My Workaround to organize my songs and create setlists

BeatBuddy General
1

I am using the beatbuddy for two years with our cover acoustic-guitar-duo. We have more than 250 (Beatbuddy) Songs.
Me and my partner use forescore on iPad to organize our chordsheets. The beatbuddy is connected with yamaha bluetooth midi adaptor. With forscore we make our setlists.

  1. In forescore I made a general setlist with all our songs.

  2. I made a Beatbuddy-Song for every chordsheet. A lot of them use the same patterns or are based on factory presets, but by doing so, I have the songname, tempo and drumkit fix. In forscore i have the option to make a midi command for each chord-sheet, to load this song on the beatbuddy.

  3. The problem is the “confusing” work with Bank Select Messages (Bank MSB and LSB), where forescore (and other apps like Onsong) find the songs on the BB SD-Card. In short: you dont tell the beatbuddy the songname, only a number for the folder and the the order of the song within this folder.
    After you made those midi commands, you shouldn’t change the order of your songs in the BB Manager.

  4. As I wrote we have over 250 songs in several languages. If I have to find a song on the BB SD-Card without our chordsheet app, directly on the beatbuddy (maybe the bluetooth adaptor fails), i tried to get a good overview-strategy for now and in future.

  5. In the BB-Manager i made a new Project with 26 Folders from A to Z for International and 6 Folders for German (A-E, F-H… and so on). In these folders, i imported the songs in alphabetical order.
    Tip: In the Beatbuddy Manager it is useful to write the midi number close to the folder- and songname, so it is easier to write the midi command for your chordsheet. (A 0, B 1…Z 25, A-E German 26 , F-H German 27…) The first song in every Folder gets a “0”, the second “1”… Why? Look in the beatbuddy Midi-settings manual, sorry. From the manual: “We know this is confusing – but MIDI was designed by computer nerds, not normal people like us, and computer nerds like to start with 0 instead of 1.”

  6. Once you did so, you have to put new songs always at the end of the folder, and give the song the next number.

I have a separate SD-Card for this “live”-Project.

5 Likes
2

Hi,
I am new to BB but interested in your work. I play with a rockin roots band but this time of year play solo accordion at Oktoberfest parties.
I am a newbie to BB but very experienced with midi.
Any songs you would care to share would be most welcome. The German folders sound intriguing. In the future maybe I can help you in return.
Good luck with your project​:sunglasses::notes::accordion: