There has got to be an easier way to find songs instead of scrolling through thousands of songs but, for the life of me, I cannot figure out an easier way! Can someone suggest an easier way to search for songs besides putting them all in excel manually so that I can search. Thanks.
Kim (just purchased my BeatBox so there will be more questions!
1 Like
I felt the same way yesterday right after I purchased the Complete Collection of songs. Today, I wrote a little python based web application to take the project files on my computer (the unzipped download), and it maps out the files into a drop down for the genres, then of the genre you select a drop down of the songs. Then when you push the “Send to Beat Buddy” button it runs a python command to push the midi info to the beat buddy.
I may share it here if I can get it a little cleaner, and perhaps after I put a search in where the drop downs are now. It’s not bad for 2-3 hours worth of play/work on it.
3 Likes
I did not find an easier way and resorted to preparing an Excel spreadsheet with all of the beats and folders in the Complete Library. You can read all about my real life experience here:
You will find out where to obtain my spreadsheet for free and you can always print it. After working with the Ableton Live file for about a year and for hundreds of songs, I am somewhat comfortable and the listing has become somewhat familiar so I can usually zoom into the right beat fairly quickly. And since I only need to do that when I am learning and preparing a song, it is no big deal. Doing it live and on the fly? Forget it.
I’ve been writing code to interact with the BB via a Web UI. Tonight I wrote the search feature.
I can search for any Folder (genre) or Song or part of it and get the list of results. Right now I click the song and the submit button shows under it. I’ll work on that.
Submit to BeatBuddy button sends a message via a python library mido to actually set the song.
The file system searched is the mirror of the project on my local pc’s hard drive.
The page is a simple web page accessible by any device in my house, ( iPad, iPhone, PC, etc)
2 Likes
Nice progress.
1 Like
That is an elegant solution requiring only a Web browser and a connection to the BB. This is where the ability to code can really come in handy - wish I was up to date on that stuff.
I among others, I am sure, would love to see somthing like this evolve into something of a song list where they could simply assign a beat (folder, song, tempo, volume, etc…) to each song. Let us know as you progress and what you end up with.
I agree that using a web browser is a universal and easy solution. The complexity comes with the dependencies such as Python to make it work. That’s just a task of packaging it in a way that makes it easier on the user to install.
As features go, I’ve made a great amount of progress if you’d like to follow along in this thread:
I’ve got most of the things you’ve mentioned… though I’ve not yet considered volume. I could add that as well. Take a look and comment on that thread if you’re interested.
bluetex
1 Like