I was very happy to receive my BeatBuddy last week and have got to work putting together a first set of songs. I’m looking to use it in one or more of the bands that I lead at church. Looking through the forums, this seems to be quite a popular application for the BB. And given the very large number of small churches that find it hard to put together a regular band with a solid drummer each week, I figure that this has the potential to be a significant customer segment for the BB.
But going through the BB’s preloaded beats, it strikes me that there is a great opportunity for someone to put together sets of beats specifically targeted for churches playing the modern repertoire of worship songs. I’ve checked out the thread ‘What Church Songs Work with which BB setting?’ but the modern repertoire isn’t really addressed.
Some of the particular aspects of these modern songs are:
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[]Many of the songs have relatively complex snare and tom patterns, eg: songs from Hillsong, including Cornerstone, Man Of Sorrows, This I Believe (The Creed)
[]There are some in 3/4, 6/8 and 12/8 with beats that aren’t typical in other forms of popular music, eg: In Christ Alone, Jesus Paid It All, Indescribable
[*]Dynamic variation is often quite pronounced.
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I’m not aware of a source for MIDI files for these beats. But I do think it would make the BB attractive to small churches if it were easy to upload the range of beats that we use from Sunday to Sunday.
If you need a beat you need to produce it! Many small churches have older congregations so going for all the latest songs does not work for lots of churches. My tip is to use the BB as a tool ,you don’t have to use it for every song only use it when it will help the song along. on Sunday we did the splendour of the king and I had planned to use Funk 4 with brushes but did not have the courage to bring it in - I should have done as it would have helped build the song. On the other hand Cornerstone does not need it although I have played it with Funk 4 and Brushes as well. Indescribable works fine with the 6/8 beats included with BB and many of the upbeat songs work great with Techno.
There is an online database that lists “secular” songs and there is a section for worship songs, however as no one has uploaded any new content for that section it just lists what stock beats can be used with which song - the current list is small but I believe someone is working on populating it. http://www.beatbuddytools.com/worship-songs/
I’ve added a dozen or so songs to that database, PM’d the user here on the forums, said I’m willing to admin that particular list but I’ve gotten no response. It’s my understanding that the databases are administered so that they don’t get spammed. The contact form on the site seems to be broken (although I’ve not tried it in a browser other than Chrome). Any other ideas on how to get a hold of the person/s responsible for the site?
@namedeplume is one of the administrators of the site so you should be getting access soon. Thanks again for being willing to populate it, once the bulk of the content is in then the updates can be done one song at a time by anyone
I agree … I am starting to put beats in on my electric drums then porting them across into BB format. It’s a lot of work.But I find I’m not quite happy using built in songs on a number of worship songs. But making each part for a song with fills is time consuming.
No, I generally get by with what is on the pedal, sometimes I use one part from one song and then use another part from another - I do this with the Rock songs as I don’t like the open hi hats, however with Beatbuilder this can easily be changed now. I have edited some songs to give me a cross stick instead of snare, or deleted some of the snares to make a more gentle beat. But as I say, often slower songs don’t benefit from the BB so as a general rule if the song doesn’t benefit from a beat I don’t bother spending time finding/making one. It also means that during worship it is one less thing to think about and for me just cutting out the BB changes the atmosphere to a more “worshipful” one.
With the new firmware I expect it will be easier to create new beats but it is still time consuming as I want to produce something that is at the same standard as the stock beats on the BB. I will at some stage create a 3/4 or 6/8 Marching type beat for use with “In Christ alone” , “O Church arise” or “Before the throne”.
As I have also stated before unless you want to sound like the original recording many of the beats could be used with different songs but it is the 3/4 and the more minimalist beats that are missing/lacking. Good news is when the shop opens I am sure some of these styles will be catered for looking at the Sound demos here. https://soundcloud.com/mybeatbuddy
Ps 40, it’s great to hear what’s working well for you and your church congregation. However, my situation is somewhat different and, I think, similar to that of many other churches. For example:
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[]We’re not comfortable playing a lot of old songs to suit the tastes of the longer-term members of our morning congregations, as we feel that this works against our goal to be as accessible as possible to visitors, particularly young families. (Our older members understand this.) At the same time, we do typically play one hymn but with a modern arrangement, eg All Creatures (David Crowder), Before The Throne (Sojourn), Jesus Paid It All (Kristian Stanfill), Come Thou Fount (David Crowder). Many of these are in 3/4.
[]More importantly, like many churches, we have an evening congregation with a focus on youth and young adults where modern music works best and it isn’t always easy for us to sustain a full, competent band of musicians.
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Re 'If you need a beat you need to produce it!’, as Sask007 observes, it takes a lot of time. And even then, it’s difficult (for me, impossible) to do it well for drum parts that are complex and groove-oriented, like many of the Hillsong-style parts. A few examples:
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And the thing is, we do want to sound like the original recording; we feel that the beat is central to what makes these songs work well.
It just seemed to me that BB might consider spending a week with Goran to put together parts for a representative set of songs in this style and a few in 3/4, 6/8 and 12/8, with snare and tom-tom intensive parts that suit modern renditions of hymns. I, for one, would be a lot happier recommending the BB to all my friends who lead bands in churches if we could load up professionally produced beats that are suitable for these songs, rather than try to cobble them together by ourselves.
Well actually did a service with Beat buddy … though we had a person doing percussion (congas and other). I Combined the beat beat buddy midi files and made a number of my own midi loops. But didn’t use any preloaded songs, stitched every song together from midi loops I liked. Soundwise through the system it actually sounded pretty good … add in the percussion player and I was pretty impressed. I think there were a few confused people who were wondering who was playing the drums. I practiced with the pedal so no hitches that way … but I’ll admit I was a little nervous that I would accidently double tap and stop the song, or forget to change to next song. But that was ok. It does add another element of things to think of during worship. The band actually thought it was pretty good. And I started relaxing more as service went on.
I used it on fast and slow songs … I think both worked well. As to the worship experience … certainly more tense than when I have drummer … I think some in congregation were wondering how the drums were happening rather than engaging but quite a few seemed to engage. It was ok.
We did Tomlins “Whom Shall I Fear” but not quite like Tomlin’s track. I didn’t do any song like Forever Reign with complex beats… but I think with some time, a general track that sounds close to “Forever Reign” is doable … it isn’t so bad drumming the beats into Cubase, then putting it on the Beat Buddy… actually kind of fun, but it will take time … but maybe when summer hours give me more time I’ll add some more. I’ll never get it exact though as I’m just learning the drums.
But I would love some Worship Midi loops put on the Library. Has anyone tried the Paid Library beats that were just added on the Website … would they be useful for worship? Are they in the sng format, or can you pick and choose each midi part?
I’m thinking of getting some as I need some calmer beats. The mallets kit and beats might be good for Celtic stuff " Come now is the time" or “Jesus be the centre” - I assume the format will the same as any BB sng with the ability for you to change it as you feel fit.
Gig basic also seems to be a useful resource of beats, listen to the samples and see if you can hear them being used in any songs that you sing. When I actually do get round to purchasing some I will let you know what I think. However as you will most likely know, I look for a beat that works not one that sounds like exact.
You may also find the following site helpful to get midi tracks. These are full songs so you will need to extract the drum track and then chop up the track into useable loops. I have done this with Chris Tomlins “wonderful cross” in the past but find them a bit too produced and programmed and personally prefer the live sound of the beats included with the BB. https://www.worship-downloads.com/
So I have just bought some. The Dum set comes as a DRM file which you can just import, the beats come with a .pbf file which is a folder file so you can import the folder and point to the file in the download. On top of this you have all the midi files that make up the song in two separate folders one for the main loops and the other for the fills so you can mix and match, the song folder is for demonstration purposes. Lastly they come with some instructions and details on what the Drum set or Beats are all about.
Thanks for sharing this … that sounds useful if you can just grab the loops you want … the beats didn’t look too expensive. And if it saves me time, it’s worth it.
The one thing I found yesterday was it was best not changing drum kits on beat buddy. When you do 4 songs in a row, the time for the beat buddy to change kits (sometimes about 5-7 seconds) combined with time it took me to push the page turn pedal on my tablet for sheet music, and the next song pedal on beatbuddy controller followed by the start song pedal on beat buddy is too long. The less dead space … the better the flow. So I just used the standard kit … I could do a song change within 2 seconds and just carried a few chords on the guitar while hitting the beat buddy pedals as long as I didn’t change the drumkit on the pedal. If I elected to do a drumkit change on beat buddy … I think the flow would be interrupted.
I hear you guys and I go through the same thing. Push the pedal to change the song in OnSong, push the BB pedal to get to the next song. What I would like to see is the Beat Buddy respond to midi messages so I could load midi note numbers into OnSong and start and stop and change sections and tempos right from OnSong (or another midi note generator like keyboard). That would be awesome!
Hey guys, I would like to join the conversation about sharing worship song beats/songs.
I have finally gotten some real traction with designing my own beats for worship. The learning curve was HUGE for this whole process, but I’m moving pretty well now. Short story…I am using Ableton Live Intro to design beats, and I would recommend it (The Intro version is about $80). But there is a extreme learning curve with Ableton.
Anyway, I have a few good weeks under my belt and feel decent about my performance with the BB as well as satisfied that the beats really work for the songs. I am learning that I have to be careful not to make things too complicated because I get nervous and I fear losing my place or double tapping accidently to end the song prematurely. I have done that in practice several times, ha…but not during the service.
I would love to know how to best share the songs I customize. We usually do a four-song set and hardly repeat from week to week, so the plan is to keep producing often. Here are the songs I have done: (I have exported and uploaded one song here on this post)
Made New
Your Grace is Enough
How He Loves (6/8 time; Ben Cajon Set)
Burn for You
Good Fight
Whom Shall I Fear (Percussion set, using Mallet Beat)
Courageous
…and currently working on
My Heart is Yours
It’s My Joy
Take My Life
Please let me know if you’re interested in getting these song and new ones, I’m happy to share.
