Hi all. Just recently found a guy using the beat buddy pedal to play backing drum tracks while he practices strumming…
Anyone have experience with this?
I have the sheeran looper, was wondering if it would be the same/ just as good to find some good drum tracks or backing tracks (or I guess make them myself) put them on 1 channel on the looper and play with those?
looking for fun ways to practice my strumming and get my technique/rhythmg/timing down at the same time. Seems like the beat buddy is a great idea.
This also is an amazing little thing to play with to practice strumming and accenting. Such a good little game.
The problem with a drum pedal and a simple looper is that you’ll never be able to exactly match the drum pedal tempo when you physically punch in and out on the looper. Your drums will move out of sync with your loop over time.
Some loopers have a built in drum machine ( e.g. Nux JTC Drum and Loop Pro, Donner circle looper) with a feature that allows you to sync the drums to the loop.
However, it appears that you might be able to use the beat buddy with your sheeran looper as it has a tempo feature designed to do this. You can definitely do it with the Sheeran X. If you have the Sheeran looper plus you’ll have to check. You connect the beat buddy to the sheeran using a midi cable. Have a look at this video.
Edit: It looks as though you can import loops into the Sheeran loopers using wav files.
I might have not been clear, I don’t want to have drums going and then loop, it was more (I’m still grade 2 beginner) a question on have people used it to help improving rhythm?
My question with the looper was also more, to save money on spending $450 on a new beat buddy pedal, would it be the same if I loaded up a drum track in the looper, purely for the use to practice my rhythm, where I would just play strumming patterns to keep in time with the drum loop on the looper, or the beat buddy…
The cheaper approach to this is simply to play along to recorded music and attempt to keep in time which is how I practice. I use an app called Moises on my iPad/iPhone which does a great job of separating parts of the song, allowing you to turn down the vocals (if you want) to make following the beat easier. It allows you to loop sections and change the speed also.
It is a subscription based app (4.99 per month) but that’s cheaper than buying hardware and you can easily stop the subscription
I know this doesn’t answer your question but I’ve been able to improve my rhythm a lot this way
If you just want to play along to a drum track, then there are loads of good options. Personally I use an app called DrumGenius - I paid a small one time fee to unlock everything, but you can try a few rhythms for free. Or you could use YouTube - there are loads of drum backing tracks there to play along with.
Thank you… yes I need to am starting to work more with playing with songs to get better, I think I let that slip focus on in technical stuff and now it’s time to just have fun with songs I love
I believe you’re right in that it will get me better
Hi I’ve done a few songs with Shane and did get the beat buddy but unfortunately it’s still in the box along with a couple of other pedals.
Keep meaning to explore more through the playground.
Interested to know if anyone has used beat buddy?
Exactly. This is why I don’t use looper as much as I wanted to
I am using drum machine software, not pedal, but I am glad to learn about the existance of drum pedals that can be connected and synched to looper pedals. Thanx
The Beat Buddy is a very capable drum machine, but that is all it does.
If you are looking for something more versatile, I suggest a Boss RC-5 Looper. It has 99 drum tracks built in (including a metronome), is a good looper, and can be MIDI-sync’ed to a Beat Buddy later if you want to loop over drum tracks from a Beat Buddy.
The fancier RC-10R looper is even more capable, with the ability to easily create intros, multi-part songs, and outros with different drum patterns and loops for each. However, it’s bigger and more expensive.
I run EZ Drummer 2 if I want to play to backing drums. Nice DAW plugin but also runs standalone from the desktop, which is more convenient for practice.
The simplest thing would be to not use the sheeran looper at all. What amp do you have? It probably has an Aux in and/or bluetooth connection. Do you have an android or apple phone? If so then just connect the phone to your Amp and then
Play a youtube drum track that you like. There are plenty of them.
or
Play a premade drum loop from an app. I use loopz on my android. There have already been a few other suggestions
or
3.Make your own drum loop with drum software e.g. garagaband or Madman’s suggestion and play those.
So I found a loop and just tested it out, copied it to my sheeran looper and it was super easy. I think something that the beat buddy does which I guess is what it is essentially designed to do, is a quick press or long press on the pedal allows the beat buddy to put in a fill depending on press length/duration
I am happy with my solution that I can throw loops on the looper and play them, then just jam over the top. I want to try and minimize the number of things I need to use at once, which putting it on a phone, and then into the amp is a little more tricky, especially if I use the phone as a timer.
