MIDI Editor external link

BeatBuddy Feature Requests
1

I know many have requested a full-fledged MIDI editor in the BB Manager song arrangement section. I also know this requires many development resources to create.

As a low cost alternative, how about allowing BB Manager users to specify an external Midi MIDI via configuration properties? For example, you browse and find a non Beat Buddy program to edit your MIDI files.

The external MIDI editor could be called from BB Manager, and when the editor file is saved or updated, the BB Manager would read in the the MIDI file in place of the current one. Surely, this would be better than juggling two programs, opening multiple browse dialogs, saving and reloading.

Thanks, Dan

2

This is actually even more resource costy, as I know nothing about portable MIDI editors out there. What will work for Mac will not work for Windows. More so, different programs - different command line options, etc. This solution hardly suits anyone, is hard to implement, difficult to grasp so it’s most likely not worth it.

3

I think it would be rather easy to implement and users to grasp. To configure, just browse to a usable MIDI editor. To use, just click on an edit button in BB Manager and invoke the editor with the name of the file. When the editor is closed the edited file is reloaded in BB Manager. A possible default would be MidiEditor which is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. Sure beats writing an editor from scratch.

4

I am not sure it will. Simply because several particular problems won’t get fixed:

  1. Users will still be able to erroneously make beats that won’t be played by BeatBuddy. This must be fixed so users always make only valid files.
  2. When editing beats, users will hear a totally different sounding of a beat they want to make.

That’s why this is a half measure that is not worth to even try.

5

I hear your point, but I still disagree with them. For point 1, I make beats with external programs like Reaper and they are unplayable with BB Manager. So your path takes more steps than my suggestion, and they both end up at the same spot. I’d rather learn that in fewer steps. Point 2, because of the BB Manager drum set mappings (not the same drum mapped instruments that Standard MIDI, Kontakt, EZ Drummer, Roland, Analogue Drums use), all my BB Manger MIDI loops sound different in BB. It is a major MIDI inter-operability problem when moving MIDI songs to BB. I will open a separate request on this issue.

6

I understand that you want to make BeatBuddy as GM compliant as possible. This is cool, and I myself would love BeatBuddy to achieve that goal in the end.
Yet, current firmware technology has the limitation of having no more than 100Mb of WAV samples total per drumset. In order to make the pedal sound quality as high as possible, a compromise was made in the overall coverage of MIDI notes.
Currently, I have the prototype idea of how to waive that limit to an extent.

Your second concern about MIDI notes inter-operability sounds very reasonable, and it was a clever move to use a separate request for that.

7

I think we and others are on the same page about trying to help improve the Beat Buddy. I figure if I make many feature requests, they should all be in a separate thread. That will make it easy for a Product Owner like Packouz to sort and prioritize the requests. It will also make it easier for users to comment and suggest alternatives.

8

True.