WHEN I began this column I highlighted that while predominantly about reviewing new original music there would be times when I’d branch out into alternative strands of the arts and creativity and so it this week.
I’m about to commit a cardinal sin in the eyes of most songwriters, guitarists, bass players and percussionists; I’ve had the pleasure of using the most effective and user friendly drum machine I’ve ever encountered.
There, I’ve said it, a drum machine that works. However, in the case of the Beat Buddy calling it a drum machine is actually doing it a huge disservice.
It’s effectively an additional foot-pedal that can sit alongside the others on your pedal board but the significant thing about it is that all of the drums sounds, and there are many, are sampled from live kits with human drummers recording them.
That means what you hear sounds, feels, and effetively is, a live drummer all at the tap of a pedal!
The first thing that becomes apparent when you plug it in is just how easy it is to get to grips with. I’ve tried using drum machines in the past, especially for home recording, and found them to be troublesome and there was no getting away from their ‘takata takata’ mechanical sound. Not the case with the Beat Buddy.
Right from the off it puts a smile on your face because it sounds like drums are meant to.
The people behind this ingenious little pedal are guitar players so it was from that perspective that they worked on developing a unit that, while providing percussive back-beats, wasn’t too mechanical sounding in nature.
The pedal has a pre-loaded SD card covering a multitude of styles and when you begin a track the pedal does different things depending on how much you tap it; it can bring you into a drum roll, fill, or, if you keep it down for a second or two, transition the beat into a slightly different pattern which is ideal as a lead into a bridge or chorus section of a song.
I tried it out in an array of settings from home jamming to recording.
I use a Boss BR8 to record a lot of demo stuff at home and while it has a built in drum machine it’s really only a metronome with different sounds.
Using the Beat Buddy allows you to lay down very lifelike drum tracks and if you use digital software like Logic Pro or Cubase it’s very easy to layer up drum tracks that really do pass the authenticity test.
Having stereo ins and outs means you can really get a full sound from the pedal when using it through a PA and the midi-sinc option gives you even more flexibility in terms of what you can do with it.
The really exciting thing about this pedal is the fact that through software called Beat Buddy Manager you can import Wav files for your drums but also, and this is the real trick, you can import standard Midi files that you created yourself.
In essence that means you can go into a studio, lay down your backing tracks and then when it comes to playing live you can import your percussion and drum tracks into your Beat Buddy and perfectly recreate your studio work in a live setting. This really is an ingenious piece of kit.
From a user-friendly perspective the unit is faultless. It has an easy to read screen displaying all the vital information you need to keep a track on what beat you’re using, the time signature you’re in and what type of kit you’ve set it to.
A very clever aspect to the pedal too, is that you don’t have to be exactly precise with when you hit it to introduce a fill because once you’ve pressed it the unit itself will calculate when the fill should comes in based on the tempo and time signature etc.
Lamentably, space prevents me from getting into the real nitty gritty of this wonderful little unit but suffice to say if you’re a songwriter, guitar player, keyboardists or someone who just loves tinkering around at home with recording devices you will not be disappointed with this.
If you want to find out more go to www.mybeatbuddy.com
