I am looking for an easy and cheap way to get a click track to sync with Buddy Beats (yes, I’ve named him The goal is have the click play in my in-ear monitors that keeps playing even when the BB stops so that the band (me) keeps in time during drum breaks.
I tried adding a click track wav to Quantiloop but I believe wavs are locked into the tempo they were recorded at to some degree. When I download it to a track, the length of the track (bars) determines the tempo. Is there a way to do this so you can have just one click track for all songs rather than a click track for each song?
I am also looking at some midi metronomes but this not a common as you would think, nor are they cheap. Someone suggested a second BB but that would be an expensive click track. I also think that Mute Pause could be a challenge because it would have to be enabled on the first BB so that when you pause it, the second BB keeps playing. And when Mute Pause is enabled the BB does not auto-start back up on beat 1. You potentially could come back in out of time with the BB.
Lastly, I did a fairly thorough exploration with multitracks which is fine but takes away all the spontaneity of the BB. I even tried the Loop Community Prime app, which is one of the best MT apps out there and even bought the Looptimus midi footpedal that enables you jump from between song parts on the fly by assigning button to the song parts in the app. It’s wonderful. But it’s really expensive to store your own MT’s on the Prime Cloud. Subscriptions range from $5 - $50 per month.
I also looked at Stage Traxx 3 which a much more affordable option to Prime. However, it is limited to only six tracks and tracks cannot sync up with the Beat Buddy. However, it can send PC and CC commands to tell the BB what tempo and song to play. And it can be midi clock.
OnSong 2023 now supports multitracks but it has a long way to go to compete with these other MT apps.
At the end of the day, Buddy Beats can’t be beat (pun fully intended) when it comes to spontaneity short of a live drummer. And Quantiloop does an excellent job syncing up with Buddy. It seems like this should be a simple and cheap option of getting a click track that syncs up with the BB and into my ears only.
An Alesis Sr-16 can be had for well under $100. I have seen them go for as low as $30, but $50-75 is realistic. Use it as the master into the BB, and just use it for a click into your ears.
Could I use OnSong (or Stage Traxx 3) to tell the Alesis what tempo to play?
Since it would be the master, obviously the BB would be the slave.
Would I have to enable Mute Pause on BB or just disable the BB from being the clock?
I think when you make the BB a slave, Mute Pause in automatically enabled. I guess the idea is that if you have the click going off in your head while the BB is paused, you should have no trouble coming back in on time.
That’s correct. As far as the OnSong question, I am not sure. Its a fairly old machine. I have never looked into having it controlled by another clock, or an outside command, except for start and stop. It might be possible. If i get time today, i’ll see if i can find documentation on it.
Yeah I use OnSong today to tell the BB tempo and song. The iPad is not set to the clock its just passing the CC and PC commands. It’s critical for the tempo to be passed on to the Alesis. How else could you do it?
The Sr-16 can get clock from an outside source. So, the BB could be the master. Get tempo from OnSong, start BB, and it will send its tempo and start to the Sr-16. If you have the BB set with the mute pause setting that continues to send clock, the Sr-16 should keep clicking away.
It’s new, but shipping in August. It can send OR follow MIDI Clock, so it’s your choice on whether you’d like it to be the Master Clock, or BB be the Master, without any sort of hassle. It has full size MIDI IN/OUT DIN connectors.
You can even run the clock/click without having anything else started. Then, start commands can be quantized to the top of the click’s bar, or perform a resync … either way it means the click audio and all your devices are staying together. It’s good for a count in that way.
There’s also a complete MIDI Implementation, so you could do something like have OnSong or another MIDI Controller send in commands that change BPM, Time Signatures, Click Track patterns, etc. or load Presets.
And the audio click options are pretty extensive.
DISCLAIMER: I make this. I’m an Aeros user myself, so I’m around here from time to time.
I’ve been messing around with Quantiloop. I was hoping for that to be the simple solution. However, since the click tracks are wav files, it appears they are somewhat locked into the tempo there were recorded at. I download one from a MT track from Loop Community and it defaulted to 128 bars. I started experimenting with various bar lengths and got real close. The wav was recorded at 72 bpm. At 95 bars, the closest I could get was 72.5 bpm. Close but no cigar. The other option is to record a new click track for each song but was trying to avoid that.
Just watched the vid. Dude, this is very cool. The goal is to able to pause the BB without stopping the click and/or start a song with the click but without the BB playing to bring it in later–on time and in sync with the click.
Definitely was a goal in the design of both CLOCKstep products to keep Clock and Start/Stop behaviors independent if that is what the user wants. This is also in accordance with the MIDI spec … running the Clock and sending the Start command aren’t the same thing, but they can seem that way if you want them to be.
I demo the 5 modes in CS:M that the user can configure, and I’m definitely open to adding more.
It’s small enough to put on a mic stand for sure. And it has a complete MIDI Implementation so that you can control it from any kind of MIDI Controller, whether that is OnSong or a programmable pedal. For input, it has a MIDI DIN and class-compliant USB, so that’s 2 really common ways for getting MIDI commands into the device. Once you do that, you’ll be free to put it anywhere really, even out of sight.
BTW, both things you’ve mentioned: Being able to run Clock independently from Start and controlling it from an external MIDI Controller just happen to be how I roll with my own band (we use click and an occasional track or looping).
Coolio. How do you sync up your tracks/loops to the BB?
I am experimenting with multitracks which eliminates a lot of tap dancing and gives the option to add or mute additional instruments as needed, but it definitely takes away from the spontaneity that we enjoy playing with the BB.
The more I think about it, since I can control it with foot pedal, I would likely mount this on my pedalboard along side the BB.
Um, wow. I use a totally different solution that seems simpler to me. I just go into Beatbuddy Manager software and add a song part that has just a shaker or a hi hat, to make my breakdown parts. The Premium song packs are good for this. They have solo hi hats, ride cymbals, kicks, shakers. No, it won’t be totally silent, but it’s something that you can hear to keep yourself in time that sounds musical and intentional for your audience. Also, you don’t have to worry about “syncing” anything to your BeatBuddy, because the shaker will be part of your song. I have actually edited some of the Premium cover songs where the guitar is supposed to start the song solo, like SRV’s “Pride and Joy”. I put a quarter-note hi hat as an extra part which is now my new part 1, copied the intro fill to make the transition to part 2, and then deleted the intro.
It sounds like you are asking about Quantize? I don’t use the BB, just the Aeros along with another looper and an occasional ARP pattern or Sequence from a synth.
I don’t know if BB has Quantize as part of its ability to follow MIDI Clock like the Aeros does, but if so, that’s the way to go. If not, sometimes its just old school “step on the pedal at the right time”. At least sync will be maintained, but start time is not always going to be on a definite pulse. I have to do that with my ARP patterns from a synth. A pulse or two or three off isn’t really noticeable (1 pulse is a 64th Triplet).
There is an ability to send a Quantize Start command from CS:M, but that is the global MIDI Start command, not targeting a specific device. You can sometimes find ways to make that work … it depends how many other devices are in the signal chain that will respond to that Start command. If BB is the only one, it should work fine to use that.
BTW, the OG CLOCKstep is ALL ABOUT sending Quantize (or CUE) MIDI Commands and is highly customizable in order to do so. That was one of the main reasons for building it. However, it doesn’t have an audio metronome which is something you are asking for. It is possible (easy actually) to combine CS and CS:M where one of them is acting as the master for the other and all the features of both can be used, but now we are talking about 2 devices instead of 1. I get the feeling you just want 1 (and I can’t fault you there).
EDIT: Just to give you an idea of where I’m coming from, this was a Studio Only vision I cooked up to record all the parts of a song completely live and quickly. This is using 3 loopers and various triggers. Sometimes the loopers support Quantize (like Aeros), and I use that everywhere I can. Sometimes I have to press things on the beat. This was before CLOCKstep, but I was using a really basic Master Clock pedal made by someone else (that was discontinued). Even still, just having that basic dedicated Master Clock pedal made it possible to do it the way I wanted to. I couldn’t have done it if any one of the other devices was acting as the master clock themselves. If I had had CS by this point, I would have been able to do a couple things differently, especially when it came to the odd time signature part at the beginning:
The goal is have the click play in my in-ear monitors that keeps playing even when the BB stops so that the band (me) keeps in time during drum breaks.
