I just purchased my Beat Buddy and midi cables and I want to setup thru my Boss RC300. I saw a video on YouTube but it was impossible to understand. Can someone point me in the right direction?
PS - I did search and read the manual but I cannot find just a simple explanation to save my life.
Thanks!
Hi @kevin.mcarthur welcome to the forum.
What specifically are you trying to do with BB and your looper?
There are already a few posts on using the RC300 - do they have any information that could help?
Thanks for the reply. Several of the links I chased took me to the old forum and the instructions were not available. From what I have been able to find, it seems like there are some limitations with the BB and RC 300 so I am hoping to find basic instructions as to how to make it work best given these limitations.
What are you trying to do? Clock sync?
All the old forum posts should have been copied over to this forum.
I am not sure what clock sync is exactly. I am hoping to start and stop the beat buddy with the RC300 and record loops in time with my guitar. Since I am new to this, I would happy to follow someones recommendation how to best make it work. I have not been able to find clear cut instructions or what my options are. Most threads are saying to sell the RC 300 and get another looper.
Here’s a useful item
Thank you for sending this. After hooking up the midi cables on BB, what settings do you have to on the RC 300 to setup master / slave, tempo, behavior, etc? What settings are needed on the BB itself (if any)?
I promise once I get this sorted I will write a step by step guide for the less advanced.
Thank you for the link. I watched this video and it is very confusing. I appreciate what he was trying to do but it is so unclear. He mentions something about setting channels in multiples of 12 which I did not understand. He also went thru the midi options quickly but never really explains what parameters needed to be changed. With the light bleed and the shaky camera, I am lost. Obviously, it is working him and many others.
I am confident someone has done something similar with their RC 300 and once I finally figure it out, I will write the guide that others need to make it work.
Although I could not find the post, a user provided instructions on the settings for the RC-300. I think it was last year.
That would be a miracle if you found it! I thought I had found something like that but the landing page said the resource had moved to the new forum. I have been searching for days.
i think the confusing thing for people today about midi is that it only goes one way. network cables, usb cables, and everything else in the world has two way cables!
That said, which box do you want to control the “time”. you can make the BB follow the RC300, or, make the RC300 follow the BB. WIth that answered, you should be able to match midi-in with midi-out, and make a chain that works.
Thank you for the reply. At this point, I am just looking for any possible way to use my BB with the RC300. I will accept any limitations and work around them. I figured by now someone had this setup and knew the ideal configuration and would have a simple step by step. The YouTube video is the closest I can get but he does not explain the MIDI settings and you can’t see the screen on the BB either.
@persist, I think this exactly what I was hoping for. I will test it out this weekend - THANK YOU!!!
If it works for you, feel free to compile or supplement the base instructions into a single pdf and post it to your thread. Good luck.
Ok, thanks to @persist I am getting closer. I have a few questions:
1.) I have recorded a blank loop on Track 3 so I can start / stop the BB. How can I get the drums to not record on Track 1 when I start my rhythm loop?
2.) How do you make outros work to stop all of the loops?
Hi, Kevin!
I regularly gig (or at least I did before the lockdown) with my BB and RC-300, and I love them both! However, I do NOT have the BB feeding into my RC-300. I feed them into separate channels on a mixer for larger rooms/shows or to separate channels on my Fishman Loudbox Performer amp for small rooms or at home. Vocals into 1 input on the amp. Guitar into bass pedal into RC-300 Into 2nd input on the amp. And BB into aux input on the back of the amp. I don’t know how you have yours hooked up, but would this setup maybe help you?
You can still connect them via midi, although, I have not had much luck with that until I purchased the Onsong app for my iPad, and have slowly been adding the midi programming for 3 devices (soon to be 4) into each song: Voicelive 3 Extreme (VL3X), BB, RC-300. Now, when I navigate to a song, it immediately puts all 3 devices on the correct patches! (When I’m over the PTSD of trying to figure out all the midi programming for all those, I will start to work on how to program the patches for my new keyboard.) :-P.
If any of the above interests you, I can try to find the posts/references for you.
Also, if you’re looking for tutorials on the RC-300, look up “Clayhorse RC-300” on YouTube. His tutorials are some of the best and got me up and running fairly quickly. The RC-300 manual is actually really good, too!—except when it comes to the midi stuff, LOL!
hi @Skwearlswife ,
Thanks for the reply. I love the idea but how do you get your loops to keep time with the BB?
Some of my loops are pre-recorded to save some time or to use equipment I don’t bring to every gig. I recorded my loop with the BB running in the background. After recording, I checked the tempo of my loop. It was .2 or so off…I just went in and adjusted the RC-300 tempo to match the BB exactly. It wasn’t a big enough adjustment to notice any stretch or squish on the loop, and it keeps time perfectly.
There is a way to set the tempo of the RC-300 on a blank program. If I remember correctly, you have to record a loop at the tempo you want—use the RC-300 drum sounds. Then copy that song to another channel. Then you can delete the loop, write to that channel again, and it should have saved your tempo for you.
Also… I think someone mentioned you can use the RC-300 drums at your fixed tempo, but just turn the drum sound down to 0.