I would like to make a song that I prepared in Reaper (using MIDI connection to BeatBuddy) play from the start to the end in BeatBuddy. I kinda managed to achieve that by entering an empty bar as the main loop and the entire song as the outro, but this is not optimal—I have to press the pedal once, and then twice to start the song. And it doesn’t always start correctly from the first beat on that double-press. Is it possible to start song using single-press somehow?
Place it instead in the Intro section of the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM).
For examples of songs that use this concept, take a look at any of the songs I’ve posted.
I cannot do that because BeatBuddy complains that the song doesn’t have a main loop.
Try taking a look at one of my songs again.
- The Empty (Phil—not-Flood uses NULL) is a MIDI file placed in the Main Drum Loop (probably same as your "empty bar as the main loop).
- Once your one-press song has been moved from the Outro to the Intro section, it will save properly and play can be started with a single tap.
Ah yes thank you, now I see. It still plays the empty main loop that needs to be stopped by double-pressing, but this is now done at the end and doesn’t interfere with correct playback.
Still would be useful to have a way to play entire songs without the need to explicitly stop the main loop.
Another problem is that the “empty” main loop is not completely empty, and what plays there is audible at PA levels.
Thanks for bringing this up as I had not previously heard of any users reporting this issue and if they did, I certainly missed it. I’m posting a replacement file for NULL and Empty. I just tested it and it seems to be okay. Please try it and let me know if it doesn’t fix the problem.
Download, unzip and replace the file “Empty” or “NULL” in any BeatBuddy Manager (BBM) songs with the attached file “Nil” (sorry couldn’t come up with a more creative name but wanted to distinguish it from those other two files 
Nil.mid.zip (241 Bytes)
Hi Temcat. What I do is in my MIDI editor, I add a load of empty bars at the end of the song. Say, throw in 20 bars for example. Then put a hi-hat (or any drum sound) right at the end. Maybe set the volume of that MIDI note very low, but it doesn’t really matter. Then in BB Manager, I leave the intro and outro empty (although see my last comment) and put the new MIDI file in the ‘main’ song part. Now when I hit BB at a gig, it ignores the intro and runs the main file right away. At the end of the song, BB is still “playing”…silently waiting for that little hi-hat I placed about 20 or 30 bars further on. But of course, I just stop the BB when I’m ready—it never runs that long to find that note I’ve hidden. Contrary to what I just said about leaving the outro empty, I usually drop an outro in too—maybe the final chorus, or just a 4-bar outro fill—whatever works for the song in question. That way, I’ve got an escape route if I want to finish the song early, for whatever reason.
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Is using the extra foot switch a “non-hackish” way to stop the song? I use the foot switch to stop songs almost exclusively, because I can’t seem to hit the double-tap on the main pedal correctly (my own timing thing…no fault of the BeatBuddy. I couldn’t use the Ditto looper for the same reason).
So I have my foot switch set up like this:
Left switch (while playing): Play Accent Hit
Right switch (while playing): Pause
(While stopped, I have the switches set up to scroll up/down the list.)
While the song is paused, my BB main pedal is set up to stop the song when I press and hold it.
Using stock beats, I will often start a fill, and then hit both foot switches when I want to end a song (which gives a nice crash ending. Then at my leisure, I just press and hold the main pedal, and the BB is no longer in play mode.
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