I have just spent the last two hours with the BeatBuddy and I gotta tell you this thing is very cool… Some things that i didnt notice in the preview videos is that when you press the pedal to do your fills they last just as long as how many beats you have left in the measure from when you pressed the pedal. If you press the pedal on the third beat in 4/4 time then your fill is only 1 beat long then back to the main beat… that really makes it versatile… And holding the pedal down for a transition makes the transition last as long as you keep the pedal pressed… Way Cool !!!
This may have been something you guys noticed from the videos but i didnt pay that much attention so i am very pleased.
You can make it play differently throughout the entire song as long as you want to… No longer stifled by drum loops and verses and choruses that have to be followed precisely…
Actually, I can tell you even more - there’s a special setting called Queue Period inside Main Menu (press both Tempo and Drum Set knobs simultaneously) > Main Pedal.
There you can override the default behavior (that you just described). Actually, I personally like it best, when I can queue a fill so it will start at the start of the next bar. I actually prefer to hear the whole fill, not only it’s ending.
Queue Period is a percent of a bar length, so if a fill is triggered after this position, it will get queued instead of played instantly. For example, if you have a 4/4 time signature, and set Queue Period to 75% (default value), then any fill that is triggered before fourth quarter of a bar will be played instantly up to the end of the current bar, but will be queued for the next bar if it’s triggered on the fourth quarter. Queue Period of 50% will queue the fill that is triggered in the third or fourth quarter, and so on!
It can be very over-complicated at the first glance, but when you get used to it, it’s very intuitive and cool. Because having the option to queue a full fill leaves you a lot of time to trigger your other effect pedals.
I think you should check my video (no post processing, non studio quality) that shows why queueing is necessary, and how it could be used in live performance - http://youtu.be/dWJycpyhn9U.
HAD to go try this thing out on my lunch hour. Unboxed it, guitar > Tonelab > BeatBuddy >Tascam 8 track, and monitored with headphones. Pressed the pedal and off it went, doing it’s thing in all it’s insanely bright screened virtual skin thumping glory. It took some settings changes to get the extra pedal functions to make sense to me, but within minutes I was playing along, adding fills, hits, ,transitions, switching between beats, stopping, starting, pausing…no bending down and no futzing with a laptop, absolutely priceless.
I think it sounds fantastic. I listened for, but didn’t hear any added noise with the pedal in the chain. Straight into a practice amp actually sounded better than I thought it would, but through headphones it was beautiful. I’m betting on a high end PA it would be awesome. Granted, I only got to sample a few songs and two drum sets, but knowing that my backing tracks are now completely under my control makes me giddy. This thing is gonna make jamming with the boys a whole new experience.
Build quality looks great. As mentioned before, the screen is very bright and very clear which makes the visual cue’s very effective, even for someone with aged eyes. I like how the knobs are below the actual pedal so even if you have monster feet and/or really bad aim, you can’t really mash the knobs by accident. The external pedal is perfect in terms of stability and function.
That’s all I got from 40 minutes or so. Can’t wait to get back to it.
The postman only had to ring once today. I didn’t have much of an opportunity to do all that I wanted to with the BeatBuddy so I didn’t really get into it. I had enough time to get it unpacked and plugged in to my stereo system. My only concern going into this had to deal with the sound of the drums and cymbals. I’ve had too many instances where it sounds ‘canned’. I just ran through some of the folders and played a couple of the songs that were in there and I have to tell you I was really impressed with what I was hearing. The drums and cymbals were very authentic and it sure didn’t sound like drum machines that I had heard before. I am so looking forward to really getting into this and to start putting some of my songs on disk. It was absolutely worth the wait. A huge thanks to all involved in developing this product. Everybody is going to want one of these sooner or later. Glad I got mine now!
Thanks for this… been fooling with this trying to figure it out …makes more sense now! … Can you post all these ‘gems’ to one ’ how to operate folder’ … it’s tough ‘mining’ theses pages for the ‘right info’ …thanks :idea:
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