I originally bought a BB as essentially a recording device to give myself a live drum feel and sound without having to go through the hassle of hiring a drummer, putting mics on all the drums, getting a good mix and sound, etc. I honestly didn’t know what to expect or how it would work and admittedly there was a learning curve and a few slight challenges this first go round (not at all related to the pedal…all operator error I can assure you). I have two songs done and the second one was so much quicker and easier. I’ll have that one up soon too, but in the mean time, my wife and I (an accomplished bass player) decided that not only was this a pretty amazing recording device, but that it would work well for one of our many live music projects (this makes 6 between the two of us) and we now are using it for a duo act…but that’s another story.
Here is the first song we did using the BB for recording. I essentially run it into a channel just as I would any instrument after I map the song out as far as bars and transitions, etc. (but I needed to do that anyway). This song had some slight issues that my pro tools wiz son fixed in the mix (again…operator error), but the drums sound super punchy and live (My son did “pro tools” that track in particular, but the original, raw track sound fairly good too.
I used the stock “rock” kit that comes loaded on the BB. In this song I also used all standard files from the 6/8 blues section too. Recording with Ableton, mixed with Pro Tools. Guitar sounds use a Joyo British Sound as a sansamp interface with a Line 6 Leslie simulator and an Analogman King of Tone for the lead. Taylor 410 and a massively rebuilt Gibson Marauder w/ Duncan 59s and a Lakland 5 string bass.
I was just reading through comments on the forum and didn’t see anyone using a BB exactly like this. It’s pretty cool actually. I did start doing my own midi beat wav files for most other songs. I tend to have a sound and groove in my head and it just seems easier and quicker to edit my own rather than doing a search and test to find something that sort of kind of comes close.
I just want to make sure I understand what you’re doing. I take it you have a midi drum track going into the BB, and then you are recording the audio coming out of the BB as your “drummer.” Is that right? I only ask because I can’t imagine how the BB itself would be used as a recorder. But, clearly, it could be used in making high quality recordings. No less an authority than Mr. Bill Rupert addressed that issue some time back. But, if I am missing something here, please fill me in, because I always want to know if there are more tricks to learn.
Yup. I basically set everything up like I would be using it to play a gig and connect it to one of the channels of my interface with a standard quarter inch guitar cord then send that into an audio track in my DAW (in this case Ableton Live). I set my volumes like I would anything else and test for sound. I may change kits, etc. at this point, but I do record dry. Once I like what I hear, I just arm the track and record like I would anything else. My son takes my wav files later and plugs em into Pro Tools and does his magic, but I basically want a good quality dry audio track. I have another song he’s working on right now that I’ll upload to Soundcloud hopefully this week. My first one is up there now. The link should be below in my signature.
