Hey everyone! Just got my Beat Buddy a few days ago. Wanting to use this in a live 2-person gig environment. Before actually getting my hands on one of these units, my thinking was that I would set up different parts for each section of a song (verse 1, chorus, verse 2, bridge, etc.). In a live environment, I would want things to be as simple as possible from a triggering standpoint. I have the external 2-pedal switch. I was expecting that I could:
single tap one footswitch to start and stop/pause a song
single tap the same another footswitch to transition between the parts of a song
However, after spending some time with unit and reading the manual, it seems that the only way to transition from one part to another is to do a long-tap (i.e. tap, hold, release). If I just single tap, it will do a fill, but will not transition to the next part. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but in a live performance environment, I don’t want to have to worry about short tapping and long tapping…I just want to tap. LOL
Is there really no way to accomplish what I’m after here? That is, is there no way to transition parts with just a normal (short) tap?
Again, I have the external footswitch…so with 3 footswitches there’s GOT to be a way to do this, right!?!
My bet would be yea, get a MIDI pedal and program it to do transitions. The BeatBuddy works great with MIDI and you can do ,many, many things, in fact, from what we can gather here, BB is working on a type of MIDI pedal with 6 switches.
I get what you mean holding pedal down to transition can take a little getting used to.You can’t set external footswitch to click once to transition and as far as I know you cant set main switch to tap to transition and hold to do a fill(but dont quote me on that).I dont want to get a midi footswitch as its just another pedal taking up real estate.I think you will get the hang of it though my advice is to keep it simple if your open to doing different arrangements of covers or whater music you do keeping it simple frees you up to concentrate on guitar playing
Honestly you really need to get into midi editing your own songs. You wont look back. You can use it to edit existing beats into a format you like. Make more complicated songs etc.
One format I often do is to create the main loop. I might make it four or 8 bars long and put a fill at the end of it and that way I dont have to worry about fills. Then create a fill that is the full chorus including the lead in fill. That way when the song is going to the chorus hit the beatbuddy button once to trigger the chorus and then it will play the chorus and comed back to the main loop without any more button pushing. Same thing for a bridge. If the bridge is straight after the chorus just create one big fill containing chorus and bridge and all you need is one button press.
I hated using transitions and only rarely do it now. I think La Grange and Cocaine are the only songs I still use transitions on.
There are, but only via a transition at the moment. Then again, if you don’t put a transition into your song in BB Manager maybe it goes straight to next main part?
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and assistance here. I’ve decided that my BB is going back to Musicians Friend as a return. I know that I can use a MIDI editor to design my parts exactly the way I want them…I would definitely do that. But the whole idea that I had with the BB was to use it to switch between these parts WHEN I want to (which might be slightly different from performance to performance). So for example, maybe the crowd is really into the chorus of a song and I feel like repeating it 12 times. Or maybe the vocalist had a frog in her throat and didn’t start verse 1 when she was supposed to. No worries, just vamp on the verse 1 part until she’s ready.
I was hoping the BB would make this a simple process…just tap when I’m ready to switch to the next part - not tap and hold for a short period and then release (i.e. long tap). I’m already trying to do several things at once during a performance and having to worry about a short tap versus a long tap just isn’t cool.
It’s all about being flexible in a live environment - and needing simple solutions from an operator’s standpoint. If I wanted something that was fixed and fully predetermined, there are other solutions that would be better suited for that…but again that’s not what I’m after.
I do believe that using an external MIDI controller is an option to get the single-tap-switch-to-next-part behavior I’m after. Just a shame that with the built-in pedal and 2 external pedals this isn’t already an option. Seems like a no-brainer to me…have the left button start/stop and the right button switch to next part.
Anyway, I may eventually revisit the BB…but for now it’s headed back. Thanks again everyone for your input.
Why don’t you just ask them to add it as a new feature for the next firmware release?
It’s a good idea and wouldn’t be too hard to implement. I’ve put forward heaps of feature requests and David & the rest of the guys at Singular Sound have been awesome.
It comes down to having to practice with the BB just like any other instrument. Any guitar player who uses special effects such as loopers, anything with tap tempo, anything with expression pedals, and anything with memory slots has to practice controlling stuff with their feet. This is a particularly interactive pedal, so it takes more practice, but interactivity is the whole point of the BB.
I do agree that the option to advance to the next part of the song would be amazing. I have a Yamaha keyboard that has the each beat set up in 4 sections (ABCD) with fills in between…so you set your pedal to advance sections and it automatically fills in between. It would be nice if the BB did something similar. The BB and it’s optional switch pedal could do it…if there was just a setting to auto-fill between parts. The main pedal could start/stop the song…and the optional pedal could move you forward and back in the song. Easy peasy. The screen could have a large A,B,C,or D on the screen so you’d know which part you were in. Mix that with the BB Editor and you could have unlimited song sections… Forward and backwards…it’s the way to go.
But not all of us want that, there are lots of us who don’t want to loop and tap dance on pedals other than on/off. I set my helix patches up so that during a gig they are a simple tap, I think snapshots in the helix are one of its best features.
There is a valid use case for the BB as a simple drum machine, I get there are lots of BB users that like it as is. I’m not one of them, I simply don’t have the time or inclination to learn another instrument. As the singer and guitar player, any time I get I want to be practicing guitar and vocal not messing with the BB.
Im happy to create a set list, and load songs from the premium library I bought. But I hate the transitions thay are a pain, as I’ve said on other posts songs like sultans of swing have 27 transitions plus fils and I have tried to just practice using the BB with the record but it just doesn’t work. In the end I give up and put it away!
I’ve been told they are hoping to add a play song feature sometime next year, I can’t wait until they do because I really like the sound and build quality. I like that the form factor is a guitar pedal and it has midi, I’m looking forward to linking it to my helix for patch / song changes.
You are 100% right. When I purchased songs I assumed I’d get songs. I too bought Sultans and it is useless because of all the attention I have to give the BB. Pretty disappointed. There is all that great drum work there but it is effetively useless for a gigging guitarist.
Heigh ho Brian! If you havent given up on the ol BB since this post…
For what it’s worth, I just finished editing a 10 part song (w/ Int and Out, technically 12 pts) down to 6 for sake of ease with Aeros part limit and it’s pretty handy. Yay midi editing!!
Granted your parts have to be the entire length of the verse and pre-chorus for example. This of course robs you of a little versatility but (for looping especially) it does cut down on the track real estate, not to mention…the damn BB-Sitting
