I’m thinking about buying a Beatbuddy but does anyone know if the Beatbuddy will have decent beats for solo guitar? I checked the Beatbuddy song matcher and I couldn’t see any songs that matched the type of stuff I play ie. Chet Atkins/Tommy Emmanuel/Jerry Reed type stuff.
I recently bought a BB to add some life to a vocal/acoustic guitar coffee-shop sort of show. Mostly light rock/trop rock (Buffett, JT, etc ). I found very little of the included beats useful for this type of stuff. Most of it is too busy/heavy. Also, I didn’t like the pedal dance required to stitch loops together live, so I ended up putting together so-called “one-button-play” complete sequences on a DAW. I also ended up using a couple of drums+bass drum kits available from some very clever folks on this forum. This approach works best for my needs. Of course, others use the BB in other ways to suit their needs. Have fun.
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You can take a listen to some of the Groove Monkee demos to see if the come closer to scratching your itch.
That said, the BB has a lot of flexibility. If you can find MIDI source files for the songs you want to play, somebody here on the forum can craft them into a one-press format with bass and other instruments.
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I record my own stuff in Logic and make backing tracks but I was hoping for something that was a little more forgiving while I’m busking ie. if you get distracted during a backing track the train keeps moving and you are up the creek - with something that loops you could come back in… I was going to rig up a battery for the job - I understand about the power supply although I was going to try and find out if it would handle raw rechargeable batteries 1.2 * 8 = 9.6v or whether I’d need to regulate that to exactly 9v with some sort of DC to DC converter? ie. what are the voltage input tolerances.
I might add sometimes some of the songs I do start out in 3/4 almost like a waltz. and then bang you play it in 4/4 boom-chk style ala Chet. A good example of that would be say Bicycle built for two (ie Daisy Bell) or say Amazing Grace.
I have one and use it for some solo and lots of duo work. I’m really anal about the drums, so I do a lot of editing. But it’s not entirely necessary, and, as others have said, there are lots of sources for MIDI files to support your show.
In terms of drum kits, if you’re going solo with an acoustic, I like the brushes and the Jazz kit.
Good luck!
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It sounds like (you believe) you’d prefer not to use 1-press songs. I get that, I much prefer having control over the drummer, so I don’t think we even have more that one or two 1-pressers in our entire repertoire. So the good news is that, in its native mode, the BB is a loop-playing pedal: each part will loop until you transition.
So if you miss your bus, you can always get the next one. 
Time signature is defined in the parts, so if you line up a 4/4 part followed by a 3/4 part, you’ll get what you asked for – but be aware that the BPM does not change, only the number of beats per bar.
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Thank you for the replies.
Joel - re: the tempo issue could you do it in two different songs? ie. Have a loop part defined as a separate song in 3/4 and move to song 2 with a different tempo in 4/4? or is that really stilted - ie too hard to transition to song 2 quickly and smoothly?
Yes, absolutely. And no, not really.
Each song has a set (by you) BPM. So shifting from 4/4 to 3/4 is no problem. But changing from song to song can take a couple of seconds. Can you give me a (YouTube) example of what you’re trying to do? If the BPM stays the same (i.e., 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3), you’ll be fine. So you just need to know if the BPM changes or not.
Also, as I understand it, in-song tempo changes may be coming – @AnthonySostre might be able to fill in those blanks.
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An example… Well this isn’t me playing but I play this one. It basically swaps from a waltz to 4/4 mid way through @ about 1:44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NViBdfmh6WM.
Sometimes there’s not such a pronounced pause between verses when you swap like in this one though.
He actually drops an extra bar or into the 3/4s as well. Totally screwed up my counting (but I recovered – I’m a college grad, after all! ).
The transition between the 3/4 and 4/4 in that version is totally doable with a BB, as long as you don’t have an outro on the 3/4 section, and don’t change drumsets. You could have a count on the 4/4 section, though, if that suited you.
The only reason you’d need to change songs, though, is that the video you sent along changes tempo. If the BPM stayed the same, you could handle it all in one song.
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Thanks Joel - well hopefully the tempo changes get introduced into the firmware like you alluded to! That song was a good example of turning a 3/4 song into a 4/4 song for effect though with Chet Atkins style fingerstyle. You can do that with all sorts of 3/4 songs.
Generally (IMO) I find most BB patterns to be be more complex than I want for what I do - typical pop/rock/country, both well known and my own tunes. However, I have always managed to find beats that work fine and, with a bit of editing in BB manager, I haven’t found any limit to getting a beat with exactly what I want. There ARE simple beats in most categories but contrary to what I’d expect, it seems that the simpler patterns are, in many cases the last few patterns of the genre rather than the first few.
I use from as few as one drum pattern alone for an entire song up to as many as 5 pattern changes with several fills per pattern plus an into and an outro for other songs.
One “trick” I use if I somehow get off the beat for some reason is to simply continue singing/playing the guitar as normal, ‘end’ the song on the BB (I use aux pedal switch 2 to do that) and restart it on the beat as I’m singing/playing. It’s quick and most of the time virtually unnoticeable by listeners.
One thing - although you certainly CAN use the BB as a ‘play along’ rhythm machine, simply starting and stopping - it shines when it sounds like a real drummer with fills, pattern changes, accents, stopping the drums at a point in certain songs/restarting, etc. To do that DOES take some practice but it really doesn’t take long to become quite proficient at doing all that, especially if you add the BB or other brand of aux pedal with 2 additional switches.
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“…it shines when it sounds like a real drummer…”
So you DO use the Sobriety setting?
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For in song tempo changes, it’s something that’ll be possible through the MIDI Maestro, and something we can build into the autopilot functionality in the future for automatic tempo changes, but currently it’s not implemented.
Still as Joe mentioned above, what you’re looking to do is possible with a few tweaks such as removing the outro and using the footswitch to tap over to the next song.
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I also use the Percussion beats for such songs. Adds a little variety to the “regular” sound of the classic tunes you play. As an aside… I read your name and thought… What is a Classi Crock?.. Sorry it took me a minute to get the name straight.
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Some who know me well would say you were right the first time. I’ve been called worse.
Anyway, that was my first email name all the way back to the early 90’s or so (“You’ve got mail!”). Just sort of stuck with it all these years.
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I put in an order for a Beatbuddy with a pedal. I’ll see how it goes for me - hopefully I’ll be happy! Thanks for the replies!
I have never tried any of the sobriety settings. It’s better if only one of us is drunk during a performance!
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Good Morning Mr. Astro!
I/We recently decided to start doing some acoustic gigs and the BB works great for that! I’d/We’d picking some of the Premium Sound packs. We regularly use:
Ballads (must have for solo acoustic)
Cajon-Cafe (same)
Shuffle&Swung (pretty good beats that might* be usable to you: We’re pretty much 8x8 so we don’t…)
Also Premium, get the Ludwig kit! It’s awesome for solo acoustic: Nice and warm, not sharp.
And I think we use the World Percussion kit a bit.
In the standard/included beats the ones we use a lot are:
Blues (it’s the closest BB schtuff comes to 8x8 rock) (the “rock” beats are modern alternative flavored)
Brushes
Latin (TONS of acoustic schtuff works GREAT for the Latin beats)
Oldies (some good steady beats and decent fills)
Pop
World (see Latin, above)
We have lots of success speeding up or slowing down the beats:
We speed up some slower beats like the Prem Ballads and use the Ludwig for a nice pusher.
We also slow down some of the 16ths and they work great too.
There are TONs of pitfalls with the BB/SS/GG midis and durm samples (you’ll need to use some other tools to overcome them) but the device and the concept itself is fantastic! Pete (of the Deaf Bunnys Band) is a very sought after durmmer in our area (he fronts and plays lead/rhythm guitar in the DBB now) and he loves the consistency of the BB (it’ll be hard to go back to a live durmmer)
One last word of advice: If your show is dynamic the BB will serve you well. If you use the BB as a one-button-press there are literally a hundred better options for this functionality.
Good luck with your new durmmer! We love our Beat Buddys!
If you want to have more discussions contact us directly through our website.
PS: Joe In Ottawa is the closest we’ve seen to someone (beside us, sic) who used the BB in place of a live body. Check him out.
Apologies for the long reply! Haven’t had our coffee yet…
ROKKON!!
Pete & Sheri
The Deaf Bunnys Band
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Good Morning! Again!
It looks like folks are mixing up time SIGNATURES with TEMPO.
A time signature refers to how many beats are in a measure and the value of quarter note:
4/4 time (pop/rock/country…) is 4 beats-per-measure (top number) and a quarter note equals 1 beat (bottom number.)
3/4 time (waltz) is 3 beats-per-measure and a quarter note equals 1 beat.
So 6/8 (like Jaded by Aerosmith, I think…) is 6 beats-per-measure and an EIGHTH note equals one beat.
Tempo is simple the beats-per-minute: More beats equals faster. Dance beat is 135 (rounded.)
The BB and the Manager software seem to handle 3/4 and 4/4 in the same song quite easily:
Caveat: I didn’t download it and test it in the device but in my experience what you see in the Manager translates directly to the device.
I just tested Blues-1 with World Beat-11 (a waltz beat) in the Manager and it worked fine.
We used a waltz fill (World Fill-41) as the intro
Blues Beat-1 for the first part.
World Beat-11 for the second part.
And Blues Fill-105 for the outro.
All worked seamlessly. We even added a middle part using the Blues-1 with a transition World Fill-41 and that went great too. (So went Blues Main-Loop, Waltz Transition-Fill, Blues Main-Loop.)
But changing the TEMPO/Beats-per-minute is a no-go. We’ve got this to work a LONG time ago in the Manager (by editing the Main-Loops BPMs) but when loaded on the device it didn’t change tempo.
PS: On the device itself there’s a FANTASTIC explanation of what the Default Tempo on the device does.
One of our signature songs would really benefit from the change-tempo function: Right now we start the song on one BB and outro/overlap to the second BB: The timing is, shall we say, a b!+(h…
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