Singular Sound BeatBuddy 10th Anniversary Edition the Only Drum Machine That sounds Human and is Easy To Use

This pedal is truly amazing. I've always had trouble with drum machines and the BeatBuddy is finally a drum machine done right. It is super easy to use, sounds amazing and gives you very powerful hands free control of the beat with very little effort. I'm a singer/songwriter and play acoustic guitar. And when I write songs at home or perform solo in coffee houses, I need a beat to work with. Music without a beat is... weak. So I tried it all -- the Alesis SR16, Boss Dr. Rhythm, etc. but they were so complicated I just gave up after getting really frustrated. And they sounded mediocre if not terrible. But the BeatBuddy is FINALLY a drum machine done RIGHT!!! This is what I like: Super duper easy to use: Seriously my grandma can use this thing. And she has! I've never seen her jam so hard, she was having so much fun I was laughing so hard I cried. You just press the pedal and a fill gets thrown in perfectly in time, no matter where in the measure you press the pedal. Holding down does a transition which ends when you let go -- really intuitive! Beautiful display: When have you seen a full color LCD screen on a stompbox? Never. The visual interface is really genius and is a large part of why the BeatBuddy is so easy to use. It changes color depending on what type beat is playing (red is intro/outro, green is main drum beat, yellow is fill, white transition, black is paused). So just by glancing down, you know what the beat is doing. But the real genius in the interface is the visual metronome. It's a dark bar that moves across the screen in time to the beat. So if the time signature is 4/4 it takes 4 bars to move across the screen, or if it's 5/4 it takes 5 bars, etc. So you know just by looking at the screen when the fill or transition is going to end and you can time yourself to the visual cue -- THIS. IS. HUGE. It made me better at guitar: I have seriously gotten better at my timing within a day of getting the BeatBuddy. My guitar teacher even said he noticed a big difference since I started playing with my BeatBuddy. So now he's getting one too! He's really excited to use it to teach his students. It inspired me to write awesome songs: It's so much easier to write music when you have a beat to work off - it gives you something to play to. And since the BeatBuddy comes with over 200 beats in over 22 different styles, I've started experimenting with playing to different styles of beats which has made me write very original tunes and different to what I usually do. It's making me grow as an artist. It sounds amazing: When I was first jamming with it, one of my musician friends came over and he was like "how did you fit a drum set in your room?!!" he couldn't believe it was a drum machine, it sounded so real. Though word of warning: If you have it plugged into an electric guitar amp it will sound muffled - those amps cut the high frequencies. The best is to plug it into a PA. If you have a digital amp with the 'Aux in' jack, then it's ok. You just plug the BeatBuddy's 3.5mm heaphones jack into the amp's aux in jack. I personally have the BeatBuddy's headphones jack plugged into my home stereo's AUX IN jack and it sounds amazing, especially because it's in stereo! It saved me (a lot) of money: I play lots of small coffee house type gigs. And they don't pay that much. So it really hurts when I have to split the money with a percussionist (have I mentioned that music without a beat is weak?). Now don't get me wrong - I love percussionists and drummers and I think they fully deserve getting paid like the rest of us musicians. But my particular percussionist tended to drink as the night went on and would start getting sloppy. And then he wouldn't show up to some gigs at all without bothering to cancel. Been looking for a replacement, but no luck... until I got my BeatBuddy! Now I have a drummer who keeps perfect time ALWAYS, and I keep all the gig money! I paid for my BeatBuddy within 4 gigs, and now I make double the money! In short, this is best investment I've made in my musical career. Other than learning to play guitar in the first place, of course.

This is a great pedal! I had several drum machines, but never kept one to actually use it. The worst one was the best "looking" one from the fancy French company Arturia. Unless you want to create the worst of the 70s sound on purpose, steer clear of that lovely looking stuff. I've had one of those little Korgs, and a few others, and they all sound canned. The Beat Buddy is fun, and sounds amazing in comparison any others I've played with or heard. Someone else reviewing it mentioned all it does is playback .wav files. That's a very unthorough look at this device. If you slow or speed up a .wav file, it doesn't take long for it to sound "wrong," losing top or bottom end, and all the notes change. That doesn't happen here; speed changes are full, dynamic, loud and correct, at any speed. To be clear, every individual tom hit, every cymbal hit, is IT'S OWN RECORDING; it's own .wav file. The machine plays these individual files back via a MIDI map. You can change the speed at which it travels along. A single cymbal hit sound file can be 30 seconds long, as they record the decay completely. Often, one cymbal (for example) has two or more recordings representing different mic placements or different hit velocities (hit it hard or soft). One cymbal might have three "personalities" recorded. It gets quite dense in complication quickly but it's all maintained by a simple MIDI map which can be brought up in the software if you want, with every hit represented by a rectangle; drag to lengthen, increase velocity; drag to move the hit or place it on a higher or lower note right on the map. This MIDI tech is the heart of the BB, and it works beautifully. This device does not just play files. It allows you to play them at whatever speed you want, with intuitive KNOBS to turn. It adds FILLS, seamlessly and reliably. There's a tiny screen but it doesn't ask you to navigate ridiculously-hard-to-manage menus. And they're not trying to upsell anything more than any other company. To "accuse" them of not giving you the "best" beats before even listening to the AWESOME beats they give you? C'mon. This is a great drum machine, which requires nothing other than power. You do not have to plug a guitar into it; it is not a guitar pedal. Any beat can go any BPM, and volume is KNOB-controlled on the fly as is BPM. If you're a performer thinking of using this for a show, buy it. You'll love it!

I love this thing. I play guitar as a hobby typically by myself or with just a couple of buddies, and consider myself fairly decent. In working on some complex licks, I was having issues with considering the rhythm of songs I was trying to cover. With Beat Buddy, I can finally have unabated jam sessions, which as many fills, crashes, and beat stops as I want! Sound quality: I love hooking it up stereo to my mixer and running it through 2 12" Alto PA speakers and a 112 sub - with this rig you could have a party with just the PA and the Beat Buddy. As mentioned before, this sounds really amazing in full stereo and with a setup that can truly articulate it's bass notes. It also sounds great through a regular speaker via the phones 1/8 jack into a bluetooth speaker or cabinet. However, I don't totally recommend this through a guitar amp. It sounds OK, but guitar amps were never designed for these kind of drum frequencies, and so cymbals and bass kicks are pretty muted and honestly I think could be doing harm to your precious guitar amp. I think if you are not going to run this through a mixer and speakers, the best, most user-friendly accessory to use this with would be any dedicated drum monitor, and if not that then I'd say an acoustic instrument amp or a keyboard amp. Seriously though, this has re-invigorated my passion for guitar and piano, for several reasons. For one, the Beat Buddy user community is very impressive, and is comprised of some very intuitive, creative people who are willing to share their ideas. This makes it so I can envision a song I'd like to learn/ cover, and then usually if I go on the user forum, I can download the beat to the entire song, that someone has created! If the beat wasn't custom-created, then nearly as useful is the suggestion of the BPM, specific beat, and specific drum kit to use for the song in question. I absolutely love browsing the forums for new ideas. All that said - I love it. Also, you really should get the optional footswitch - it opens up some really great possibilities to improvise by adding crashes or 'start/stop' beat pauses - I really enjoy experimenting with the footswitch, and find that its super intuitive and easy to jam right along with the guitar without much thought at all. As the manufacturers state, this is NOT a backing track. This truly is a simulated drummer that responds live, and I think it does an awesome job at it. For anyone stuck in a rut on their guitar learning or piano learning (or drum learning for that matter!), this thing is simply amazing and I can't recommend it enough.

I am a 63 year old english woman and bought this equipment to play drums for me while I play guitar. (Which I have played for 51 years) When I first took it out of the box I couldnt use it. Then after a bit of patience remembering 'when all else fails read the instructions' we became buddies. So I decided to buy some additional songs from the Singular Sound website - The inventor and manufacturer. I got a bit carried away as there are hundreds of songs and it was a good way to spend a cold, lonely Christmas night. The songs landed immediately on my computer - technology today is amazing. But I could not get the songs from my computer onto my Beatbuddy. Eventually I fell out with my new buddy. (My attitude always gets the better of me.) I put him in his box. I read lots of bad reviews that told/supported my story and i planned to send him back to Amazon. I forgot to do that and ended up with something I wasn't using. I went to the Beatbuddy website and saw that they give help and support. I emailed them and this very nice young man from Miami (Jay) called me and accessed my computer in Arizona. I'm sure it was magic! Within about 15 minutes he had it all up and running and sent me 2 manuals to read. My Beatbuddy is now my Bestbuddy, he is so easy to use I can access all the songs easily everything is at the touch of a button, all on the machine. He has a great sound - like a real (good) drummer. The volume switch took care of my neighbors. (When I'm really rockin at midnight my earphones keep my secret safe.) I'm now exploring the midi port, that I can use with Onsong, how to edit and create songs, intros and outros and how to use the foot switch too, which makes everything even more accessible - (all on youtube) Thank you Beatbuddy/Singular Sound you are incredible! And have made on old lady very happy. ROCKON!

After reading through reviews, I felt as a non-drummer I was hoping I could sit down and just start playing. That may be the case but I found there was certainly a learning curve. This comes with 200 songs, but how do you pick one of these songs that match what you are trying to play on your guitar efficiently, and what do you do if you cannot differentiate between 3/4 time and 6/8 time. Many of the songs(beats) are much too complex in my opinion including the intro's. I wanted to build a basic beat with a 4 count intro, a basic beat, and a few fills for starters. You build a song by selecting *.mid files from the software through a button that defines either the intro, pattern, fill, transition, or accent (accent files are *.wav files), however, every song has their own folders and you cannot simply just go down a huge list of *.mid files to pick one, you may see about 3 to 10 files to choose from without much file navigation. searching through all these songs for a specific beat is too time consuming and I needed to build my own *.mid files but did not know how. You can download other user songs which may be a 4 bar beat, or it may be a complete backing track to the entire song! You can find a list that matches beatbuddy patterns to some popular songs which is a good starting point. After contacting beatbuddy with a list of questions I got a response that was timely and very friendly. They pointed me to a free basic program so i could try to create my own beats and save them as *.mid files for use to build songs. I also learned how to copy the parts i liked between songs and save my own. The sound quality of the drums is very good and the concept and use is good after you spend some time learning how to use it. There are many additional drum patterns you can purchase, although I felt that $300 should cover the cost of a huge library to include basic, or essential tracks. It is time consuming to audition all these parts and compare what may be included in a new additional add on packages without getting beats you already have. Overall I like the pedal, quality, and ability to create and store each song I want to play but will just take some time to build this library. With experience it only takes a few minutes to put a song together and save it to your set list. Still learning!!

The first one I got had a ground loop humming noise. I could fiddle with the audio cable all day long and get it to stop, but it was a pain in the butt. Tried like 4 or 5 different cables, 3 different amplifiers aux inputs, same problem. Tried different power plugs, same problem. Today the replacement arrived. Not only was it a much newer/nicer model than the first one I received, it doesn't have the noise problem at all. Thank you, Amazon. This really is an awesome product and either Amazon or the manufacturer will take care of you. Best drummer ever, and is much better than any drum machine I have ever owned in the past because it is truly designed for guitarists. Also makes learning bass a lot more fun. Yeah, I know, it's a digital drummer but the sounds are sampled and they really do sound great. There are purists, of course, but I don't have access to a real drummer so it's perfect for me.

The audio samples are top notch and sound great - even if you're not playing live, it makes playing a lot more fun than with just a metronome to keep time. The website to look up songs and cross reference to the onboard settings works great.

I wrestled with whether or not to keep this for three long nights while it had me pulling my hair out trying to create my own user kits. Out of the box, it's a wonderful product. The kits and sounds are great. It will fit the bill for a great many people who simply want to use it as it is with the stock patterns and kits. But that's where the fun ended for me. I spent about 15 hours watching Youtube tutorials and trying to create my own kits only to have the Beat Buddy ignore most of my efforts. For instance, I browsed my wav files and imported them, clicked on them after importing and they played fine. Saved my progress. loaded my new kit only to find my wav file no longer played. The Beat Buddy won't use files with meta data tags which is a whole other headache. It is also squirrely when you try to name your new kit. I'm not new to synths and music gear. I've worked with them for decades. I've worked in music supply retail. So, I'm not unfamiliar with how these things should work. The hardware is very user-friendly. Unfortunately, the Beat Buddy Manager Software is the worst I've seen for any gear. If I have to spend more hours fiddling with making something work instead of actually creating music, that's a deal breaker for me. On a more positive note, I emailed the company twice and they responded very fast and gave me some recommendations. They recommended that I use Audacity instead of Logic X when creating wav files. But, IMO, if a popular DAW like Logic X doesn't work well with their product, it should be documented in their manual. But, apparently, they would rather have customers struggle for hours than to add one sentence to their manual that would save customers hours of unproductive frustration. I returned the Beat Buddy. That's 15 hours I'll never get back.