Hi all, older picker here trying to wrap my mind around this unit. . .
When I double tap the footswitch, the outro appears on the screen, but I never hear an outro fill, just the same beat which ends abruptly at the end of the measure (on “4 and”, which sounds a bit odd as the down beat of the end doesn’t play).
Am I missing something? For me an outtro fill would be kind of nice – I can’t see that it’s disabled anywhere in the settings.
It’s ironic I guess, everyone seems to ask how to disable the outro. I will eventually learn to develop my own songs in beat buddy I guess, but for now I just need to know how to end songs gracefully. . .
edited: after more messing with it, yes there are outros on the basic beats, but don’t seem to be any on the songs (I got the upgraded sd card with everything on it).
I can see where the outro fills would be a problem if accidentally triggered in the middle of a song – so the question should be, how do you guys handle ending songs if you don’t use the outro feature?
All of my songs either have outro fills, or the last part is something like “Chorus Out,” where it’s a long part that plays to the last note, followed by several empty bars so I have time to stop it before it repeats. This approach is really helpful when you have a tempo retard as you hit the last couple of notes (the BB doesn’t do tempo changes…).
thanks I take it those are songs you have adapted yourself? I’m going to have to get into the BB manager and start learning how to do that, thanks. . .
Yep , I tend to adapt all the songs we play. There is lots of variety in the main library, but, for the first time in my playing career, the drummer will do whatever I tell him to, so I take advantage to get it all just right.
We have a large repertoire and use almost nothing as-is because, if I’m being honest, I’m a little bit anal about stuff. But I don’t use the BBM for file part editing, only for constructing sets and building songs out of parts. To edit individual parts, I happen to like Reaper. It’s a very primitive MIDI editor, but it does what I need it to do.
In addition to editing parts, I also use MIDI to have my Beat Buddy run our lights, so, even if we’re using largely box-stock parts, I’ll go in and add the lighting cues as well.
Now, normally I do this a shameless plug, but, in this case, I’ll invite you to our YouTube channel so you can see what we’re doing with a little editing, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n5qPelhkng&list=PL8J5RUKpVBmhPSSA2oec1CGaK_emN1oto. They’ll give you a feel for what’s possible with a little editing (the first video in the list is actually about 80% stock parts). And I know there are more than a couple of people on this forum who are doing a lot more than I am with stellar results.
Thanks Joe, enjoyed Hard to Handle! nice groove and not too fast. Great guitar sound & vocals too. Makes me miss my band (broke up because Covid).
I’m not super techy but I’m going to have adapt songs – I did a lot of that with an Alesis drum machine, but BB is pretty different and never did it via computer so there’s a learning curve ahead I can tell!
Thanks again for taking your time to reply, very helpful. Gotta say this drum machine sounds pretty darn good. Especially in the right hands.
Jan
P.s. not a plug because we’re disbanded now but a very old demo vid:
(oops didn’t mean for a giant thumbnail to come up)
Great video – thanks for sharing! Here’s a little something you might enjoy dissecting. A little more bouncy than the version on your demo, but lots of fun: Wagon Wheel.sng (1.5 MB)
I BELIEVE you can FILE/IMPORT that as-is (@Phil_Flood? Is that right? I don’t share very often). You’ll want to change the drum set to the standard kit, or download my re-engineered kit here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/71zk5ks96taa51g/Standard_JV_1.0.drm?dl=0. That kit is the Standard v1 kit, but I’ve added gates and EQ the way I would if I was mixing that very lively kit for a live venue.
Yup. Download it. Then, from BBM File>Import>Song.
Hey, Joe - what is this white stuff I have outside on ground here in South Central Texas? What am I supposed to do with it? Is the yellow stuff special in some way?
Yeah, I heard you guys were experiencing a Canadian spring. Normally, I’d offer a discussion on snowblowers – old vs. new, single- vs. two- vs. three-stage, how accumulation affects choice of scotch, why snow is better than fridges for beer, and so on. I might even tell you how to make maple taffy candy for the kids. But you’re in south central Texas, I suggest you just wait, it will go away on its own eventually.
But if you have dogs that have never seen snow, let 'em out – you’ll never see a more pure expression of joy!
And on that note, the yellow stuff is to be avoided.
Thanks, Joe. Yeah, normally we get this stuff once every other year or so, but it’s always gone by 10 am the next morning. This is sticking around since we’re staying below freezing. Might thaw a bit tomorrow during the day, but then we are supposed to get more sleet/freezing rain tomorrow night. And, of course, we have no snow removal equipment and no salt trucks. They were trying to clear the freeways yesterday with road graders. Anyhow, I’m safe and warm in the house. Take care.
Hey Joe, if you don’t mind me pestering you a bit more. . .
Are there some good tutorials floating around to get started? I found one to simply import the sd card info into manager, and there’s some really old tutorials on youtube also (not sure if they’re still relevant).
I’m finding just combing through the posts and replies here gives some good info, I’m gathering what I can. I’ve got Studio One by Presonus (haven’t messed with it yet) so I guess I can do some midi creating that way, it’s a lot of information to suss out but one bite at a time.
Anyway thanks if you know anything about the tutorials!
FWIW, I’ve used Studio One’s pattern editor to create simple rock beats that I have then imported into BBM directly (once the pattern is saved as a MIDI file). You may have to do some moving notes around in BBM depending on what drum set you choose, but it works pretty smoothly for me.
@JFairweather, if you have an outro with an extra measure, you get a downbeat on the 1. But when I need something more complex – like maybe a timing retard – I create a final part that does what I need and add a few bars of empty space (with a something in the final beat) so I have time to stop the BB before the part repeats.
Can you accomplish what you’re trying to do with that approach?
Not sure if you’re addressing me Joe, or another reply – my mission is to get comfortable using the BB manager and try to do that. I’ll be spending some time with it today – yes, your approach sounds like it would work great for me!
It was actually aimed at JFairweather, I’ve added a callout to make that clear.
@Sherock86, learning BBM is a great place to start if you’re going to take advantage of the more advanced bits. You might also want to look for a MIDI editor (most DAWs have one – I use Reaper) and get comfortable with editing – again, if you’re going to really leverage what you’ve got.
