Notes_Norton

There is a lot of wisdom in that quote BayouBill. When you can do it so well that you don't have to think about it anymore, you can turn the so-called left brain off and your subconscious will allow your emotions to be expressed through the music. In a simpler way, an old teacher of mine used to say, "Practice it until you can play it without thinking. The best music comes out when you don't have to think about it." I have friends who tell me to buy karaoke tracks or commercial MIDI sequences for my tracks. They tell me I'm working too hard. Working too hard? Since when is music working? We PLAY music. Sure, practice can take time, and it's often repetitious, but it's still play. Doing my own backing tracks to the best of my ability takes time. It depends on the song. Sometimes part of a day, other times days with edit after edit once I hear them on stage. But when they are done they are absolutely as good as I can make them, and I'm proud of my accomplishment. If I'm lucky, I'll get to sing and/or play sax, wind synth, or guitar over that track thousands of times on stage with a full dance floor or a concert crowd enjoying the music I'm making. On stage playing music with an appreciative audience feeding the energy back to me is the most fun I can have with my clothes on. Insights and incites by Notes

I make my own backing tracks for my duo saving the most fun parts to be played live over the tracks. Downsizing to a duo was a compromise, but a way to keep making a living doing music and nothing but music in the days after people stopped paying bands enough money to live on. I make most of them 100% MIDI because (a) I don't have a pristine recording environment and (b) too much audio sounds like karaoke to me. I don't know if the audience cares about karaoke tracks, but I have enough self-pride to care. I make the majority of them from scratch, playing the parts live with MIDI controllers, starting with the drums first, then the bass, and after that whatever the song needs. I play drums, bass, sax, wind synth, guitar, flute, keyboard synth and vocals so it's something I can do. Doing the entire backing track myself lets me know exactly what is going on in the song, the chords, the substitutions used, and everything I need to play a good improvised solo. Doing the backing tracks myself also allows me to change and/or extend the song I'm covering so I can have a space for a nice solo. I can put it in our best key, and change the tempo too without artifacts. If there is an appropriate style I'll use Band-in-a-Box for the 'mule work' (comp parts that don't require song specific licks or rhythms). I have a page on how to: http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html Another mule work time saver. I can enter the chords in BiaB, and if playing horn, string or other ensemble parts, I can record the high part and let BiaB write the lower harmony parts. BiaB has many different options and follows the rules I learned in the Berklee correspondence course when I was young. I'm a live performer, if I were to do an album I'd still record the parts the same way, drums first, bass next and so on. So would it be a backing track or not? (Who cares?) I've done 'sax for hire' studio work often to a rhythm section already recorded and with a temp vocal track on it. When done the singer overdubs the final track. So is that a backing track to the vocalist? (Another rhetorical question.) I also write aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box so I know what the app can do and cannot do, it's strong points to use and it's weaknesses to avoid. At the start of this post, I said the duo was a compromise, and it is... All the background parts are 'me'. -- there is nobody to surprise me with a part I didn't think of already -- there is interaction on stage only between my partner and myself, but not with the 'band' .. we can react to it, but it doesn't react back to us -- the arrangements are set in stone and although I can make different arrangements of the same song for different situations, once I start it's what it is -- it's a lot more 'not playing music work' on stage -- when those rare but inevitable mistakes are made, the rest of the 'band' won't help you cover them up. But here is what drove me to duo-land: I was in a 5 piece band with the woman who is now my wife (we first met while in different bands and joined first a jazz trio and then this pop band together). We were working steadily and the bass player had to quit. Two months out of work auditioning and braking in a replacement. As a musician I know to keep two months living money in the bank for these circumstances but I don't like having to replenish it. A few months later we lost the drummer. Auditioned a few and hired one who had a small kit, kept a solid beat, played tastefully, and could sing background vocals. She caught on quickly and we got back to work in about a month. First gig, a wedding at a local country club. The crowd was huge so the opened the accordion pleat wall between the lounge and the dining room and set us in the lounge. The drummer said, "God won't forgive me if I play in a bar." I said, "God will have to forgive me for homicide tonight if you don't play in the bar." She then figured if we didn't drink for this one time it would be OK. The next week I bought a keyboard with an on-board sequencer and never looked back. And the bonus was that we were taking home more money. The duo made only about $100 less per night than the 5 piece was making. And we split it with two people who were living together at the time (and eventually married). After the keyboard came an Atari Computer, a Mac, and now I make the tracks on a Windows PC. The technology has grown nicely since I started doing the duo thing in 1985, and we've been working steady every since. In fact, we have to turn down work to take a yearly vacation. The duo works for us, and making my own backing tracks works for us too. Insights and incites by Notes

Export as MIDI type 1 Try setting Continuous Controller 7 (track volume) to zero. Sometimes CC7 is used during the song for transient volume changes instead of CC11 which is supposed to be for that function, so that could be a problem. If so look to see if CC11 is used anywhere, if not, set that to zero at the beginning of the track. I think that would be what I'd try first. If it works and you really need MIDI type 0, go ahead and save as MIDI 0 and the changes should stick. Insights and incites by Notes

Sorry to have strayed off topic, I didn't mean to hijack the thread. I do have some of my Band-in-a-Box customers who tell me they use BiaB with various DAW apps, including Cakewalk to play church music (there - I'm back on topic). I used Master Tracks Pro as a MIDI sequencer since the days when Atari computers had MIDI ports and Macs where using Motorola CPUs. I didn't switch to IBM (now PC) until they got rid of DOS and went to Windows 3.1. I guess I'm showing me age (oops! I mean great wisdom, maturity and experience <wink--grin>) . For Audio I used PG Music's Power Tracks Pro Audio and Audacity because it supplied all my minimal audio needs. I've always liked doing my MIDI work on an app that didn't integrate audio too. With MTPro everything I needed was available with one click of the menu. Without the addition of audio, there are no sub-menus and sub-sub menu choices. Without the extra baggage I could get my MIDI work done much quicker. A lot of my projects are 100% MIDI. If needed I would import the MIDI into Power Tracks Pro Audio and add any audio parts. But I'm basically a live performer who makes his own backing tracks and too much audio makes it sound like karaoke. MTPro has been orphaned since about 2005 and isn't at it's best under Windows 10, so I asked my friends in the Band-in-a-Box for recommendations. Cakewalk came up more than the others. I had tried Cubase when it was still pretty now and didn't like it. About 10 years ago a Cubase LE disk came with a guitar pedal I bought. Still didn't like it. I'm gigging too much to get very far into Cakewalk. The tourist season ends after Easter so I'll be able to put more time into it then. It looks like Cakewalk might be my DAW of choice, and I suspect I'll be asking some questions here and hopefully getting some helpful advice. It seems like a nice forum with a lot of nice people. Insights and incites by Notes

There are many ways to play music badly ;) I grew up hearing church music (Roman Catholic) in small-town Florida and the church choirs were always very amateur, omitting the rests at the end of the phrase to rush the next one, having voices that don't blend, and terrible intonation. But they tried real hard and did their best. A couple of years ago I found myself in Montreal Quebec Canada. I don't go to church anymore but I heard they have a great pipe organ there. They do. A great organist as well. And the choir is magnificent, a real treasure. They are on a par with the likes of the Robert Shaw Choral and other top-notch recording groups. I hope the people of Montreal know what a gem then have in their city. If I stayed another week I would have gone to mass again just to hear them. Insights and incites by Notes

That one was new to me. I agree, it was well done. In a related note, I remember jazz in the Verve and CTI label days where the record companies would pair up two jazz giants (live in the studio) and release albums. Stan Getz with Slide Hampton, or Bill Evans, or Chet Baker, or Kenny Barron, or Astrud Gilberto, or Dave Brubeck, or Gerry Mulligan and so on. Some of the pairings were brilliant and others just didn't work for me. The Stan Getz with Charlie Byrd and the Getz with Louis Bonfa disks are classics. They did this for Stan, Joe Pass, Zoot Sims, Cal Tjader, Ben Webster, and tons of other stars. So I suppose the old/new splicing are just an outgrowth and a twist on that. I've done some recording and I prefer to do it with the band and the vocalist all playing at the same time. Do multiple takes and choose the best one. Add additional parts on for sweetening if needed but I like the core band and lead singer (or solo instrumentalist) to be playing together so they can react to each other in real time. Perhaps I favor that because I've been on stage since I was in high school and I like interacting with others. I've done some session work to a temp vocal track, reacted to the vocalist, and when the final vocal track was laid down she/he sang it differently and my reaction still worked, but not nearly as well. The vocal inflection I complemented or contrasted with was no longer there, the vocalist sang it differently that day. When work calls, I'll do it either way, but I prefer it 'organic'. There is no bad way to play music. But I've heard some great recordings done piece at a time, track at a time, pick the best part out of dozens, that to this day blow me away. Again, more than one right way to do this. And for the backing tracks in my duo, I record the drums, bass, and comp parts myself in multiple passes leaving out the "most fun" parts for Leilani and I to play live on stage. I play the parts live into the DAW one at a time. I'm usually 100% MIDI in the DAW. Since I don't have a pristine studio to work with it works well for me with no studio expense. Plus it's available 24/7, all MIDI with background vocal parts done on synth voices doesn't shout "karaoke", and I can change keys, arrangement, and do other edits, either great or small whenever I want. Plus I'm not the world's best keyboard player by any stretch of the imagination. I practice a part I need to record just enough to get comfortable with the feel and if I hit a clunker I can keep going and fix it with a double-click. I'm still using Master Tracks Pro, but as soon as the winter season work slows down I plan to put some time in with Cakewalk and if it can do the things that I need to abandon MTPro. It has been orphaned since the 1980s, still works, but not as well on Windows 10 as it does on my old XP or Win7 computers. I have friends/competitors who buy karaoke tracks. They say it's a lot less work. But that doesn't work for me. I want to extend the arrangements, leave room for a sax, wind synth, flute, and/or guitar solo, and change the key without any artifacts. It might take me a day or two to work up a new song, but if I'm lucky, I'll get to play it hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Besides, when I do the work myself, I know every chord, every substitution, and thus how to play a better solo over the top. One of my biggest joys in life is to improvise a solo. I have the day off today (working on some re-mixing backing tracks) and I can't wait to go to work tomorrow. Insights and incites by Notes

One of the greats indeed. Thanks for posting.

Since I write aftermarket style 'disks' and fake 'disks' for Band-in-a-Box, I frequent the PG Music/Band-in-a-Box forum daily http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?lang=english Although I play 7 instruments (8 if you count voice) sax is my primary instrument so Ialso go to Sax On The Web a lot https://forum.saxontheweb.net/forum.php Wind Synthesizer is a spin-off from sax so I go here a few times a week http://www.patchmanmusic.com/forum Harmony Central is another stop for me https://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/ Since I bought my Parker guitars, I hardly play my Gibson or Epiphone anymore, but after years of frequenting the Gibson forum, I have a lot of on-line friends there so I still go, mostly to post in the 'lounge' area http://forum.gibson.com/ Parker guitars went out of business and the forum isn't very active, but I still stop by once or twice a week http://forums.parkerguitars.com/index.php?action=login I used to go to a few Facebook pages, but I don't like the way they do business so I quit and deleted my data. If I need help on Carvin, Yamaha, Roland, MOTU, Ketron, or any other gear I own, I'll go to their forums until my problem is solved, but I don't frequent them. That about does it for me. Notes

Actually I think the song was kind of cute. I would never cover that song though, it reminds me too much of political attack ads. Don't tell me what the other does wrong, tell me what you do right, but not in words, in your music. BTW, I didn't care for the Kenny/Satchmo cut at all, but neither did I the Nat/Natalie hit. Those songs were for other people's ears. But I think Natalie Cole was a very good singer for standards, and OK for pop. (my personal opinion). I dislike Pat's riff on Kenny every bit as much as the Kenny songs. Pat Metheny has a right to his opinion, but I think negative opinions are better not broadcasted to the world at large. If a horn player Pat liked, perhaps Michael Brecker cut a spliced tribute with Louis, would he have liked it, or still went into a minor rant? I don't know and since Brecker is in the great gig in the sky now, we'll never get that chance (not that I think it would happen if he was still alive). I think other saxophonists who I think play better than Kenny aren't getting as much popular acclaim, but then my all-time favorite jazz singer, Mark Murphy isn't a household name while dozens of lesser singers are. Perhaps I don't know what it takes. I've never purchased a Kenny G recording, but I can't dis him for making a living playing music. His music is just not my proverbial cup of tea. I played a Kenny G song, "Songbird" when it was a hit, Kenny's head, my improvisations, and my own background arrangement that was not all that close to the original. I've been playing the over 55 market since I was in my late 30s. More freedom, fewer days per week, more money, more variety of genres I get to play, and more appreciation. I don't have to do them 'like the record' but I can if I choose to. I used to know a killer pianist, he could send me into a trance and chose only to play once in a while when a good jazz gig came around. He couldn't support himself on that, so he toiled away 9 to 5 -- 5 days a week for some faceless corporation. Which is the worse sell out? Commercial music or a 9 to 5??? I'm not sure. I've known quite a few good musicians who support themselves with a day-gig so they can play 'art music' one night a week for drinks and tips or a mere pittance. Some of them are wonderful to listen to and I'm glad they made what I consider that sacrifice. Kenny G has very good tone on the soprano, but what he does on his commercial records is not what I like to hear. It's for someone else's ears. I'm more of a Stan Getz, Stanley Turrentine, Houston Person, Lester Young, Zoot Sims kind of guy. I'm not even fond of John Coltrane although I can appreciate his genius - the way he says it just doesn't speak to me. And although I am in a duo doing cover songs, we don't cover many 'like the record' because I play for a mature audience and that's not necessary. I can put a synth trumpet solo in a Beatles song and if I do a good job, they will love it. Some of the songs are direct covers, most are not although they are in the proverbial "ball park", and many are complete reinterpretations. But I get to make a living doing music and nothing but music and I am not a wage slave for some faceless corporate magnate. That works for me, but isn't the right path for everybody. I have a great time on the gig, it's almost like getting paid to goof off and have fun. Sure I read and pace the audience, give them what they want when they want it and sneak in a few for myself as well. I know I work for the house or the entertainment purchaser but I like playing music and love the audience feedback. I hated working the two day gigs I've had in my life. In MIDI I have about 30 different electric guitar sounds, some of which do pretty good emulations of teles, strats, 335s and to a lesser degree les paul, plus a number of others. Plus there are parameters I can tweak in each synth patch to make them sound different from the way they did from the factory. And two people can play that same grand piano and you can tell which one was Leon Russell and which one was Billy Preston. Same for the same synthesizer emulation sounds. Two good but different players on the same controller and synth will sound different. That seems to be the point I was making when responding to yours about synths voices sounding the same. It's also my personal opinion that tone is secondary to expression. I know as musicians we all endlessly chase tone, and that's proper, but that's not what sells to the public. Why else would singers like Dr. John, Stevie Nicks, Bob Dylan, Blossom Dearie, John Lennon and a host of others make zillions of dollars and become idols in their genres? I'm a live player, and get feedback from the audience. It's not a lecture or a monologue, it's a dialog. I feed them and they feed be back in return. So IMO as long as the tone is appropriate for the genre of music and the song you are playing, your expression, your choice of notes, your choice of ornaments, your individual phrasing, your pitch manipulations, and all the other things that turn empty notes into music are what makes the difference. And that's for me. YMMV. As I said before, there is more than one right way to make music.

Thanks.

And you have a very good point. For some this would be the best approach and I do enjoy many instantly recognizable artists. But there is more than one way to make good music. Piano players are recognizable even when playing the same studio piano. Most people can't hear the difference between one Steinway Concert Grand and another, yet when you hear a song "The Wrecking Crew" did the session on, you can usually tell when Leon Russell was on the session. It's not his tone, it's his playing. And even among piano players, there are times when many reach for a Rhodes or a Digital piano, not for what they do like that Steinway, but for their differences. I am a long time sax player, although I play more than a half dozen instruments sax is my 'home' instrument. And on the gig I play wind synth sax too. Why would a sax player with a real one use a synth sax? For the things the synth sax will do that my acoustic sax will not. I play the synth sax for the differences. Now there are also other instruments I emulate on the gig. I do my absolute best to sound like the instrument I'm emulating. For Example: If the song calls for a trumpet solo, I want it to sound as much like a trumpet as my skills and the limitations of my gear allows. In that situation I think it is the right thing to do. And people do remember my duo. We started gigging in 1985 and for the first 3 years I worked very hard at self-promotion and tapered off as work came to me. Since 1990 I haven't done a single sales call. And in order to take a yearly vacation I actually have to block out the time in advance and turn work down. We gigged at a yacht club that we play at perhaps 5 or 6 times per year. People coming in before the downbeat greeted us with big smiles and comments like, "We're glad you are here, you're our favorite band." and so on (I'm sure other bands are other people's favorites but dozens came up to us and remembered us). Now if I was a solo artist trying to make records, I'd probably have a different approach. The approach you mentioned. As a sax player I'm glad Stan Getz sounds like Getz, Stanley Turrentine sounds like Turrentine, Richie Cole sounds like Cole, and so on. And if I were a session musician I'd try to be a musical chameleon and be unrecognizable by my tone and approach each song the way the people running the session thought fit. And I'm glad session sax player Plas Johnson has many different voices on his sax. In my duo, we are musical chameleons. When we play a rock song you would think we are a rock band, when we play reggae we sound like a reggae band, when we do country we sound like a Nashville band, when we do standards we sound like a swing jazz band, when we do funk we sound like a funk band, and so on. We do all this to the best of ability. This keeps us working. For over 30 years we work more than any other duo around, and we get more money than others too. I haven't done a sales call in decades because we thrive on repeat business and word of mouth. Pat Metheny is a great player, and I like listening to him play. However at time I think he is too negative and critical of others. I heard him do a big tirade against Kenny G. Now I don't particularly care for Kenny G commercial output, and I've heard Kenny play much better sax when he was with Jeff Lorber's Fusion, but Mr. G found something that his audience loved and made him a lot of money. That's much better than being the poor starving artist. And although I was in a band that almost made it famous once, the majority of my life was spend playing commercial music, so how can I dis Kenny G for playing commercial music? Not everybody is as fortunate as Mr. Methany, to be able to play whatever he wants and have make a good living at it. I had a long talk with Tom Scott many years ago. He said something like this (and I paraphrase) ... There is a sax player somewhere playing in a Holiday Inn in a place like Valparaiso Indiana that can put me in his back pocket, but I was in the right place at the right time, I had the right connections, I showed up straight, and I played what was required of me at the time, so I got the gig. In a different set of circumstances, Pat Metheny could have been doing cover songs in a Holiday Inn. But he had the talent, had the connections, was in the right place at the right time, and covered the gig well. I tend to strive to stay into the positive territory (although I do fail at that sometimes) and remember that there is more than one right way to make music. What is right for me might not be right for the next person, but as long as the musician is communicating with an audience, it's obviously one of the right ways. So whether you are playing emulative, original, interpretive, or whatever, if the music speaks to me personally, it's good music. If it doesn't then it is music made for the ears of someone else. Insights and incites by Notes

Hi, I'm new to this forum. When following a thread in many other forums, there is a "First unread post" link that sends me to exact spot I left off on the the thread last time. I don't see one here. Am I missing it? Or is there just not one I'm not complaining, but if there is a link I'd like to know how to find it. Thanks, Notes

And he has a point, but perhaps because he never played MIDI. Also we all have a tendency to look at other performers through musician's eyes, and forget about how our audience looks at us. As a sax player who doesn't play trumpet, trombone, harmonica, concertina, clarinet, flugelhorn, and a dozen other instruments, I enjoy playing different sounds on the wind synth and it gives our duo tonal colors and variety that they wouldn't get if I only played sax and guitar on stage. Speaking of guitar, it's my 7th instrument (8th if you count vocals) and I can still do some thing solo-wise on the wind synth that I'm not able to do on the guitar yet. Also, there is an art to emulating other instruments with MIDI. If you play that sax patch like a piano, no matter how good the tone is, you won't convince anyone that it's a sax. You have to recreate the nuances of sax playing, which are partially governed by the advantages and limitations of that instrument. If you play a piano patch like a sax, it won't fool anyone either. Not to say that these are wrong things to do. If you want a piano to have sax-like qualities in your song, go for it. It just might work fantastically. Learning to emulate other instruments with MIDI, including my own primary instrument, the sax, also taught me a lot about coaxing expression out of 'pure synth' patches that don't emulate anything specific. For those of us who make their living playing music live, we must remember we are in show business and we must also remember to see ourselves through they eyes of whatever audience we find in front of us at the moment. If I thought making my guitar do a nice kazoo solo and it would please the audience, I'd do just that. And once you have the audience on your side, they won't mind at all if you occasionally throw in something that is exclusively for yourself, as long as it doesn't stray too far away and/or is at the right moment. Insights and incites by Notes

Until the editing features of audio approach those of MIDI, I'll stick with it. Good sound modules can get 90-95% "real" and I can do so much that I can't do with audio that it makes for a more expressive output. I'm going to quote Craig Anderton from an old Keyboard Magazine article extolling the virtues of MIDI: You can edit every characteristic of every performance gesture: dynamics, volume, timing, the length and pitch of every note, pitch-bend, and even which sound is being played. MIDI data can tell a piano sound what to play, or if you change your mind, a Clavinet patch. With digital audio, changing the instrument that plays a given part requires re-recording the track….but MIDI can do much more… Craig, if you're listening, thanks for putting the way I feel into words. I just sequenced an old song for my duo. I have about 30 different MIDI guitars in my synth modules, the one with the Telecaster Rear Pickup patch did the trick. It's a GM patch with a LSB bank change option. I also sequenced the backing vocals. I used Syn Vox for some and "Hamming" for others, so I get the backing vocal parts without human voices making what we do sound like karaoke. It took a lot of different patches to come up with that combo. And these are just the simplest of edits. Insights and incites by Notes

Just for a little smile.

Thanks. Some day I'd love to visit your beautiful country. Notes

Admit nothing. Stand on the 5th. Notes

Another very good sounding synth that I think is no longer in production is the Ketron SD2. Of all the synths I own, if I were to choose one to play a General MIDI sequence, that would be it. The sounds are consistently way above average. For monophonic solo brass, woodwind, string and guitar lines it's hard to beat the physical modeling synthesis of the Yamaha VL line. The VL70m, also discontinued, may not have the best tone, although an aftermarket chip from Patchman Music improves that, but it has the ability to recreate the nuances of the instruments it emulates well. (I have no connection with Patchman other than I'm a customer). I like this one so much that when there was a rumor of it being discontinued, I bought a second one. Insights and incites by Notes

I think BiaB is not for people who don't play instruments if making backing tracks is the desire. BiaB could make a backing track simply by entering the chords, but the interface isn't for non-music people, and is rather awkward even for music folks at first. But that can be learned like any app. However IMHO the output from BiaB is "not ready for prime time". First of all, the tracks are good but quite generic. And they should be. I had a customer ask for a style to make Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" so I made one for him. The problem was, as soon as that signature guitar lick came in, it stated "Don't Be Cruel" and if you tried using it on another song, it still shouted "Don't Be Cruel". So it was a one-song style. I could have sequenced the song from scratch easier than I could have made the style. On the other hand BiaB has some very good things going for it. I've written aftermarket styles for BiaB and as work-for-hire for other auto accompaniment hardware and software apps. BiaB has by far the potential to make a much more musical accompaniment. The 'handles' are there in the StyleMaker so you can have special patterns for exact musical situations. For example: The ii of a ii V7 I progression or the V7 that leads to a I at the beginning of an A or B section. There are more. But like I said, BiaB isn't ready for prime time. Because the styles are generic, if you need song specific licks (like Don't Be Cruel) you have to add them when the song is over. Some of the oldest BiaB styles use quantized drums, and could use some kind of groove filter to bring them to life. BiaB eventually got rid of the drum grid and allowed drums with a resolution of 120bbm, but the early styles have never been converted. As a drummer (it was my first instrument) quantized drums don't work for most forms of pop music. The exceptions would be some Disco, EDM, and so on. I like writing BiaB styles because it gives me a chance to learn new things, use my schooling in theory and arranging, and there is a puzzle/challenge/game to overcome the limitations of BiaB to get it to do more than it was designed for and hide what it cannot do yet. For example, BiaB only allows 4 chords per bar, but I invented a work-around that allows up to 8 chords per bar, I call them EXPANDED styles. They also double the ppq resolution of BiaB. I write styles for BiaB more than I use it, but I do use it from time to time. For my own duo's backing tracks, I use BiaB for what I call the 'mule work'. That is if there is an appropriate style. Mule work? Say I've entered the drums, bass, and signature licks in a song in real time and those background comp parts like piano comp or rhythm guitar are close to a BiaB style --- I just put the chords in BiaB, extract the comp parts and put them into my sequence (I'm still all MIDI at this point). For fewer songs, especially if there is an appropriate style, I can even use BiaB for the drums and bass. Latin Salsa, Rhumba, and Merengue come to mind immediately. Some rock, jazz and blues too. Even then, I'll touch things up in a DAW/Sequencer before recording it. But for some songs I just need to get to the sequencer/DAW and play the parts in one at a time, starting with the drums and bass and adding the comp parts. I had to do that for "Blurred Lines", "Uptown Funk", and James Brown's "I Got You - I Feel Good". I'm thinking about Rascal Flatts' version of "Life Is A Highway" next (we had a couple of requests) and offhand I can't think of an appropriate BiaB style. But I did "Your Mind Is On Vacation" by Mose Allison pretty much 90% BiaB a couple of months ago. Also, BiaB has a harmonizing feature that follows the rules I learned in the Berklee Correspondence course many years ago. I can put the chords into BiaB, play the top note of the horn, string, or whatever line and have BiaB put the lower notes in for me. There are dozens of harmonization schemes to choose from. This can be a real time saver without any sacrifice of quality. It saves me of playing each part separately. BiaB now comes with "Real Tracks" but I hardly ever use them. The Real Tracks are audio styles, which are non-editable for all practical purposes. What PG Music has done is genius, but if I wanted to even simple things change a drum roll, use a ride bell instead of the ride edge, change the LP sounding guitar to one that sounds like a Strat, change an acoustic piano to a Rhodes, or more advanced edits like take out a generic pattern and insert a song specific lick, or change where the accents are, even exporting into Melodyne won't do most of what I want to do. But then I like PLAYing music and PLAYing with my tools. If I wanted to just play someone else's music, I'd pop in a CD, a flash drive or stream. I want the music to have my touch in it. They don't call it PLAYing music for nothing. It's not for everybody, but if you like playing with your music, BiaB can be a good tool for many of us. Insights and incites by Notes PS, about musicians who don't commit. I've played in up to 7 piece rock bands, and even was the warm up band for headliner concerts many years ago. But there were always problems with the musician who got too high on the job, didn't show up on time, spent a too long break chasing some sex relations, and so on. Before the duo I was in a 5 piece, the bass player quit and we replaced him, the drummer quit and we replaced her and I was out of work for a total of 3 months while we worked in the new members. Then I realized that I had to depend on us if I wanted to work steadily, so Leilani and I left the 5 piece band in 1985, started the duo, and we haven't been out of work since. We don't play in as glamorous rooms as we did, but we take home more money per gig (the price people pay doesn't go up that much with each additional member). Anyway, if I want live band kicks, I go to a jam session - that is as long as I know the house band is making decent money to host it.

I use a DAW for two things: I'm in a duo. I make my own backing tracks mostly from scratch but sometimes I use Band-in-a-Box for some of the backing comp tracks. Since I play drums, bass, sax, wind synth, guitar, flute, and keys I can make the tracks in our key, and our arrangement. I make aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box. I sequence MIDI parts in the DAW and then import snippits into the StyleMaker app for Band-in-a-Box I'm mostly MIDI because MIDI is hundreds of times more editable than audio. But there is more than one right way to make music, and currently this is the right way for me. That could change as technology evolves. Insights and incites by Notes

I play in a duo and we do a lot of 50s to 90s music. We play for an adult crowd. We also do some newer tunes that the over 50 folks like and we have a lot of Big Band Standards that we used to do when we first started cultivating this market. Most of the Big Band Jazz people are gone now and the oldest ones are the Elvis generation. We've played this same market since about 1990 when we got off the cruise ships, found it more profitable than working clubs with fewer days per week. The downside of course is moving gear every gig, but they tell us weight bearing exercise is good for us ;) Now with the night club business getting worse and worse, I'm glad we made that move when we did, as we are well established in that market and still working steadily. Insights and incites by Notes

There are some good sounds on those old sound modules. I played with the TX81z, MT32 and Korg DDD5 drums for a while. When General MIDI came out, I added a SC-55 Sound Canvas (which I still have). I like the Ketron SD2 and the Edirol SD90 for more modern emulative sounds, the XV5050 does some nice non-emulative synthy sounds but none of my newer sound modules have those few gems that I still use from the TX and MT modules. I finally retired my Korg DS8. It has some nice FM sounds but being a full keyboard, it just took up more room than it was worth. If I ever need it, it's in its case. I think it's nice to be able to add sound modules and not lose any of the old sounds. At home I use a UPS and on the gig I always use a Line/Power Conditioner. I think this protects both the computers and synth modules on stage. Insights and incites by Notes

Thanks again for all the warm welcomes. It's good to see some old friends and to meet some new friends here. Every new sequence I've done since the invention of Standard MIDI files is to save them both in proprietary format AND MIDI type 1 files. Since MIDI 1 doesn't tell me which sound module I use I put notes on each track name in my own shorthand. That way if I pull up a MIDI 1 file and see acoustic bass it will tell me Acou Bass and have notes like SD (for studio Canvas) V for variation number or MT for my old MT32, TX for my old TX81z. Before standard MIDI files I had 300 files stored in a hardware sequencer that failed. A number had been saved in standard MIDI files because as soon as it was introduced, I saved in both formats, but I still lost a couple of hundred songs. Lesson learned a bit too late, I should have spent some time converting the old. The nice things to me about having hardware sound modules as opposed to software synths is that they never get orphaned with OS upgrades. The MT32 and TX81z have a lot of dated sounds on the, but still have some very good ones that aren't replicated on the ROM based synthesizers. I bought them during the Atari, DOS and Motorola MAC days. How many software synths from decades ago still work? I even have an old Akai S900 hardware sampler and a Peavey SP sample player in the mix. I sampled my own J-Bass, left/right hand snare drum hits (so rolls don't sound like a machine gun), ride cymbals hit at various distances from the bell, etc. I also like the fact that all my hardware sound modules have for all practical purposes no latency (actually I think there is about 5 to 6 msec on each). I can take one voice from my YamahaVL70m, another from my Edirol SD90, another from my Roland XV5050, or whatever on different MIDI channels and they are all in sync. Don't misunderstand this as the only way to do this. There is more than one "best way" to make music and I've changed my own 'best way' quite a few times and figure I'll be changing it again and again as time goes on. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Sensuous Saturnalia/Krazy Kwanzaa/Happy Hanukkah (for next year I guess since it's gone already), and/or whatever you may be celebrating. Me? I'll celebrate anybody's party as long as there are smiles and good will associated with it. I have a gig this evening for a bunch of French Canadians wintering in Florida so let me add Joyeux Noel to the above list. Time to load the gear. "Hi" to my old friends and "Nice to meet you" to my new friends. Notes

I agree. That's probably it as there isn't much more to say.