Hi! I don`t know if I shall buy am BB mini or “full”. How “flexible” is the mini? Is it possible to have / create a “song” with only 4/4 Hihats within the first part and full set in the second part? When i read abut the BB mini, it seems, that i can only work with the integrated patterns.
Based on anecdotes from within the forum, the full pedal will allow you flexibility and creative expansibility. Along with that, though, comes a steeper learning curve but greater satisfaction from not being quite so limited with the Mini. Hope this makes sense. My choice was for the full monte.
So if you have a solid idea of your requirements, I would suggest that the pedal cost should be a consideration but not the determining factor.
Yep, you’re stuck with what they give you on the Mini which is really quite limited compared to its big brother. Lower sample rate, mono output, no multi-samples for kits hence less realism, less ambience/reverb on drum kits (I had both BBs briefly and that’s how it sounded to me), kits are locked to patterns (can’t change them), can’t add other rhythms, no midi sync, can’t use BB Manager software etc. etc.
Welcome Frank,
Go For the Full beat buddy because if you buy the mini you will be impressed and always be wondering if you should have bought the full BB
As Persist says be prepared for a learning curve with the BB however there is an excellent support network on this forum.
I’ve owned mine for a few months and I am still learning, this pedal is capable of so much more than I initially thought, it really is an excellent product with no completion.
A tad expensive but your getting the latest technology and lots of good support, continual improvement through firmware upgrades.
Go Big … You won’t regret it !
Thank you, meanwhile I read a lot, and it will be the full BB. Very impressive is the way it works together with onsong (setting up tempo and patterns without bowing down)… But i use PDF-Cordsheets organized with forscore (more than 1.200), it will be a lot of work bringing them to onsong. Is there another way /app to call up song presets via midi-ipad?
It’s not some special integration with OnSong, OnSong is simply sending some MIDI commands to the BeatBuddy. It looks like you can do the same with ForScore. See https://forscore.co/midi-scores/
I feel your pain on the PDF conversion in OnSong being a lot of work. My band partner had a gazillion songs in PDF format on his iPad OnSong before I met him. He did a solo act before, and is a very experienced musician, so he really only needed the lyrics. Once he had to play with the band, he quickly discovered some of us needed chord sheets and we needed a quick way to convert keys etc.
Even though we each have 600-800, or more, songs in our iPads, we discovered we really only needed to convert the ones we regularly perform, which is closer to 100-200 songs. Fortunately, none of my songs were ever in PDF format. We generally convert the PDFs in OnSong as we need them for a set. OnSong will convert a PDF to text, but it only works well if the PDF sheet is clean (not musical scores, not full of chicken scratch or handwritten etc.). With some songs its easier to just start over with lyrics and/or chords off the internet and convert from there. Doing it on an as-needed basis, it took us about a year (a few hours a week) to get our rotation in good OnSong format, including BB MIDI commands, where necessary.
All that said, if I had a large collection of PDF songs and didn’t want (or need) to go through all the work to convert them, I would simply put the songs (with the proper beats, tempos etc) in folders for each performance and keep the PDFs in OnSong. Then you can access them on the BB simply by tapping the pedals on a footswitch to move to the next song inside the set folders. There are several threads on how to do this.
I m playing guitar in several Combos… Worship Bands - there i get my sheets by CCLI - I think these are no problem for onsong.
But for my Guitar-Cover-Duo, I use PDFs from SCANS. I bought 4 german songbooks called “Das Ding”, which I scanned, storing them as PDF (so forscore can load them).
Is onsong able to convert them like an OCR-Software? Would be great afterwards being able to transpose songs.
Its hard to say how much trouble you will have converting the scans of songs from you book to OnSong. OnSong will convert the text of a clean chord sheet (no musical staffs), but it often needs a lot of hand editing to clean it up, because the conversion doesn’t seem to do line returns well. You will often have to go in and correct the spacing and line returns by hand. There have been many times when my partner has sent me one of his PDF files that I just threw up my hands and found a song already in ChordPro or OnSong type format from the web and used that as a starting point. The only way to know is to try one.
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Today I bought a beatbuddy with footswitch! I cant await the delivery.
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Can onsong show pdfs without converting? Like a “picture”? For my gospelchoir band i have lots of scanned note-sheet Pdfs with a lot of pages. These are impossible to convert.
Yes. OnSong can display any PDF files you have as a picture without conversion.
If you get the equipment (either Puc+, Yamaha MD-BT01, or wired MIDI connector) for your iPad, you can even send the MIDI commands to your BeatBuddy from OnSong from aPDF file. Watch this video at the OnSong site, and read the threads on this site for guidance on how.
https://onsong.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2745789-controlling-beatbuddy
Thoughts while waiting for my beatbuddy…
Before changing from forscore to onsong, do you know an app which can send tempo and song changes via midi to the beat buddy? only midi commands, no midi clock an special things.
For me it would be easier to choose about 10 typical Drums, which i use for our varying live-performances. I have an older ipad 2 on which a template for the changes may rum via midi-interface and cck. I once bought these things for controlling my GR 55. I have an app called TB Midi Stuff
Update, I have sense moved on to a software looper. Sold all my hardware loopers and now use Quantiloop. http://quantiloop.com/
This thing is killer, the updates have been top notch, the features are awesome, and the software works perfect with the Beatbuddy. The developer of the Quantiloop has made the software to work hand in hand with the BeatBuddy. The Quantiloop will Even control the BeatBuddy including Tempo, Volume, Change Patches, and more. No more bending to change patches. This a no brainer for me, but to each his own. Here is another thread http://forum.mybeatbuddy.com/index.php?threads/quantiloop-and-beatbuddy-best-buddies.7908/
Quantiloop sounds great any plans to make an android version of this app
I cannot answer that, but if you go to facebook and message him he gets right back to you and he will give you the answer.
Thank you
@persist Yes I do 
As I love the BB as well
@jstrausss Never say never. But currently there are no plans for android. But if the demand increases you never know…
That’s good to hear. Seems it’s catching on rapidly here. Thank you for the fast response.