I am fairly new to Beat Buddy, still exploring …
I have made a few midi-tracks in Logic - but:
how do I keep the velocity settings when importing midi into Beat Buddy Manager?
how do I make Beat Buddy Manager handle beats with odd measures?
(Beat Buddy Manager adds extra beats/bars to make totals dividable by 4 or 8)
The velocity settings should just come along with the midi file. If you have you drum track as a logic midi file, Just use export track as midi file, and the velocity comes along with the track.
Odd measures - The simplest approach is to change the time signature for the entire song after you have completed the song. This will impact the visual metronome. For example, I just did The Beatles “Yer Blues.” As written, it is 12/8, with a change to 6/8, then 8/8 and back to 12/8. It also has a break section in 4/4. It did the song as a One Press. After completing the song, I deleted all time signature changes, and left it as 12/8 for the entire song. In the final measure, I made sure I dragged the last drum hit to show as ending at the end of the measure. This keeps BB Manager from inserting space at the beginning of the song. Yes, that’s weird. Open space at the end gets sent to the front. But, If I didn’t want to do that, Option 2 would have been to change the time signature to 2/8. Then, again, the visual metronome would be useless, but everything would fall where it is supposed to. The BB does not add beats/bars to make a song divisible by 8 or 4. It adds beats to make the song divisible by the initial time signature of the song. Sometimes, the easiest approach is to change the time signature to 1/8 or 1/4, particularly is you have a mix of even and odd numbers or beats per measure. you wind up having to ignore the visual metronome, but the song works. And, of course, if it is a multi-part song, then you have to be able to make you changes in one beat, which could require some practice.
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Thanks for your reply
- I get the velocity settings now, must have been an ‘error 40’ with my first tries
Just did a drum track for ‘Closest thing to crazy’ which has 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8 - and imported the entire midi-track into BB Manager. It works - can’t make it work with sections …
By the way: when BB reaches the end of the midi-file, it immediately starts over again - how do you make it stop automatically?
The BB will loop a song part placed into the Main Loop section of BB Manager over and over. Intro section and Outro section only play once. I like to build my One Press songs with the whole song placed in the intro. Then, one tap starts the song. You do need to have an empty or null section in the main loop area. Download an existing one press song from the Forum and copy that section for your songs. When the BB reaches the Empty section it loops that until you end the song with a double tap, but it is silent to the audience. Another option is to build the song with the nothing in intro, null as main loop, and the whole song in the outro. Then, after you load the song, one press starts the silent main loop. You then double tap to play the audible part, and the song ends by itself when it reaches the end. A third option is to add several empty measures at the end of your midi, followed by a measure with one short note at the end of the measure. You would keep this as the main loop. When your song ends it audible section, you then have time to double tap to end the song before the loop begins again.
I already figured out the 3rd option - but I will try out the 1st option (song = intro), I think.
Thanks for your help - much appreciated 