Tempo increment/decrement via MIDI

BeatBuddy Help, Questions and Bugs
1

Hello everyone, I’ve been trying to control my BeatBuddy using a Nektar Pacer MIDI foot controller. One feature I’m aiming for is to increment or decrement the tempo on the fly while playing.

Currently, I’m sending the following NRPN sequence on MIDI channel 1:
CC 99 with value 0 (MSB)
CC 98 with value 32 (LSB)
CC 97 with value 2 (tempo decrement by 2 bpm)

However, the BeatBuddy doesn’t seem to respond to this message sequence. I have confirmed that MIDI Control is enabled and the MIDI channel is set to “All.” I’m pretty sure the BeatBuddy supports these messages since I’ve seen videos where tempo increment/decrement works in real time with other MIDI controllers.

The sequence is sent twice—once on pedal press and again on pedal release. For the pedal release, I’ve tried sending value 0 (assuming that this would be ignored) and also sending the same value (which would effectively decrement the tempo twice by 2 bpm). Neither approach produced any effect.

Does anyone here use the Nektar Pacer with the BeatBuddy? Can you share your experience or any tips? I’d really appreciate any insight on where I might be going wrong.

Thanks in advance!

2

Hey there,

The CC97 and 98 NRPN are not required to make this work, the BeatBuddy is automatically set to incr/decr via CC:106 and CC:107 tempo MSN/LSB, but you may want to set them to CC:106 and CC:107 after having set it to CC:0 and CC:32

From BB manual:
Steps to Increment Tempo

Steps Message Details
1* CC:99 / 106 Set the NRPN MSB register to Tempo MSB
2* CC:98 / 107 Set the NRPN LSB register to tempo LSB
3 CC:96 / 1 Increment the tempo by one

Steps with a * are optional if the only value control by Inc/Dec is the Tempo. By default, the BeatBuddy will increment / decrement the tempo when receiving a INC/DEC message.

After doing this you can also use CC:97 to decrement by one (or by whatever value used in CC:97)

Hope this makes sense,

Thanks for the question!

3

Thanks for the reply. So I don’t need to send any NRPN pair in preparation, in order to “inform” the BB that I’ll be changing the tempo? Just sending CC:96 = 1 to increment by one, and CC:97 = 1 to decrement by one (I suppose any other value is possible as well). I will try that. Thanks!

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