I’ve been cranking out beatbuddy songs and there’s one thing that I’ve found rather frustrating: a lot of songs have signature fills or transitions and I’ve found that while playing, you are required to trigger the fill just right to get the entire fill and to have it placed where it should go. For example if you don’t get it right, the song will move from verse to chorus and skip the transition fill, or in other cases it will chop of some of the first part of the fill.
it would be fantastic if there was a parameter for a fill that was something along the lines of: “in-measure” vs. “after measure”. That way I wouldn’t have to focus on when the fill needed to be triggered, it would always get tacked on to the end of the current measure.
Other than that, I’ve been having a blast with my pedal!! I’ve gigged with it a couple times and it gets heavily utilized during an open-mic that I co-host. People ask for me to set them up with percussion. I’ve actually noticed people dancing to the pedal’s output when I’ve just left it playing.
Yeah, CharlesSpencer, there was a nice heap of BB songs coming from you lately! That’s very cool!
Just jumping in to show you that I personally respect your efforts, and I am sure if David had any free time, he would do that officially for all the Singular Sound as well!
As far as your suggestion goes, yeah, I was definitely running into the same issues you are running as well. If you bother to check my video once again, you can actually see, that right before I play the last solo, I’ve originally wanted to transition to the second part, but I’ve failed to hold the pedal, tapping it instead. I’ve actually panicked! I knew I was f…ed in that there is currently no way to undo a fill into transition… (I was filming my video “as is” without relying to any post-processing) But the fun thing is that I loved the result better!
So, staying on topic, I can tell you that there is a special parameter in the BeatBuddy called Queue Period. It is a percentage-based value basing on the bar length, that sets instant-queued breakpoint. More info can be found here - http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=51&p=157#p157. TLDR: If pressed/held before Queue Period (of let’s say its default value of 50% - in the first half a bar), you’ll get the fill kicked in instantly. Pressing/holding after this value (in the second half a bar in this example) will queue the fill to start when the next bar starts.
I have played with that setup parameter but I rather like it to have a high value because it sounds horrible if you miss the cutoff and the next bar starts with a fill, it sounds like a drummer-flub. I think we can all agree that the point of the pedal is the performer has control yet they shouldn’t really have to focus on the pedal. I’m finding that when I’m on stage in a bar that’s bustling with patrons and I’m singing my fool head off and making the chord changes, it’s too much for me to be thinking: I need to press my foot down… now! As with any other aspect of the performance, it’s one thing to be playing around with the pedal at home, it’s another thing when you’re under the stage lights.
Sincerely, BeatBuddy engineers, I’m not whining, this is my battlefield experience: this pedal would be PERFECT if a performer could ensure that a fill or transition fill was going to fall exactly after the current measure. I know I’m probably using it a little differently than originally intended, but I have to tell you guys, it sounds fantastic when those signature transitions happen perfectly because it’s how a drummer can build excitement going into the chorus or how he can bring it back down on exiting the chorus.
I’m with you Charles, I’d like to see an instant fill disable option, or 99% queue value. For some songs, the queue and instant fill works great, but for others, triggering it at exactly the right spot is often problematic.
I am sorry for correcting you, but Queue Period means the opposite - having it at close to 0% will mean what you wanted to say - that any time you press (or, more precisely, after 0% of a bar elapsed), the fill/transition will get queued to the start of the next bar.
More realistically speaking, having it at strictly 0% will mean that if you delay your press timing just a little bit and a new bar already started (but you wanted to have a fill/transition here) it will mean you will not be able to do it, and will need to derp a whole new next bar (as you will be able to only queue your transition)!
That’s why clever engineers at Singular Sound chose to make 25% the lowest value for Queue Period. At first, I was against that as well, still I was proven wrong as soon as I started actually playing. Theory and practice often vary significantly!
Queue Period of 25% will mean (for a 4/4 bar)
If you tap/hold in the first quarter of a current bar - fill/transition is applied instantly (for this bar)
doing so in second, third or fourth quarter - queues it for the next bar.
BeatBuddy is very easy to learn, but can be pretty difficult to master! Try playing with different Queue Period values. At first I was almost sure 25% is what I need. But value of 50% is what I loved the most after several hours of playing.
My BB has a built in feature to make it easier to hit the queue at the right time… the tempo knob. I haven’t got the skill yet to go much above 130 bpm.
Yes, we’re on the same page, but we’re each trying to do something different. You’re trying to trigger a fill and I’m trying to queue a fill, With the current options, a small delay isn’t a big deal for instant fills as the fill happens in time when you press the pedal. That cool too. However, if you’re trying to queue a fill and you delay a little or hit it too early, it plays instantly, which in some cases, isn’t desired. That is why I’d like as an option… always queue, so that it always plays in its entirety, at the start of the next bar, regardless of whether I press the pedal at 24%, 52%, 78%, or somewhere in between, just queue it.
Yeah! But what happens if you delayed pretty significantly and pressed at 0% of the next bar you wanted to queue a transition on?
But I get your message you still want Queue Period of 0%.
