There are a few songs that we play and sing the intros or first Verse without any drums. I would like to start BB with no “Intro” when the whole band comes in by a “press” on the downbeat of the “all in” measure. The Main Pedal is set up for “release” because I use the Footswitch 1 to cycle backward through the song list and Footswitch 2 to cycle forward through the set list.
I end the songs using the Footswitch to “pause/release” and “accent” at the same time. Once the song is over, I must press the Main Footswitch one time so that I can then advance the song list using the opt Footswitch. If I have the Main Footswitch set to start songs on the “press” then I have no way to advance my song list.
The reason this is a problem is that it is too difficult to accurately come in on “release” with a BB drum beat perfectly in meter with a band already chugging along. If I press the Footswitch while tapping my foot to the “already in progress” song, there is a slight delay the throws off the entire band.
Is there a work around, or can this be fixed in the firmware update?
Great idea, I’ve been dealing with the same. Often our guitarist will start a song by himself, and I will quickly identify the song, then scroll to the song, load it, and start the BB on the 1st chorus. That is stressful enough without the BB coming in late on the downbeat.
As was pointed out to me awhile back on this forum there is a Main Pedal function you can set to choose either Release or press. One caveat - now that I have upgraded to firmware v1.74 there still seems to be some flakiness - it changed back to ‘Release’ on me recently. I also still have to reset button functions after updating an SD.
I have my pedal set on PRESS to start. My additional footswitch I have set to PAUSE on the first switch and OUTRO on the other.
For the OUTRO I have to hold my foot on it because it is set to momentry rather than latch.
Seems to work well.
I must add that I do not use the scroll feature as you do. If you hold the pedal and release on the count that should work!!
If I understand you correctly, I think you can get what you want with beta firmware version 1.7.5 - ask the support guy to email you the latest version.
I have my foot switch set up so that the two buttons scroll through the song list (forward on one switch, back on the other) when the BB isn’t playing. That’s independent of the setting on the main pedal which you should be able to set to ‘Press’ vs ‘Release’ and still get the scrolling feature on the foot switch. While the BB is playing, I’ve set my foot switch to ‘Pause’ and ‘Outro’. I don’t use accent hits.
The only way I see to start a song with no intro is to remove the intro from the song in BBManager. You should be able to do that independent of any of the above pedal or foot switch settings.
I am running 1.7.5 and I tried your suggestion. When I set the Main Pedal to “Press”, the Footswitch still will cycle forward or back through the setlist, but I still have the problem of not being able to “silently” get to the next song.
When the Main Pedal is set to “Press” and I stop/end the song by using “pause” on the Footswitch, pressing the Main pedal just starts the beat again. If the Main Pedal is set to “Release”, pressing the Main Pedal resets the pedal, releasing the Footswitch from “play” mode to “silent” mode, therefore allowing me to advance the songs in the Setlist.
I think this is doable with the current 1.7.5 firmware, if you want to move the next song and not play the intro, you’ll have to delete the intro to the song before going to the gig and save it to your SD card. While at the gig, you’ll stop the current song with a double press of the main pedal or a single press of the properly configured foot switch (this action will play the outro but there might be a command to stop the song without the outro - triple press of the main pedal perhaps), use the foot switches to move to the song you want to play, start the song (the version without the intro) with the main pedal. The song you select will then start right away (on the ‘press’ or ‘release’ depending on how you have the main pedal set).
I’d also test this at home first as I don’t actually know what the BB will do with a song having no intro.
There’s no feature, yet, that gives you the option to start a song directly into the main loop, skipping the intro or count-in AFAIK nor is there one that stops the current song and automatically goes to the next song. Those would likely be two new features you might request as options in the configuration setup. The first one would be problematic because doing it in the BB would make it a global setting so it would skip the intro on all songs.
Alternatively, you could request a specific configuration setting for one of the foot switches to do both steps. You’d lose the ability to program the foot switch with one of the features you already use.
There is no way around this. If the pedal is set to start the beat on “press” rather than “release”, the moment you press the main pedal whilst the song is paused you will have initiated the command to start playing. The only way to stop the song while it is paused by holding down the pedal in an extended hold is only if the Start Beat is set to “release”. But you cannot have both, the pedal set to “press” and be able to stop the song immediately in pause mode by holding the main pedal down.
If you do not want the outro fill, it can be removed manually via the BBManager. Same thing with intro fills, or you can globally disable them via the BB’s settings menu if you know that you will not be interested in having them in the current session you are in.
OK - thank you for the reply I have figured out a work around: I start the song via the Main Pedal and “pause” with the Foot Pedal after the first click of the Intro. We can then start the song without BeatBuddy playing and come in on the chorus downbeat by hitting the “pause” again on the Foot Pedal.
I end the song by hitting both buttons on the Foot Pedal (pause4 AND cymbal Accent), then HOLD the Main Pedal to silently end the song. Then I am “all clear” to scroll the songs in the set list (backward or forward via the 2 buttons on the Food Pedal).