I really like the fact that when playing live I can prepare for transitions by holding my foot down on the pedal as long as I want, and then have the transition go into effect when I release my foot from the pedal. It frees me up to pay attention to my playing and singing so I don’t have to look down at my feet for the transition.
However, this function only works if you DON’T have transition fills programmed in. If you have transition fills in your song, and you hold your foot on the pedal, the transition process will start whether or not you release your foot from the pedal. If you happen to be playing and singing during a transition, it can be a difficult mental exercise to also look down and try to coordinator your foot to hold down the pedal at the right moment and for the right length of time. (If you don’t hold the pedal long enough, it will just give you a regular fill and won’t transition. If you hold down the pedal too long, it will repeat the transition fill again). I believe that most working musicians who play structured songs would rarely ever have the need to repeat transition fills.
Also, this inconsistency in functionality (transition alone vs. transition with fill) can make it tough to remember which songs I can use pedal release for transition and which ones I cannot. For that reason, I’ve been leaving out transition fills from most of my songs, simply so I can use pedal release. I would rather be able to keep the transition fills in, but I don’t want to risk missing my trigger point if I have a lot going on.
So, my request for functionality would be to give us the option to trigger transition fills+transition on pedal release, and leave it as an option as to whether we would rather have a transition fill played repeatedly when holding down the pedal. I personally think more musicians would want the former option as the default setting.
Thanks for listening!
An otherwise happy Beat Buddy user