidance on when the functionality I’m looking for will be released if ever and it’s been sat on the shelf gathering dust for the best part of a year.
I’ll have a think and see what’s out there. I really don’t want to use backing tracks although we have before now. Using the BB felt like a cleaner solution, but from your comment your saying this is the norm for drum machines so none of them will play a song and then stop when it’s done.
Anyway, thank you for your helpful comments.
I have stopped making long intro’s so that you can drop into a song at any part. Long intros have to play every time. Short intro’s are effectively click in and don’t distract from a ad-hoc song
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If you’re essentially happy with the tracks you created and placed in the Main Loop area, try this. Open your track in your midi editor, and at the end of the track add several blank measures. Then, on the last note of that series of measures insert a velocity 1 note in some unused location. I unusually recommend midi note 0 for this. This will give you several measures to double tap the pedal after then of your track before it begins to play again.
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There is another option you could consider for drums one-press (DOP) type songs and that’s to place the midi file in the Outro section; you’ll still need a Null/Nil/Empty midi file in the Main Drums Loop section to have the right BeatBuddy (BB) structure. This way the song will play all the way to completion and stop. The only difference is that you’ll need a double-tap to start the song since it’s in the Outro.
Since you seem most interested in using the premium content, this obviously won’t scratch all of your itches. Hope I haven’t strayed too far off the beaten path of your original intent….
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Thanks for the reply, that’s a good option and I’ll give it a try. As for the premium content I do like the fact that there’s a decent library of songs and the guys that created them are far better at it than I am.
But I’d rather create my own and be able to use the BB than not at all.
Thanks,
Lee.
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Another thing that might help is that you get all of the MIDI files for the songs - they are in the midi_sources folder
You could just drop them into your DAW, arrange them in the proper song order and export as MIDI file to get complete songs from them, and then do as others suggest above
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I simply just tap on the right button on the footswitch… Song stops, simple!
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The songs in the premium library loop at the end, so you have to be quick or it starts from the beginning. This is annoying and doesn’t look good in a live gig situation when your just wanting to cover the song.
However I understand now that this is basically a looper for drums and so this is the expected behaviour.
I hope in a future firmware release they add a checkbox to select whether to loop and stop when you get to the end of the song.
Thanks for your reply 
I use Premium Library songs on stage. They don’t loop back to the beginning of the song. Maybe you downloaded one of those one-press songs from the forums? I’ve never used one of those. People make those by putting a whole song on one loop, right? I guess that would go back to the beginning if you didn’t stop it.
The official Beatbuddy songs all consist of separate loops for each part of the song. So, if you’re properly keeping up with your transitions, you should be on the last loop towards the end of the song. This is usually a chorus. Beatbuddy will just keep playing this part. If I don’t trigger the outro in time, no biggie! I just sing the chorus again!
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I have several of these type songs downloaded on my BB but as I said, I simply hit the right side footswitch and it stops. I then step on the main pedal and it brings me back to the list and I can then use the right footswitch again to advance my gig list. There seems to be several ways to do this, this works for me. I do this in a live gig situation. I do have to say that at times, I feel like I’m doing a tap dance on stage! Between the BB and my pedal board, it keeps things interesting!!!
Good luck on whichever way works for you.
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I wonder, will the AutoPilot feature, when implemented (and I know there are precursors to this that remain pending), address this and allow for a song to play thru and come to an end automatically when that is desired?
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Yes, auto play would end the song, as it would cause the song to progress through the outro section.
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I think it really depends on comfort with tapping. I’m new to looping and BB, so the foot dance is more difficult, particularly when I’m learning a song. I still haven’t tried using the BB and Aeros together, which will bring a whole new set of hurdles.
OP or autoplay will help, but I’d likely set up a song in two ways. Multipart for learning parts and for progressing to full play-though followed by OP when simply playing the song.
Why wouldn’t this work with the premium content?
Because we are talking about two different song formats.
One-press types usually consist of a song that plays from start to finish with a single tap when the song is placed in the Intro and ending the song requires a double tap; if the song is placed in the Outro, it will require a double tap to start playing the Outro after which when reaching the end, it will automatically stop the song without any user intervention.
The premium content is multi-part and requires the user to interact with the pedal to advance thru each of the song’s sections; starting a song requires a single tap and stopping it requires a double tap to start playing the Outro after which the song stops.