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

This is very easy to use. It really helps me stay on beat and it makes playing the guitar by myself. Much more enjoyable. Highly recommended.

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.

By far the best investment for Rhythm, great for practice, Amazing for recording Ideas, great for song Writing i love the fact that I can Create my own beats in it. the only drawback is No battery power.

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!!