Starting in time

BeatBuddy Feature Requests
1

Howzit all you musicians out there…

Just an introduction:

I have been a professional muso for the last 25 years and have played gigs from 10 to 10 000 people over the years.(Yes I know, I must have done something seriously wrong in a past life. Hehe.)

The first 20 years I played solo and duos with midi backing tracks, but about 5 years ago I went back to my roots and now play in a 3-piece (Bass, drums and guitar) blues/rock band. I do vocals and guitar.

I ordered my BeatBuddy mainly for smaller gigs where it’s not financially viable to have a drummer as well.

As far as I know I’m the first musician here in Cape Town, South Africa, to own a BeatBuddy. (Mostly because we’re a bit behind the times and it’s unfortunately very expensive here with our weak currency.) I have literally been looking for something like the BeatBuddy for years, and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, apart from one thing…

I received my BeatBuddy last Thursday and did my first gig with it on Sunday night. We were loose like a 2-dollar hooker but I’ll get it soon. (Hehe.)
However, after the first gig I found the biggest chink in it’s armour. (In my very humble opinion)

So… To business:

The way I see it, it’s all about only one thing. The first beat of the song…

  1. When the pedal’s “SETTINGS – MAIN PEDAL – START BEAT” is set to RELEASE… It’s virtually impossible (for me) to come in on time if the drums comes in after the rest of the band.

  2. When the pedal’s “SETTINGS – MAIN PEDAL – START BEAT” is set to PRESS… The problem goes away… However. Now the problem becomes: "When I finish the song on a PAUSE”,

I can no longer advance to the next song silently. I have to stop the song first with a double tap, which makes a loud noise that’s very irritating for the punters at the show and myself.

I found a temporary solution here from 8daypsalmist:

http://forum.mybeatbuddy.com/index.php?threads/start-beat-on-press-rather-than-release-main-pedal.5224/

(BTW: 8daypsalmist. You’re a bloody genius! Thanks for the tip!)

However… With this tip I loose my intro.

My suggestions:

  1. A sub menu under “SETTINGS – MAIN PEDAL – START BEAT” for when the BeatBuddy is in “Stopped” or “Playing/Pause” mode.

  2. Enable the “Tap Mode” to be turned off. I can then put my foot on the pedal and take it off when I want the beat to start. Currently I can not do that because by the time I want the beat to start, the BeatBuddy has gone into “Tap Mode”. The “Tap Mode” can always be assigned to the footswitch.

I am however not a programmer and have no idea how hard it would be to implement these options and all the other musicians here might have prefer one or the other option that I suggested.

On a personal note:

Thank you for an amazing pedal. I love the simplicity but yet versatility of the pedal. It truly is the next best thing to a live drummer if you don’t want to play with the boring old backing tracks which gives no room for variation in a song from one night to the next.

And lastly… Thanks Jay for the help when we ordered the pedal. (There was a bit of a problem with the power supply due to our country’s power)

Cheers all you guys and hope to hear from you soon.

Johnny Ray.

2

Hi Guys.
Sorry to be impatient, but could someone from BeatBuddy please just advise if these changes would be possible?
It is quite a problem when performing live.
Thanks. I’ll be waiting for your reply.

1 Like
3

Hey, Johnny!
I’ve stumbled across this thread now a couple of times – and only because, like you, I think Start on Press should be not just the first, but the ONLY option :slight_smile: – but never really jumped in because I don’t understand what the problem is. Can you tell me what you want to happen and when? I’ve been gigging with the BB for almost 18 months – more than 70 shows – and I MIGHT have a suggestion for you. Might not, bit it can’t hurt to try.

Joe

4

Hi Joe.
The release function is very important because it effectively gives the pedal 2 funtions on one switch. Let’s say you set the pedal on press, then it starts straight away… No problem!.. BUT… If you then end a song with the pause button, you can’t scroll to the next song with your footswitch. It has to be set on “Release”, then you can hold the main pedal down and the BeatBuddy will go into the “Stopped” mode without making a sound. Then you can scroll to your next song without bending down to fiddle with your pedal.
Does this make sense?

Thanks.

5

It does. Could you solve the problem by simply not having an outro on a song that you want to just stop? (I know, probably the equivalent of Tech Support asking if it’s plugged in…). If not, why not? Trying to get a complete picture, not trying to be a dick.

:slight_smile:

Joe

6

Hey no problem Joe. Glad to answer questions.
Well I never just press pause to stop. I always hit the accent as well… And if you just press stop with no outro, it doesn’t stop straight away. It plays through to end end of the bar before stopping.

7

So you stop mid-bar – with an accent hit? Interesting. I never thought to do that. And that works the way you want it to with the main pedal in Release to Start mode?

So, if I’m understanding this correctly (and I may not be, because I never use RTS mode), you need the outboard pedal to behave as if the main pedal is in RTS mode? Which boils down to being able to choose the mode for the main pedal and the outboard pedal independently.

Does that make sense?

If so, it begs for one more modification: The ability to set/save your pedal preferences in BBManager.

Joe

8

Sorry Joe. I’m probably being dof here, but what do you mean by RTS mode?:smiley:
Basically I want the pedal as is (when set to release), but just the first start of a song to be able to be set to press, so you don’t have that lag of 1 tenth of a second.
I was thinking just a setting on the main Beatbuddy pedal itself.

9

:slight_smile:

10

Are you saying you want the beat start start when you press and not when you release the pedal. My pedal was set to start the beat when I release the pedal and I change it in the setting to start the beat right on the press down and not the release up. Not sure if this is what your talking about but I thought I’d give it a shot :slight_smile:

11

RTS = Release to Start. Thought I equated them the first time I mentioned it. My bad.

:slight_smile:

12

I think that’s what he’s saying, but the outboard pedals behave differently depending which mode you’re in (pres to start vs. release to start).

13

THIS WORKS WELL FOR ME, default behaviors I think:
If you end after a pause tap on the breakout pedal,
You can exit “play mode” by pressing and hold on main pedal.
This allows you to advance to next song afterwards as hoped

THIS DOESN’T WORK AS WELL FOR ME
The “return from pause with a roll” is unusable for me (and I suspect you)
The result is usually out of time and the shipped rolls are usually too embellished ; )

14

This is correct lovesinging…
I would also like the song to start on (press to start), but only the start. The rest of the song and end of the song should be on (release to start) setting.

Just remember it takes me time to reply, because I’m 7 hours ahead of you guys in the states. So I’m sleeping when you are awake. :wink:

1 Like
15

Seems like that might be a minor and sensible change (to me at least)

16

I’m just trying to follow this all and figure it out. I too have the issue of being in time with the start if it’s a sudden sort of start, where I have to hit my guitar at the same time as I start the pedal. I have fixed that on a number of songs, but just by adding count in intro (Either a measure or a measure plus if there is a pickup in the song). A couple of songs I have won’t work like that…and I suck at the timing.

Ending songs: I did also discover that if I end a song suddenly at any point by pressing the pause on my external pedal (which I think turns it off immediately regardless of where you are in the measure), I can just hold the main pedal down and it shuts off play mode so I can use my external pedal to advance to the next song. That seems to work.

I’d love other ideas though. I have not tried release to start. I can really see how release to end (or better yet, release to start outro) would be helpful. My issue is that I am always doing other things like shutting off a looper or something like that. I sometimes feel like I should put taps on my sneakers with all the jumping around pushing stuff with my feet I do now. I’m just started to take this operation on the road too (after years of either only playing with a live drummer OR just me, myself and I and my acoustic. We were playing yesterday and this thing is so great, I did almost at times forget I didn’t have a live drummer and almost forgot to transition or stop. It’s all cool though…