so I’m new to beat buddy trying to decide if I’m going to stick with it or return it, and in reading through the threads there are a couple of things I’m not getting. For example this one press play and bass. I’m trying to figure out why the users are trying to make beat buddy what its not…to my understanding it’s supposed to be a interactive drum machine you play with your feet. It seems most here want it to play bass and other instruments and not be interactive, what gives? Also there’s a insert in the BB packaging that state something like if you can think it you can play it. I’ve read a post from the makers that it’s not a composition tool. This seems directly opposite of what their documentation states. It seems on both end we have users trying to make the BB what it’s not and the other end BB is not living up to its promises. Can someone here explain this to me? Thanks.
I’m not a big fan of the one-press stuff either…
I prefer to be able to switch parts when I want… which is exactly what it was made for and what it CAN do if that’s what you want…
The cool thing about some electronics is that people figure out ways to make it do what they want even if it wasn’t intentionally designed that way…
If people want to use it as a backing track player, that’s up to them… There’s plenty of stuff out there that’s not One-press, you just have to find it amongst all the other stuff… Anything released by Singular Sound is still broken up into parts. I have the full collection as well as a couple packages I bought from Groove Monkey… I haven’t really downloaded much user created stuff since the one-press craze began…
Hey – welcome to the family!
There are lots of (sometimes very strong) opinions on both of your questions, but I’ll take a kick at it and let folks flame me if they must.
On the OP songs, I generally prefer to drive the drummer interactively when we play live, because I can use that to read and react to the crowd: Songs that are gangbusters get an 8-minute treatment; songs that are dogs get a verse/chorus/out. But I do use some OP songs, usually under one of two circumstances:
-
The song likely has no legs, so it’s not worth spending the time I often spend building and editing. In these cases, I usually download a MIDI source file and fit it to the Beat Buddy drums, deleting all else, and go from there. Low cost of entry, and if the song goes away in three weeks, I didn’t have that much invested in it in the first place, so, no harm, no foul.
-
I am too busy in the song (or the timing is too tight) to reliably hit my marks, so I need the BB to drive itself. Dead or Alive is an example of that, in that, at one point, I am singing, switching pickups, changing patches on my pedalboard, and hitting the boost all in the same two beats – and in a specific order. So, also changing the part on the BB was a bridge too far, and, after trying to do it for a few gigs and missing most of the time, I broke down and built it as an OP.
So that’s where it’s handy for me. There are a lot of guys here who make the perfectly legitimate argument that “Why fight it when you could just lay back and focus on guitar?” I think that’s a great point, too.
As for “Dream it – do it,” to me, that really means “Learn to edit the files and the world is your oyster.” My duo has a growing repertoire of about 110 songs. Exactly four use the beats as they came on the BB.
I want the drummer to do what I want him to do, so I program, I shuffle, and I build from scratch. Lots of guys on here do. But lots of guys also take the view that close enough is close enough, and do very little editing.
Do audiences hear and appreciate the 8+ hours I’ve been known to spend getting a song exactly right vs. close enough? Probably not, but I do. And I actually think part of the fun is in bending the technology to my will (my BB runs our light show!). So I program by hand and I play parts in with an old Roland Octapad.
Do I need to expend that effort to get gigs? Again, probably not. But I want it just so, and that makes me happy.
As an aside, my wife thinks I’m nuts for the time I put into each song, but she gets (and I am painfully aware) that I am a control freak, so…
Anyway, those are my takes. I’m sure others will have different points of view on it as well.
I’m new to BeatBuddy too, and I sort of agree with with you but with reservations…
If you’re playing a style of song which fits the standard BeatBuddy drums / tempos / styles that’s the way to use the pedal.
If you want to play say a Beatles track for example, there are so many variations of drumming within Beatles songs that ‘standard’ sng / track supplied with the Beat Buddy will not fit the song.
The only way with more complicated songs is to use One Press sng files.
Simple repeating songs like basic blues or rock n roll work well with the standard beats supplied.
I have started using the ‘Bodhran’ drum kit for jigs / reels / polkas / waltzes with my squeezebox they work great.
The other view might be that, if you’re writing your own songs, you can make your song fit with the standard BeatBuddy drum tracks. I don’t write my own stuff.
Thanks for the replies guys. I can see where the one press stuff would be important. I’ve just started using it so I haven’t checked out the programming aspect yet.
It might be worth mentioning that there is a ‘Song Matching’ page that is worth looking at.
It’s one of those bits of the forum that is easy to miss.
The page suggests possible songs which can be used with kits and beats - have a look
Yep I started checking those out dont see any I play…seems I’ll be creating alot of material.
To be honest, I had a look for songs which I could use and came to the same conclusion as you.
In fact, hardly any of the BeatBuddy standard content fit the 60’s tunes which I play. I seem to be spending too much time converting backing tracks for songs, over to the One Press - BeatBuddy system which seems like a stupid thing to be doing.
I have around 100 backing tracks in WAV. format which sound great on my Lenovo pad with Songer player app which I have used for gigs. I’m at a stage where I’m trying to make the BeatBuddy sound like my better quality backing tracks, which is not really the point of BB.
I only got the pedal a couple of weeks ago, I’ll be putting the BB pedal on eBay UK later today…
Sorry to hear that. But it sounds a bit like maybe it’s just not the right solution for you.
Who would you say the BB is for?
I’m thinking about returning mine the starter beats are ok…but the programming process seems to be alot harder than it needs to be…
It’s not designed to be a straight playback device – although people have bent it to that use with OPs (a testament to its flexibility). I use it that way sometimes, but that’s not where it shines. It is eminently flexible and programmable, but to get the most out of it, you have you be willing to work with it (which can be onerous, I grant you).
So, to answer your question, if all you need is playback, the BB is not be the simplest solution; if you want to be able to react to crowd response, it’s a far better solution for that, but you’re not just going to fire it up out of the box and gig with it if you’re picky about the drummer playing exactly what you want it to play.
The programming is about as much effort as programming a standard drum machine. It’s the options you have while programming that both give you a lot more flexibility and suck up a lot of time if you take advantage of them.
Makes sense…thanks
I dont seen any good r&b soul or Motown type songs…so it looks like I’ll have to piece them together myself.
I guess this topic is pretty well played out by now, but when I saw the original post I said “Amen Brother.”
I’ve had my Beatbuddy since shortly after they came out, but I bailed when people started only providing user files with bass added. I get the OP thing, although - as expressed in the original post - I really just wanted a good sounding drum foot pedal. The beats offered through Singular Sounds are pretty stiff, so I looked forward to the user-created programs. They frequently did a better job with syncopation.
Anyway, I am glad to hear the song-matching tool is still available. As I said, I bailed on my BB a while back. When I came back to it this year, everything had changed and I thought the song matching (as well as the old user uploads) were lost. Thanks for the link Fenderman!
Hey JoeinOttawa, you saved me the time to write my point of view as I totally concur with yours (except for the wife bit, as mine has an “ex” in front, hehe)
Glad to find somebody else who is as devoted as I am in creating faithful beats to the songs we perform -even if the audience is oblivious of the work involved. Cheers!
LuisInMontreal 
There is no one-size-fits-all way to use BeatBuddy. Some people want to do interactive stuff with it, which is cool. In my duo, I am playing bass, foot synthesizer, harmonica, kazobo, or singing, and when I have all that stuff going on, the drums are the last thing I want to have to worry about. Also, my duo plays fairly complicated songs, and I’ve found that if I accidentally miss triggering a BeatBuddy transition, it can throw the whole song off.
Finally, I’ve found that the crowd honestly doesn’t care if we’re just using BeatBuddy as a drum machine. We are doing so much other stuff during our act that no one even notices the BeatBuddy. It’s just there, reliably doing its job.
Thanks for all the replies guys, I really didnt know what to expect when I purchased the BB. I guess I wanted something interactive on the drum side(I play bass) but the beats contained and other patterns produced by the BB are uninspiring as well can the content produced by BB. I have yet to start making my own beats. Doesnt anyone have any clue besides BB and say looploft and groove monkey that makes beats and drum sets for the BB?