A new type of rhythm machine/beat box has arrived from Singular Sound. The special thing about it is that it comes in the form of a guitar pedal, so it looks like they had controlling the unit by your feet in mind when they designed it.

Unprecedented Compact Size

The standout feature of the BeatBuddy is its compact size. It could even be said that the unit was specially designed with the guitarist in mind.

Up until now, even compact rhythm machines have been little boxes, sometimes thin, with pads and buttons—your standard "rhythm machine." The BeatBuddy resets all that, cutting in line with a new compact foot pedal format, which is probably the first of its kind.

Plentiful Features, No Sacrifice to Operability

A necessary operation and general feature of rhythm machines is the ability to start and stop rhythms, do fill-ins, change patterns, and the like. The fact that all of this can be controlled right at your feet, which is an absolute must for live performance, may be the biggest merit of operability of the device.

For starters, you select a rhythm genre, song or pattern that suits your needs, and the unit plays an intro, then a regular pattern.

When you need a fill-in, you just step on a switch and a fill-in is triggered, but depending on the timing of when you step on the switch, the length and pattern of the fill-in is automatically handled by the BeatBuddy. This frees the user from having to think about the timing of fill-ins!

The timing and pattern info is displayed on the unit's LCD screen, so it's quite easy to see what's going on. The metronome and length lines are even shown, so it's super easy to understand, as well as very well-thought out.

If you keep your foot on the switch during playback, you can get variations of the pattern being played back. If you double tap it, the unit will switch to ending mode. Of course all operations are done in perfect sync at a bar level.

We think this is just the thing for solo performance, or for drummer-less duos—a performance-oriented, pedal type new effector/accessory, if you will.

Songs can be paused during playback, and the next song can be called up as well. If you wish to expand the unit, there is a separately available Footswitch+ as well as a bundled set that comes with it all.

Real Drum Sounds

The rhythms included with the BeatBuddy cover 21 genres and offer a total of 200 different preset songs internally. The preset rhythms are all built around real sounds, not simply something that uses PCM sampled parts programmed into a rhythm. REAL DRUMMERS were recorded at 24-bit quality for an undeniably realistic sound.

The time stretch function works very well to change the tempo of the recordings to whatever tempo you need to use, so there's no worrying about whether a certain pattern can be played back at your tempo or not. Just choose a pattern, set the tempo, and away you go. It's almost like having a real drummer right there with you.

If you use the specialized editing software, you can set up song files, edit fill-ins, change patterns, and so on. Additionally, there is an online library of expansion songs available to download and/or purchase, which can be added to the unit as you like.

Demo & Review Video

For our Demo & Review Video, we use a MIDI Maestro alongside the BeatBuddy, to show how they can be used in conjunction in a variety of ways.

Sales Info (Japan only)

by musictrack