Hey guys, how are you doing? I hope I’m in the right place, and that you can help me out. I’m a 60 year old guitar player…doing 3-4 solo gigs a week in NYC. Been using an Alesis SR-16 for 6 years, or so…and have really grown tired of the crappy sounds…and limited patters (I never used “song”, only “patterns”. I play everything from Sinatra/40s, up through some newer stuff…but especially 50s and 60s. How difficult is it to use the BeatBuddy? When I do start messing around with it (I just got it today), will a few of you guys be able to help me with programming/using the footswitch, and using or downloading some of the songs that are on here? ANY help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you guys.
Tommy
Welcome. The BeatBuddy is a pretty solid piece of gear. When you run into problems and you can’t find answers to your questions after searching the various sections of the forum, there’s always somebody willing to lend a hand. Two sections you might want to become familiar with are the Technical Support and Resources sections. There’s all sorts of reference material for those who will just spend a little time searching first and then asking questions when they get stumped.
I’ve been a user for about six months. (I play acoustic guitar in a duo with flute, mostly jazz standards). A couple of things I would share with a brand new user:
- Watch the videos available on the Singular website and on Youtube. Keep in mind some videos are out of date and Singular has since upgraded or changed some things.
- Read this forum regularly as well as any time you have a question or run into a problem–and don’t forget that most questions you will have were answered by someone awhile back, so use the search function liberally. The Singular staff and members of the forum are very helpful and understanding, and they help make this an excellent product for users.
- The amount of beats, kits, and options available on BB can be overwhelming for a new user. But after downloading some premium content and exploring all the options, I found myself actually using only about 15 different beats and about 4 drum kits for our set list of around 40 songs. Once you get familiar with BB, you’ll know what range of beats/kits works best with your material.
- IMHO, the BB content is much more focused on multiple-piece electric bands, especially rock, blues, and pop, and much less focused on material appropriate for a solo/duo acoustic act. But if you look hard enough you can usually find something that works.
- A lot of the beats are too busy, harsh, or complex for my needs (though I admit that, as an acoustic guitar and upright bass jazz player, I’ve always had this complaint about live drummers). Sometimes I wish BB had a footswitch button for “hey, drummer, TONE IT DOWN!”
I hope this helps!
One more little tip. I often find when searching for things on the forum that I know are already there, sometimes because I posted them, I get a search result that says the word is too short or too common. When this happens, especially if you have a short phrase you are searching for, put the search term in quotes, like “rock kit”, for example. You may end up getting some hits that way.
Also don’t be afraid to try some of the user generated content. Even if a song was posted using a kit that calls for a keyboard part, or strings, or whatever, you can always use that song with a kit that does not have bass or keys, and all you will hear is the drum part. Although, if the keyboard part dropped down into the upper part of the General Midi drum range, you may get some some weird results. In those instances, if you find something that otherwise sounded good, you could always ask on the forum if someone could edit the song, or, we probably could give you a little tutorial on how to do it yourself.
Oh, and if you want to post a list of songs from your book that you would like beats for, again, feel free. I was working on jazz standards awhile back, and then got distracted by the rock and blues songs in my book. I am just about done with those, so I will soon be ready to get back into my jazz standards.
Beatbuddy is easy to use compared to other drum machines and pedals. I hooked it up to my amp and had it working in less than 5 minutes. The food switch pedal does take time to get used to as does the core unit. The documentation and videos help a lot. On my Peavey 6505 amp I had to route it to the send/receive/out effects switch on the back of the amp and use a different channel for my looper pedal and guitar but now it works. How are you trying to use it?
Guys, I have messed around with it for 2 days, or so…and I cannot for the life of me…figure it out! The read-out on the pedal has things like…“part 1/8”…(1 of 8). How the heck do you get all of those different parts of a song? Do you have to toe-tap 1 to 8 different times? You know,…being that I am only going to use it on my solo acoustic gigs,…is there a simple way to maybe have an intro, main song part, and MAYBE a second part to use sometimes to make the song sound not so robotic, or crappy?
Also…I see fellows here that actually make entire songs, and post them on here for guys to use (which is VERY nice of you guys). How would I go about that? Do I need to buy a memory card? (also, I have an iMac)
How to get different parts - yes, you would need to toe tap all those times. The original BB firmware had a 500 note limit on a song section. This forced one to break a song into small parts. That has since been done away with. Some folks like all that splitting up of a song, and if that floats your boat, it’s cool by me. Others, including myself, like something simpler. You will see in the Resources, a bunch of songs labeled OPB, or something similar. These songs have one long part. You press play, and the song plays. Guitar-aoke, if you will. For jazz/blues, I like to build Jam versions. The way this works is that everything in the song before the jam gets put into the intro. The jam becomes the main loop. Everything after the jam goes into the outro. This means one-Press starts the song, and then plays all the way through the looping jam section, which continues to loop, until you double tap for the outro. That might be more to your liking.
I am also on a Mac. I edit and create songs in Logic Pro X, but there are other choices. You want something that lets you easily import, edit, and export Midi songs.
The memory card that came with the BB holds a good number of songs. I have everything in the Resources section on my BB, which includes about 150 drum kits and close to 2000 songs, and it all fits on a 16gb card. If you want to get cards for back-up, at this point 32gb cards are reasonably priced and the BB can’t use anything bigger. But, you don’t need another card for song creation or for sharing on the Forum.
If you have the MIDI cable from Singular sound you can download the free Beat Buddy app to customize your sound layout on the provided SD card that comes with the Beat Buddy. You can edit the parameters with this app to your desired setup. You can also use the footswitch pedal if you ordered this for your BB to stop, pause and switch to different parts of songs I think. Hope this helps. I am still learning mine but it is great.
You don’t need the MIDI cable to download or use BB Manager.
Good to know. What looper works best with the BB? I have a delay looper pedal but that is mostly for delay effects. I heard the Ditto X4 had issues and Pigtronix is good but expensive.
I have the Pigtronix. It works. I also have the software looper, Quantiloop, which also works. The Quantiloop requires an iPad, and also a foot control, like the iRig BlueBoard. You’d also need some kind of interface to get the iPad talking to the BB. The iRig Pro Duo works, I also have the Yamaha BT-01 which works for OnSong, but I’ve heard some folks don’t trust it for clock sync. The point is, the Quantiloop looks real tempting for the software price, but there is a significant hardware investment if you don’t already have the devices. In my case, I had an iPad, several, really, and I already have the BlueBoard for use with AmpliTube. I did pick up the iRig Pro Duo just for Quantiloop, but it also gives me another midi port if I plug it into my Mac. All in all, the Pigtronix is very good, and it avoids the optics of having one or more iPads on stage with you. I tried several loopers before settling on the Pigtronix. It has the features I needed. But, I do like the flexibility of the Quantiloop, and for any work at home, it is becoming my looper of choice.
Cool I will shop around for a used Pigtronix looper than as spending $500 on a looper is a lot of cash to buy it new.
It’s me…one more time, gang. I think I bit off more than I can chew with this thing. I DON’T GET IT! Can you tell me how to use the song that I downloaded? I used my iMac, and had to open a DropBox account. Now it is in my computer…what do I do? (it’s “Michelle” by The Beatles). How can i open it, and then transfer it to my BeatBudy? By the way, mine has a 4GB card. If I can’t figure my BeatBuddy out …(at least a little)…by next Thursday…I will be selling it, and will just pick up a Boss DR-670. Maybe that is really all I need. Sorry to be a pain in the neck, men,…but I think that I just don’t have the patience to learn how to use it.
You must use the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM) to transfer Premium and user-created songs and drum sets to your pedal.
Before you go too much further down this path and if you haven’t done so yet, you’ve got to
[LIST]
[]Read the user guide
[]Watch the tutorial videos
[]Get familiar with forum content and using the forumsearch function
[]Download, install and use the BBM to manage pedal content
[/LIST]
Cool
Bought one today and building my pedal board setup today. [ATTACH=full]7036[/ATTACH]
Very cool! Be sure to go through the manual for the Infinity. Also update it to the latest firmware.
Any other loop pedal options to work with BB other than the Pig? I am only a hobbyist and play infrequenty just for fun but would like to use a loop and the BB.I just got the Boss RC-3 but that doesnt have MIDI and I just found out about the BB this week after I got the RC-3 and now I was going to return that and get the Ditto X4 because it has the MIDI clock synch but now I read/watch about issues on the X4 so what is a hobbyist to do if you dont want to spend any more than an X4 for a MIDI looper? what should I use with the BB?
thanks
If you have an iPad, Quantiloop works very well, and would cost less than a hardware looper. And, if you are playing just for fun, you could always just go with any non-syncing looper and just work on getting your timing as good as you can. Loopers, in general, are relatively high cost effects, and loopers with midi sync move you into a higher cost level.
Yeah thats what I was afraid of. I am a Android/PC guy so I only have an Android tablet and phone.
My wife and son use Apple iPhones but we dont have an iPad in the house. My son has his Mac laptop but that is for his school use and I dont have access that. I do have an older iPod but of course the screen is too small to use for the looper purpose. I checked the website and yes the Quantiloop seems cool.