Description
BeatBuddy is the first drum machine in a guitar pedal format that enables full hands-free, creative control of the beat. Musicians can effortlessly insert fills, transition from verse to chorus, add accent hits, throw in drum breaks, and more, to create an unprecedented live drummer effect – all in award-winning, ultra-realistic 24-bit sound. The non-quantized beats, recordings of real drummers, makes BeatBuddy the first drum machine to not sound like a machine.
BeatBuddy is packed with features for musicians from all walks of life. A visual display of the beat makes it easy to improve rhythm or play with unfamiliar time signatures. MIDI Sync controls your loopers to make sure they’re in time with the beat. Record directly from the BeatBuddy for professional-level drums on your upcoming album. Create gig lists and scroll through your songs, hands-free, during your next performance.
It’s the power of a drum machine with the simplicity of a pedal.
FUNCTIONS
• MIDI Sync
• Visual Metronome
• No programming necessary
• Live hands-free control of the beat
• Use with guitar, piano, harmonica, or any electric or acoustic instrument
INCLUDED CONTENT
• 24 genres
• 220+ styles
• 10 drum sets
• All time signatures
ADDITIONAL CONTENT
• Add up to 3 million songs
• Add up to 300 drum sets
• Create with the free software
• Download from the Premium Library
• Share on the our Forum
SPECS
• True stereo
• Award-winning realism
• Studio-grade 24-bit sound
• Non-quantized (feels human, not mechanical)
• Beats are recordings of professional drummers
• Use with any sound system, including headphones
From the manufacturer
“We’ve never tested a product that is as innovative as the BeatBuddy.”
-American Blues Scene.
“A dream come true for one-man band singer-songwriters.”
-Music Radar.
“A genius idea.”
Gizmodo.
Not All Great Drummers Are Human
The BeatBuddy is a pedal that gives performers complete control over the beat while playing live.
So while you play your instrument, you also have control over the drums.
We live-sampled professional drummers at full dynamic range to make the beats in the BeatBuddy.
When you hear the drum patterns and start to control them live, it is truly like a human drummer playing along with you.
Play right out of the box:
- 10 drum sets
- 24 genres
- 220+ styles
A Drum Machine Designed For Musicians Not Technicians
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Visual MetronomeThe moving line shows which beat is currently playing in the measure. (A 3/4 beat will have three lines, a 4/4 beat will have four lines, etc.). |
Choose Your Own Drum SetYour thrash beats sound awesome on the metal kit, but you might want to play them with brushes or even on a hand drum. |
Additional ContentDownload up to 3 million songs from the online library. Create your own beats with the free software. Share your songs with the BeatBuddy community. |
Sound Quality
Functions:
– Live hands-free control of the beat.
– No programming necessary.
– Visual Metronome.
– MIDI Sync.
– Use with guitar, piano, harmonica, or any electric or acoustic instrument.
– Award-winning realism.*
-Studio-grade 24-bit sound.
-True stereo.
– Non-quantized (feels human, not mechanical).
– Beats are recordings of professional drummers.
– Use with any sound system, including headphones.
*Guitar World Magazine’s Platinum Award and the Guitar Player Hall of Fame Award, among others, for having incredibly realistic drums, 2015.
Stephen Carter, aka, Carter Stephenson – Author –
Best Drum Sound in the Universe!I LOVE this product! I also bought the extra control switch. Its a must if you’re performing live. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it, because it leaves all other drum machines in the dust!!!. You can also download drums for the complete songs and library for a specific artist. For Example, if I wanted to play a Carlos Santanna song, I could download any one individually, or download the complete Santanna. It’s got all the persussion on it, in addition to the drums, and more importantly, it’s got the FEEL of the artist, just like the record! Led Zep… any artist that’s known! Unbelievable! Easy to operate: justStomp on the Switch to start a rhythm, adjust the speed ( tempo) and the volume, and then just stomp again to add fills, as often as you want, stomp on another button to pause it all, for whatever reason then stomp it again to start back up. The other button on the extra control switch box cones with being able to hit a crash symbol, whenever you want as a default. Buy you can program both it and the other switch to do a wide variety of functions. Stomp on the original box 2 times, it does a quick outro, then stops. Very, very cool. If you want the BEST BEST BEST, drum sounds and variety of beats, rhythms, genres, different sounding sets, or then combine them, (for example, mix Funk beats with acoustic hand drum sounds and you get djembe, conga, bongo, tabla, ashiko, boku, cowbell, finger cymbals, etc., all funked up!!! It’s a beautiful thing!The thing to remember, is that you need to set each setting beforehand, write it down, or enter it on a. Note page online. Otherwise, it will take a while to give the right beat, tempo,volume, type of drumset you want and how to get to it quickly. Do this beforehand, and you can get through one set or four, with no delays!You can also just play around with it, experiment and just see and feel how it works and it will work, easily right out of the package!!!All the controls are intuitive, so if you are a “techno-phobe,” that is, afraid of technology, the Beat Buddy is, once again, THE BEST!!!I am not paid a penny or any amount fir this review. I’ve payed music for 5 decades and I wrote this review, because it’s the BEST OF THE BEST drum machines available, out there. This pedal is an investment. Buy it. Spring for it. And the extra switch pedal. Dont leave it out. You won’t be sorry.
Toby –
You won’t regret it!🤙Kick Ass, straight jammin out of the box!!
Jason DeFrank –
FINALLY! A drum machine done right!!!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.
Mark Urso –
Beats Em All BuddyThis 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 way to look at this device. If you slow or speed up a .wav file, it doesn’t take long for it to sound “wrong,” because you either lose top or bottom end quickly, and all the character can go away. That doesn’t happen here; any speed sounds full, dynamic, loud and correct.This device does not just play files. It allows you to play them at whatever speed you want, with a super intuitive KNOB 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!
Fiona Lewis –
An amazing machine, exceptional support availabe. I am very happy.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!
Eli –
Absolutely rocks! Has reinvigorated my guitar and piano playing.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.
ADad –
You can find a list that matches beatbuddy patterns to some popular songs which is a good starting pointAfter 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!!
Design Dude –
What I love: -Very well builtWhat I love:-Very well built.- Lots of inputs/output options.- Simple to use.- Great sound quality.- Fun for inspiration while playing guitar.- The ability to use your foot to trigger a drum beat rather than having to use a computer.- The ability for the BeatBuddy to get future upgrades because it’s more like a mini computer rather.What I Don’t Like:- The inability to just play full songs without having to trigger all of the transitions, fills, and so on. This seems like a very stupid omission to me. Apparently I’m not alone, as there are dozens of requests in the forums for this very feature.- To me the software gets confusing. I never know if I’m suppose to be saving a project or a song, and I don’t really understand where I’m suppose to be saving anything to. The instructions are meant to be clear, but I still don’t get it.- I wish it was easier to find full drum tracks to songs. I spent hours trying to find midi drum tracks to some of my favorite tunes and was unable to find anything. Not a fault of BeatBuddy, but I find it a huge limitation.- The only way to get this pedal to “midi-synch” is to buy a $400 midi-sync looper (there are only a handful of them on the market). It doesn’t sync with normal loopers like the Ditto looper. The workaround (while not optimal) is to record the drum track along with the guitar. This might not be a fault of the Beat Buddy, but a negative worth mentioning.Summary: fun device, though I wish I could use it to play along to some of my favorite songs. I also wish it was the software was more intuitive. I hope they add the capability to use the pedal as a trigger to play complete songs rather than having to trigger every transition.
Christopher M. Gauthreaux –
Like having a literal portable drummerRemarkably easy to use, highest of sound quality.
fee services –
what they dont tell you- revised 2020 reviewive had ‘drum machines’ before, just fancy metronomes. well, this is not that. it sounds realistic, and its very fun to work with as a solo guitarist. but heres the rub- it has a bank with genres and drum kits. you toggle between the 2 to get the sound you want. the problem is, well, most of the beats sound the same. they sell you 500 beats but really youre getting maybe 80 different beats. I went through all of them today and for instance- the techno- I couldnt tell the difference between the 10 in the list. the same with many others. and all the information is stored on an sd card. the beat buddy is really just a mini computer that reads the information as you press the pedal. the good news- its instant- no lag. thats the selling point of this device. playing live. why 3 stars? well, once you purchase and register on the site, they let you know that all the best beats are available!!! just pay another $200 to get them. I call that a SCAM. Also- were is the ska beats? I like the product- but I sense a bit of greediness on the the part of the stockholders..revised – 2020- the company released an update that included many more beats, some I really find perfect. So I’m changing my review from a 3 to a 4.6. No 5 because I had to spend hours online to get this figured out- sad face emoji