The Story of my BeatBuddy

My buddy showed up last week. He sat on the couch plugged into a portable speaker for a few days. Longer than I really wanted.

I toyed with him. But I just could not seem to figure him out. He was confusing. I got worried that we might not work well together as a band. The more worried I got the more I hesitated and the longer I procrastinated. And read posts in this forum.

Then I finally introduced him to my guitar and turned him onto my high power PA. He sort of liked that and I could hear him much more clearly. Actually he sounded about 10x better.

And then I played 2 waltzes and 3 normal songs. At that point I realized that he and I understand each other Very Very well. We were just shy before. I think we are going to be drinking buddies soon. Well I drink…. he just has a little 9V juice.

Anyway::: all joking aside… I’m loving this pedal. I was sort of overwhelmed… and worried because I’m a solo player and just didn’t really know how to get started. I was worried it would be like my experience with a metronome. But when I just jumped in things seemed to dial in immediately and I was jamming and having fun within the first few songs.

During this first session I even learned something about playing chord transitions in the middle of a measure. (I.e… working the transition in and playing it WITH the drumming pattern and not playing it like a robot or like it was some kind of a “chore”. If that makes sense to anybody. It sounds much more musical now.)

So I learned something useful with my first session with this beast. Then I tried to do it again without the drums… and it just didn’t feel “natural”. So I’m totally sold… I need my buddy. Maybe this still the newness. But I don’t think so.

Drinking buddies for life.

4 Likes

Great to hear. I have had mine for over 2 years now and I will buy another one if Buddy passes away. And I can bet you have a lot more to learn and find out about Buddy’s abilities. This site is great for learning these things. A lot of good people here willing to share their knowledge. Oh… Buddy has a “sobriety setting” (no joke), so he can drink with you!!

1 Like

Yep. I’m a BB lifer now. I got mine in September and have worked drums up into 33 tunes. Some of those were existing songs I already played and some of those were new songs that needed drums to really work. I play acoustic guitar and sing in a duo with a piano/bass player who also sings. Between the beat buddy, some guitar FX and my boomerang Looper we can now do full band type songs. We recently added Roadhouse Blues and Simple Man and it sounds like a full band is up on stage.

3 Likes

Thanks. I’m sure I have LOT more to learn about this device and playing music.

When I play the guitar it is an ESCAPE from computers. SO I almost didn’t buy this. BUT I think I can make an exception for this. A physical device which is mostly “just press the button” most of the time seems okay to me. (Sure you can spend as much time as you want loading or even creating tracks. BUT you don’t HAVE to.)

For now I think I’ll just experience for awhile. I’ll consider creating my own tracks later.

2 Likes

Wow, that’s cool. I remember my first time using Beat Buddy, it was so awful…

What made it awful for you?

Did You feel overloaded… or you just didn’t know how to play along with a track?
Or something else?

I haven’t yet tried playing with a formal song pattern yet.

Up until now I just pick random patterns with the correct timing and adjust the tempo as needed.

I was originally very worried about “how do you know which pattern to use”. But now I realize you just use a few of them… and your ears will choose and you’ll just find a favorite. Basically I used too much energy thinking about it…. The answer is “just play music”.

I’ve messed with the drum sets with added bass and songs with the bass added… but I have not been impressed enough yet to want to use any of them yet.

2 posts were split to a new topic: BeatBuddy (BB) no longer reads my SD card

Well, it was awful, because I just didn’t know how to use it properly. So after that I switched back to my midi controller to make some beats to play with, it was a way easier for me that time. But now, after hours of tutorials I can understand how BB works. But still there’s a lot to learn.

Yes I agree there is a lot to learn… more if you 100% dig in and create songs and such.

Not as much to find a generic beat to play with. But they need a better search/preview mechanism. For example: “show me only 3/4 songs”.