Random selection of fills

I’m not satisfied with the actual algorithm for random fills. Very often the same fill is selected three or four times in sequence. I would prefer a better mix of the fills.
I suggest two additional “random algorithms”, which one should be able to choose in settings menu:
[LIST=1]
[]Every fill initially gets a priority count of one. After a fill is played, this special fill gets a priority count of one again, all other fill’s priority counts are increased by one. The new algorithm preferes fills with higher priority count.
This algorithm is still kind of random, since one fill could still be played two times in series, but that wouldn’t happen too often.
[
]When a song is selected, the sort order of the fills of each song part is arranged randomly. From now on the fills are played in that order. After every fill of one song part has been played once, the sort order of the fills of this song part is arranged randomly again, but the fill played last will not be the first fill in the new sort order. In addition the sort order will be kept even when song parts are changed.
With this algorithm, when you have a song where in the chorus you only need to play one single fill, then you always will get a different fill each time you play the chorus. And every fill will be played as often as the others.
[/LIST]
Maybe you can realize something like that in the future.

Somewhat agree on the option 1 up to the point where you say “The new algorithm prefers fills with higher priority count”. It’s really important up to what degree should they be preferred?
Option 2 screams overcomplication to me. Making algorithm more complicated doesn’t make it any more random.

Daef …

thank you for your reply.
I didn’t want to explain the algorithm in detail. But what could be done is to use the priority count as weight factor when determing the next fill. Another way could be to only choose between fills with the highest priority count. But there might be other ways, which would lead to different behaviour (and are diffent complex to implement).
Even the increment by one could be changed - another possibility is to multiply the priority count by a constant factor.
My approach is to minimize the chance to repeat the same fill subsequently, while other fills are not played at all. Variations of that algorithm could be tested to get the best result finally.

The second option would not produce a random sequence - that’s true. But as a musician I prefer variety, and the second option would lead to that. But when the first option works good enough, maybe the second isn’t necessary any more.

Well, I see the problem here is that you believe the same pattern is selected multiple times in a row. This is definitely not how it should be, and it is not random at all, if this is the case.

I have personally never used the random fills feature as I absolutely hate any randomness in music, especially coming from my personal drummer when I am trying to get my playing sound as accurate as possible :slight_smile:

wait… there is a random fill feature?

@scudd Yes.

There are two things I would like to be improved:
[LIST]
[]I don’t want to hear the same fill multiple times in a row. Even twice in a row is more than I want.
[
]When I change between song parts, in some cases I don’t want the first fill played to be always the same (I have songs where in the chorus only one fill is played and I want a different fill each time I play the chorus). With fixed order it would be the same each time. With random order it could be (and actually happens too often). If for example the index of the fill to be played in fixed order is not reset when changing song parts that would do the job as well. But since in many cases I do want a fix order that should only be an option to be switched on or off.
[/LIST]
Anyway I like the BeatBuddy very much and what I want could be achieved by building very complex song structures and chosing only fixed order for fills. But maybe other users have the same requests so it might be worth thinking about it.

Toki, I’m not sure if the software guys can put these rules into the random selection of fills, but for now, what you may be able to do is to put many different fills into each part, so that the chances of repeating would be less?

In1voice …
Thanks for your tipp, but I’ve tried that already. I put up to 8 fills into one song part (although the BeatBuddy Manager allows the selection of “random” only up to 7 fills, but adding another fill after changing this option works). But even with 7 or 8 fills it happens that the same fill is played 2 or 3 times in a row.

This sounds like noone actually bothered to test this random fills feature properly back then.
I think this will be revisited in one of the next firmware versions.