Premium Purple Rain Bug?

Has anyone successfully used the Premium Purple Rain (Prince) midi track? I don’t see how it works.

The verse midi is 8 beats (2 measures) long. The transition part is 1 measure (4 beats)

However, the verse ends up being 7 1/2 measure long, or 6 measures of 4/4 and 1 measure of 6/4, before the transition. I could not find a way to make this work out of the box. I ended up creating a new transition fill that was in 6/4, that was essentially the last 2 beats of the verse midi prepended to the included transition. It’s the same way on the transition back into the Verse, where the last measure of the chorus seems to be 6/4.

Am I missing something, or is there a flaw in the Premium content for this tune?

I don’t have it, so I don’t know the answer in this specific case, but, generally, when I have a passage that ends on the half-bar, I make the whole part 2/4. Don’t know if that helps in this case, and, if not, sorry for butting in!

:slight_smile:

That would work too, depending on if the drum part repeats on the half measure. The simplest way for me was to make the transition 6/4. I actually ended up making it another part and not a transition.

So between Beat 1-3 of measure 6 I trigger the next part (which is the 6/4 (1/2 measure + 4 beat transition))
While the 6/4 bit is playing I just hit Next again to transition to the chorus. Timing wise with this song that feels the easiest to me, but it would definitely vary from song to song and what you are comfortable with as a player.

I hear what you’re saying – I would never have thought to do it that way. Pretty clever!

What I was suggesting is take the entire (let’s say) 8 x 4/4 bars passage into an editor like Reaper and reset the time signature to 2/4 so you end up with 16 x 2/4 bars. It plays exactly the same, but lets you exit mid-bar.

Oh yeah! That would work great too! I should learn how to use something like Reaper. I use Garage Band to combine midi parts and the BBManager editor to make simple beats. But the more I get into it the more flexibility and power I’m going to want over these midi files.

Exactly. You can get by with what the BB folks provide – you absolutely can – but, finally having a drummer that does exactly what you tell him can be addictive. And it’s a slippery slope from “Maybe just one more kick on the 2…” to playing parts in through an Octapad and programming the BB to play keyboards and run your DMX light show (true story).

:slight_smile:

We have a collection of maybe 200 songs, and I would say less than five of them are NOT somehow manipulated. And more than half are modified to add custom lighting cues (because our BB DOES run our lights).

Welcome to the jungle, my friend!

BTW, I find Reaper really pretty easy to use once you get into it.

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My current solution for this issue: I used Garage Band to build a Verse/Chorus as a single .mid. The Chorus beat actually starts on beat 3 of measure 8 after the first 6/4 part, but then the second 6/4 part at the end of the chorus evens things out again.

Then I have the standard Premium Chorus.mid as Song-Part 2 for after the third Chorus when it goes into the lead. This makes it super simple to play.

I also integrate my boomerang looper as follows:

Beat 1 of part 1 - Start the loop recording. The first 4 measures of the Verse are actually also what plays for the end solo. So on measure 5 I kick off loop 2. The second half of the verse and the entire chorus are on loop 2. Then when Verse 2 starts I kick back to loop 1 and layer on bass during the second verse/chorus.Then I can start noodling a little during the third verse/chorus and go full on Lead over loop 1 after that.

It’s gonna be FIRE! Can’t wait to debut it at our next show.