So, I have a gig booked this Friday, have had 2 drummers, and they both moved away after a year each of rehearsals. I use a tc helicon voicelive gtx for harmonies, and a few loops, and the Bass Player and I just call ourselves “The Bob and Parry Trio”
Frustrating to say the least. I’ve tried the Cajon on a kick pedal, but it is lacking in sound, and I like to stand while peforming, so that’s out of the question.
After running into a fellow musician in my area in a parking lot, I was complaining about not having drum accompaniment. He suggested the beat buddy to me, and I was aware of it, but not fully schooled on its capabilities.
After a week of reviews, research, and videos, I decided to get the pedal. Out of the box, it was pretty nice, played through all of the presets, and found some good ones to play along with, with familiar songs. I downloaded the bbm, and it was pretty intimidating at first. Between researching the forum, and the tutorials, it was pretty easy to start pulling songs apart, changing intros, fills, changing some of the user shared beats,tempos, kits, downloading kits and making up a few set lists for my upcoming gig.,
Great job fellow forum users! I will soon share my tweaks to songs when I am more familiarized with the software. A lot of the default tweaks were adding simpler intros, and getting rid of fills and fills from some users songs that are better structured as transitions,
I would recommend anyone using this pedal to accept the learning curve with the bbm, and other software to make the pedal customizable for live performance. It has taken me a week to do all of this so far, and less than a week with rehearsals for the gig, so far im up to 34 songs, and counting, with many acoustic songs without the pedal to fill in the gaps.
I am excited to learn the next phase of adding my own beats, and accents, making kits, ect, but one thing at a time. I am not a computer expert, but I find that this can be done with average skills.
I also find that a lot of the bad reviews for this pedal are from people that don’t want to learn how to use the software, or aren’t researching the forums enough for help.
In closing, I was happy to request and download the newest unreleleased firmware, knowing that the usb cable to the pedal, and the lack of accent hits would cause glitches. Simple, I just added an accent hit to every song, and bingo! solved for now. I am very happy with the new tempo indicator while the song is stopped, great for songs without intros.
My only request so far from default firmware is softer sounding kits in all genres for acoustic performance, and more simplistic rock and country beats, like 50s country, and rimshot stuff, but im sure I can build all that in the future too. I have downloaded a lot of the shared stuff on the forum, and a lot of them are great! youll be hearing from me folks, glad to be aboard!
We have been gigging Beatbuddy for a few weeks now and love it. Playing Acoustic Roots Americana music as a duet or 4-piece depending on who is available. After the learning curve of using it for one gig, we all want to use it always - it adds so much more energy, movement and style!
I found that “simplify” was the order of the day for me. I did several things:
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I found a basic beat that matched the feel of the song. The Beat Buddy pre-programmed beats were mostly too busy for my tastes, but I found what I needed for our style of music in the Groove Monkee offerings (mostly 2-beats, Trains and Shuffles). For simplification, there are no fills, transitions, Different Choruses/Bridges, etc. Just one basic beat! Less chance of screw ups, no tap dancing and allow me to focus on guitar and vocals.
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I start every song with a 1,2,1234 Hats Intro, or 1,2,123456 for 6/8 songs.
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I have my 2-button Footswitch set up to cycle back and forth through the set list (while not playing) and pause/unpause and crash cymbal (while playing). That way I can add start/stops/breakdown’s to our songs. Hit both buttons at once and add a crash accent to starts/stops. Works well for song endings!
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My Boomerang 3 is midi synced so I can play guitar leads over rhythm for our Duo Project.
I may add more beats in songs later as we all get use to it - for example, it might be nice to have a “verse feel” and a “chorus feel” is some songs. But now, our live sound is built around vocal harmonys and unique instrumentation, and NOT amazing and complicated drum beats.
Peace,
James