Short(er) intros / fills

BeatBuddy General
#1

Hi! I just got a BeatBuddy and I’m loving it. I’m slowly but surely programming beats for all the songs in my gig book (sometimes copy+pasting patterns from the default library, sometimes writing very simple patterns myself with the beatbuilder - thanks CharlesSpencer!!)

My question is regarding writing shorter intros and or fills. I don’t play drums, and I haven’t done anything with MIDI up until this point. I noticed that some of the fills in the default BB library are labeled “short fill” but when I use the beatbuilder and write something that’s two bars, the beatbuddy plays that fill for beats 1+2 (instead of 3+4), and if I write something that has two empty bars, and bars 3+4 having a fill, the BB just doesn’t play it right (it hits a tom and then just holds silent for a long time).

Also, is there a setting for the beatbuddy to only do a half bar intro rather than full bar? I noticed in the new firmware there’s a setting with 25%, 50%, 75% etc. but didn’t really notice a difference between changing that setting.

Thank you!

#2

You don’t have to count beats in the measure… the pedal will do it for you. Lets see if i can “draw” it.

you have a main section of 4 measure of 4/4

1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 |

if you have a fill that is two beats long, and trigger it near the beginning of the 4th measure this is what happens:

1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 |
^ ^—^
triggered here ^ ^ plays it here
The pedal has intelligence to allow it to wait and fit the fill into the measure properly. If the fill were 3 beats long, it would start at the “2” and play the 3 beats, etc. What happens if you trigger it on the “2” of the last measure, and the fill is 4 beats long, (i.e. too long to fit), what happens? Well, usually, it will play the last 3 beats of the 4 beat fill! Don’t fret it, the pedal has the smarts! (There is a setting that will cause it to play the fill after the measure, if you want that. that’s “cue fill setting”)

#3

Thank you! That was very helpful. I understand if I don’t know how to write a full bar fill, I can just use the midi pattern for whatever part that fill is for, and edit the last part wherever I want the fill.

Now, how would this work when it comes to the intro of a song? I can’t choose to trigger the intro on beat 3 since the song isn’t playing yet.

#4

I made the intros that are in the Resources section of this forum. I found, and confirmed with Goran, that I had to add a ‘phantom beat’ at the start of the next measure to get the intros to play correctly.

I never experimented with short intros so I don’t know if that would work. You could try it in less time than it took me to type this reply.

#5

Hi guys , i think that is a problem with beatbuddy , whenever i stop the song and i need to play starting with some kind of a roll , it would actually complete the whole bar , there is no way i can get the beatbuddty to shorten the length of the intro i guess.