Band in a Box to help with writing?

[Notes_Norton]

On 2/23/2023 at 11:18 AM, Sal Sorice said:

Thanks Notes_Norton! I'll likely get the Audiophile Edition so I have both MIDI and Real options. BiaB looks very powerful, but the interface seems complicated and cluttered, but, as an IT Professional I'm sure I can muddle through. Any tutorials, etc that you or anyone else can point me to would be much appreciated!

BiaB started out small, just an auto-accompaniment app with 3 instruments (Piano, Bass, and Drums). It has grown from year to year adding feature after feature, which results in a complicated interface. But for the basic type in the chords, pick a style, and click the Play icon, it's still pretty simple.

Once you get that down, the rest can be learned function by function, and you can use the ones you like and ignore the ones you don't.

I'm sure you will get it, and if you have any questions that I can help with, I'd be happy to assist.

 

Notes ♫

[Byron Dickens]

5 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

did you let the developer know?

There has been much discussion

[craigb]

Let's just say that BiaB is much better that BDaTaMR! ?

(I.e., "Band drunk and trashing a motel room!" ? )

[Sal Sorice]

Just an FYI... Got what I thought was a very good price on Audiophile OmniPAK edition. PG Music site has it for $869. Got it at egenisis.com (legitimate reseller) for $692 (Their price of $769 - 10% coupon for giving them an email address as first time buyer).

[lawajava]

I think if you use Band in a Box with its suggested styles it can easily get you very far and very fast in creating a song.

I use it, but of the suggested tracks and audio that results when I put a part together I may only use one or two tracks from the whole collection of tracks brought up by Band in a Box.  I can easily add my own playing or other tools to assemble fresh sounding other tracks in the DAW.

Edited February 24, 2023 by lawajava

[Russell]

This has been a very informative and useful thread for me . . . I thank you all!

I record my own live vocals, guitars. mandolin and bass and am pretty handy with Addictive Drums but have been looking for a way to incorporate some piano / steel guitar and fiddle tracks. As I don't play any of those and my keyboard / virtual instrument skills are super basic at best, this looks like something I can use.

Am I correct in thinking I can take an existing song of mine and input the chords in BiaB - generate a song then take just the tracks I want and plug them into Cakewalk?

Until my Pedal Steel guy comes back to Arizona and I coax one of my local keyboard playing friends into helping this will at least give me a better representation of what I'm trying to accomplish.

Pricey but look like it might be worth the price of admission . . .

[Bapu]

28 minutes ago, Russell said:

Am I correct in thinking I can take an existing song of mine and input the chords in BiaB - generate a song then take just the tracks I want and plug them into Cakewalk?

Yes.

[Sal Sorice]

3 hours ago, Russell said:

This has been a very informative and useful thread for me . . . I thank you all!

I record my own live vocals, guitars. mandolin and bass and am pretty handy with Addictive Drums but have been looking for a way to incorporate some piano / steel guitar and fiddle tracks. As I don't play any of those and my keyboard / virtual instrument skills are super basic at best, this looks like something I can use.

Am I correct in thinking I can take an existing song of mine and input the chords in BiaB - generate a song then take just the tracks I want and plug them into Cakewalk?

Until my Pedal Steel guy comes back to Arizona and I coax one of my local keyboard playing friends into helping this will at least give me a better representation of what I'm trying to accomplish.

Pricey but look like it might be worth the price of admission . . .

 

2 hours ago, Bapu said:

Yes.

Russell, I'm heading in the same direction. Looking to use BiaB to help get things going (or use it to add to an existing idea), then move the tracks (either WAV or MIDI) into Cakewalk to process/tweak further.

I'm looking forward to getting the Audiophile OmniPAK that I just ordered and learning more about what BiaB can offer/do. Will be posting more as I learn about the program. 

I'm a classically trained pianist and am pretty good at keyboards, but my vocals are mediocre. May have to reach out to community members for help polishing my ideas into an acceptable finished song :^)

[msmcleod]

A couple of FYI's if you're using BiaB to generate specific parts, where you've already got tracks in CbB:

You want to generate a part half way through a song that starts on a tempo change, or contains tempo changes:

BiaB follows the song tempo from start to finish, so it can get confused if you want sections generated out of place and the tempo is different. There are two options:

1. Enter the chords in BiaB for the whole song, and just make everything silent in BiaB until it gets to the part you want; or
2. Either in a new CbB project or in the standalone BiaB app, create a small song that covers just the section you want at the required tempo(s)... then drag the audio into your main CbB project (FWIW this is what I do).  Using a temporary CbB project is definitely the easiest way to go if you have further tempo changes within that section.

Uncommon Time signatures are handled badly

This is probably my biggest gripe - common time signatures such as 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, & 6/8 are fine... but once you get to 5/4 or 7/8 it gets ugly.  It treats two bars of 7/8 as a bar of 4/4 followed by a bar of 3/4.  Sometimes this works fine, but other times not so much - e.g. you actually wanted a 3/4 followed by 4/4 feel.  

There are four options here:
1. Allow BiaB to do it's 4/4, 3/4 thing... it may be fine
2. Use RealBand (which comes with BiaB) - this does support uncommon time signatures, so you can use that, but it's a bit more work. 
3. In BiaB, use a combination of syncopated pushes/holds and time signature changes, but there are limitations to this.... not all RealTracks support pushes & holds.
4. Don't use 7/8 in CbB, but instead use a combination of 3/4 and 4/4 in CbB itself - you may also need to double or half the tempo depending on  how BiaB interprets this.

It's also worth noting that apart from the "About Time" style set (which is MIDI only), none of the RealStyles natively support 7/4 or 7/8 - so you may get odd results. If you're generating guitar solos, you may get better results by generating the whole solo in 4/4 ,and selectively chop out an 8th note from each bar where it's  most appropriate.

[Notes_Norton]

For uncommon time signatures in BiaB, I don't consider each cell in the matrix as a bar of music. The cell can be part of a bar or even two bars of music.

So if you want 5/4 time, make one cell have 3 beats (use F5) and the next one 2 beats. (or 2 followed by 3 depending on the feel of the song).

BiaB has written some 5/4 styles, but since each cell of the matrix is divided in 1 through 4, putting chord changes in any beat, but the first will now work. 4 does not go into 5 evenly.

BiaB is back-compatible to the infant program they wrote in the DOS 5 days. This is commendable, but the older systems can't do what new computers can do. Some creative thinking needs to be used to get around the limitations imposed by the compatibility effort.

I've used a triplet based style for 6/8 songs, making each BiaB cell two bars of 6/8. Or one bar of 12/8.

I've also used an appropriate 3/4 style to make each cell one half of a 6/8 measure.

Sometimes you just need to think outside the box.

Another example, if using MIDI styles, you can change the instrument voice. That jazz guitar in the style might sound better for a particular song as a Rhodes piano—change the patch number. Or a piano might sound better as a clav.

Or you can change styles mid-song and change the instruments of the second style to match those in the first, so the style changes but the 'musicians' do not change instruments.

There are plenty of other tricks I've learned and PG Music has a nice forum with friendly people who are eager to help.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

 

[craigb]

Apparently, when I took bass lessons to try and not play a bass like a guitarist, I can only play in uncommon time signatures...  The non-musical variety. ?

[Sal Sorice]

Thanks all for your insightful (inciteful? :^) comments! Looking forward to getting my Audiophile OminPAK and learning BiaB! My hope is that I can use it to generate ideas / base arrangements and then bring those into Cakewalk and further refine the tracks. No idea what can be done to manipulate RealTracks.  For MIDI tracks, I assume you could swap out instruments, etc. on imported MIDI tracks (to utilize Kontakt, EZ Drummer, EZ Bass, etc.) I've got so much to learn!

[Notes_Norton]

I export MIDI from BiaB, then import to Master Tracks Pro where I do all the editing.

The editing can also be done in Cakewalk, I just find MTPro quicker. Since it's MIDI only, I am not bogged down with the more complicated menu system. Every edit function is 2 clicks away.

The reason why I use MIDI instead of the RealTracks, is because I can edit them.

I can change the inversion of the chords so the melody note is on top if I want, I can swap out drum rolls or get rid of them, I can change instruments, I can add song-specific licks or figures, I can even change drum instruments, say drag the shaker and drop it on the tambourine pitch.

Years ago I posted a challenge on the Band-in-a-Box forum. I did "A Day In The Life" in the Beatles Fake Disk https://www.nortonmusic.com/fake32.html and challenged anyone to make it sound as much like the original song with real tracks. No one even submitted an entry. And I did this all in BiaB without exporting to a DAW. The song is on that page, in BiaB's song format (.sgu) as a free sample.

If you have good synth modules or software synths, you can get the MIDI tracks tone to sound 95-99% as good as the Real Tracks. The MIDI track is thousands of times more editable so in the end, you can make a better sounding track. Of course that is just my opinion.

Now, if I were to submit an original song to a record label, I'd probably use the RealTracks. There is a use for both tools.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

[Shane_B.]

Last try to reply. Lol. Something is messed up on my cell and keeps adding blank lines and crashes the forum since the last update my carrier did. Hence my recent silence. (Your welcome). I bought the uncompressed version of Real Tracks on HDD. Long story short I returned it to Sweetwater because there was a major bug with one specific function that apparently only I ever ran in to that was the main functionI wanted it for. Tech support was non existent but the guys on the forum were very helpful once they understood the problem and were able to repeat it on their end. Even though tech support stopped responding to me I kept looking for an update and low and behold they issued a fix for it in the next version upgrade. Too late though, I already returned it plus I felt wronged that I had to pay for that upgrade. I really liked BiaB. Some day I'll try a demo and see if the bug is truly fixed. If it is I'll buy it again. I remember now. It kept throwing in 7ths in songs with no 7th added but it only did it wit some of the Real Tracks, not all. Of course it was mostly the ones I bought for. Lol It didn't do it with Midi only real tracks. That has supposedly been fixed. I could really use BiaB now because I'm thinking of doing a duo gig with one of my old bandmates. If I knew that was truly fixed I'd probably jump back in soon. But I highly recommend BiaB. It is a little tricky to learn but there are great guys on the forum and lots of help there and here.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Shane_B.

[Grem]

Still showing lots of white space in your post Shane

[craigb]

8 hours ago, Grem said:

Still showing lots of white space in your post Shane

Probably snow? ?

[Notes_Norton]

PG Music likes to issue an update every November for Windows, and mid-year for Mac. I think they want the update to be a good Christmas present for the biggest market, Windows.

PG Music uses a small army of Beta Testers, and they catch most of the bugs before release, but some usually slip by them. But PG will eventually issue update after update as the end users find more of them.

Me? I typically wait until March to get mine. By then the major bugs, if not all of them, have been cleaned up.

Tech help there is typically good, but they do have periods where they are overwhelmed and things fall through the cracks. I don't have inside knowledge about this, but that's what it seems like to one who is on the outside looking in.

The PG Forum is a good help, too. There are a lot of end users who are eager to help with problems.

All in all, I think BiaB is a good tool. It does have some flaws, but most apps do.

I've written "for hire" styles for a couple of other Auto-Accompaniment apps and keyboards. Due to NDAs, I can't disclose which ones. But from the ones I've participated in, BiaB has the best output. The method for making musical patterns includes masks to make certain patterns only appear in musically appropriate places.

Notes ♫

 

[Sal Sorice]

Just an FYI to anyone following this thread. Groove3.com has some excellent tutorials on BiaB. It's a subscription site, but they have so much useful content that I am on there regularly. If anyone knows of other similar sites, please let me know!

[kennywtelejazz]

FWIW , I actually find the videos hosted at  PG Music to be of significant value as a learning resource  

Kenny