Cakewalk and Band in a box.

[Gerry 1943]

Have   recently had a nice little jazz ballad taken from Band in a Box and transferred to Cakewalk.

However, I would like to add/change some instruments in Cakewalk.

How do I do this? I have tried inserting Audio, Midi and Soft Synth tracks without success. For example, I inserted an Audio track and copied the Band in the Box guitar track to it.

I   get sound but it is the guitar sound that I copied form Band in a Box. I would like to change it to a keyboard sound. When I inserted the Midi or Audio tracks and copied from Band in a Box, I get no sound at all. 

How could I get to copy and paste a track from Band in a Box to Cakewalk and change the instrument?

I know it can be done because I have done it in the past but do not remember. Maybe changing to Window's 11 has something to do with this ?

Thank you in advance for any support. Greatly appreciate it.

Regards

Gerry

 

[Terry Kelley]

Export the midi from BIAB, then export the wave instruments from BIAB (select file per instrument. ) Next import the wave and midi into Cakewalk tracks.  Make the tempo in Cakewalk match the tempo in BIAB. Watch that the midi and wave clips are aligned. You might need to slide one to match the other.

Now you have some choices. You can apply whatever instruments you want to the midi tracks plus you have the wave stems to mix in if you want. 

You can also go back into BIAB, change the style and extract various new instruments as you like. It’s great for getting away from the canned BIAB styles.

Finally, you can add the BIAB VST into Cakewalk, load the BIAB VST with the SGU file (File at the top left) and see the chords as you play your song in BIAB. It will also play the BIAB audio if you want.

Edited Saturday at 12:19 AM by Terry Kelley

[Sock Monkey]

What might have changed for you is about a year ago Sonar removed the ability to play midi tracks through the MS Wavetable synth. 
They also removed the TTS-1 GM synth. 
But you have both the SynthFont64  and Coyote GM synths included in BiaB but you will have to add their location to Sonar’s  plugin scan path. 
 

Midi in Sonar make no sound anymore unless you add an instrument. 
 

I use BiaB all the time and I just export the midi file from BiaB. I OPEN the file. Don’t import- open it. 
This will duplicate the Band in a Box set up including tempo map. 
Now add the Synth Font or Coyote players and make sure all tracks are output to it. 
For the real tracks you are to export separately and then drag them into the project. 
 

The midi tracks can now easily be upgraded to better VST’s. 

[Gerry 1943]

Terry, thank you very much   for your reply, however, I may be dumb, but I do not understand your procedure.

What I have done is copy and paste the 3 instruments tracks from BIAB into Cakewalk. I ended up with3 audio tracks in Cakewalk, ( bass, drums and guitar ).

Now, within Cakewalk, I have SI instruments and also Toontrack instruments that I would like to substitute from the BIAB instruments....bass and guitar. 

I have tried creating a midi track, audio track and/or soft synth track with a new bass sound. I am able to copy and paste the BIAB track to   these, but I get no sound.

I notice you say to export the midi file from BAIB, is there a difference between " exporting " and " copy & paste " ?  Because what I have done is copy & paste and end up with an audio track.       What could be my problem?

Thank you again

Regards

Gerry

[Gerry 1943]

Thank you, Sock. The fact that I am using the previous free version of Cakewalk, which I have had for years, would that make a difference or would your instructions still be valid.

Thank you in advance for your reply. Regards.

Gerry

[Byron Dickens]

It sounds like your BIAB  project used Real Tracks, which are audio recordings, not MIDI so you are stuck with what you got.

[Gerry 1943]

Thank you Byron.  Do you mean to say that if those tracks were midi, I could do want I intend to do.

If YES,  good I will make sure my future projects are in midi.

In the meantime is there a way of changing/converting these Reak Track into midi.

Again thank you.

Regards.

Gerry

[Terry Kelley]

Yeah, if they are green the midi wont be a direct copy of the Real Tracks. It’s often nonsensical.

Read in the BIAB manual about MIDI instrument assignment and hit up the BIAB forum. You can switch any instruments to MIDI or select a style that doesn’t use Real Tracks.

Edited Saturday at 04:12 PM by Terry Kelley

[Gerry 1943]

Thank you Byron.  Do you mean to say that if those tracks were midi, I could do want I intend to do.

If YES,  good I will make sure my future projects are in midi.

In the meantime is there a way of changing/converting these Reak Track into midi.

Again thank you.

Regards.

Gerry

[Gerry 1943]

Thank you, Terry. Much appreciated. We learn new things every day!

Regards.

Take care and be safe.

Gerry

[mettelus]

13 hours ago, Gerry 1943 said:

I ended up with3 audio tracks in Cakewalk, ( bass, drums and guitar ).

You can try dragging each one of those audio tracks (in Cakewalk) to an empty MIDI track (also in Cakewalk) and see how well each converts. The bass may do well, the drums would be hit-or-miss (and also mapped as general MIDI), but the guitar is most likely a no-go (especially with leads). Where BIAB will help you is it converts RealTracks to proper tempo/key for you, so importing that into Cakewalk may be what you want anyway (if you like the part). Doing guitars with MIDI is often a bit painful, so the BIAB conversion of RealTracks may be the simpler approach.

[Sock Monkey]

4 hours ago, Gerry 1943 said:

In the meantime is there a way of changing/converting these Reak Track into midi.

Again thank you.

Regards.

Gerry

Yes and no. 
Im not sure if you understood my first post. 
In a BiaB project you will often have a combination of midi and real tracks. 
This depends on the style you choose. Example the country styles often have pedal steel guitar which is audio. 
 

So I enter the chords etc and the song sounds similar to the original version. 
 

I export as midi. This is important because it maintains all the GM midi information about the song. 
Then I think you can export the real tracks as wave files. Sorry it’s been a while but for sure I had the audio tracks to use. 
 

And yes Cakewalk and Sonar are identical in this situation. 
 

Now Open Cakewalk and using the file menu open the midi file. 

You will see the whole project with the correct tempo including tempo changes.

The chords will show as markers and the tracks will be named as well as the correct GM channels and patches are assigned. 

You can now drag and drop the audio tracks to the blank space below the midi tracks. 

Make sure they are starting at zero. They should play. If you don’t hear them you have an audio problem. Another topic. 

There is no sound from the midi tracks because there are no instruments. 

You now have the choice to use a GM player or better yet use VST instruments. 

For GM insert the Coyote or synth font64 and output the midi tracks to it. 

To use better instruments , as example the SI Drums, insert the SI drums and drag the midi drum track to it while holding shift. 

Note that one flaw in Cakewalk is when you open a midi file it doesn’t create a Master bus. 
So you might want to add that and make it the default and point all instruments to it. Otherwise the sound goes directly to your audio interface or computer speakers. 
 

Audio to midi is a complicated process and I find it works best with simple material like bass. it won’t work with things like guitars due to the pitch bends don’t transfer to midi very well. So you are better off just using the real tracks as is. I actually use Melodyne to clean them up. 

Overall transferring a BitB project to Cakewalk is worth the effort and you can make a huge improvement to the song. 
 

Edited Saturday at 08:44 PM by Sock Monkey

[Sal Sorice]

Following this thread with great interest! I splurged on the 2025 BiaB Audiophile OmniPak (i.e., EVERYTHING they offer). Admittedly, I'm a relative newbie with BiaB, but it seems to be a great tool and it looks like they really improved the DAW integration. I look forward to learning a lot about BiaB.

Keep this thread going!

[Sock Monkey]

Yes for people who don’t know how to play a keyboard this gives them access to midi parts that are easily edited as well as re arrange and experiment with different synth sounds.
Great composition tool for starting an original song.  
It has come a long way and has a huge user base. The forum is very helpful and active. 

There’s 2 other free programs that can also generate midi accompaniment. jJazz and Chord pulse.  JJazz is full featured but oriented towards jazz music. Chord pulse is simple and has very limited styles. 

 

[Misha]

Gary,

I have just talked about this in BIAB forum. Many, if not most Real Tracks in Band in a box have MIDI notations. There is a fairly uncomplicated way to extract that midi and import it to Cakewalk.  I will give you steps how I would do it, but it's more of a BIAB discussion, ideally move conversation there. You will get answers from people that use it daily and know the thing inside out.

Keep in mind that process is destructive, so save a copy of the project.

1) In BIAB when you have your Real Track ready to export right click on it in mixer.

2) Select  Track actions >Erase track

3) First question will be if you want to erase Real track > Yes

4) Second question: do you want to erase midi data > hit Cancel. Track should be converted to midi. Before you do anything else go to step #5.

5) click freeze button on the mixer.

You can try  dragging file (track) directly to Cakewalk or save project midi and then import it to Cakewalk.

Your best guy for Midi on PGM forum is Mario, (former Cakewalk user) he knows quite a bit about Midi side of BIAB.

 

 

[Terry Kelley]

Is don’t think all Real Tracks have a corresponding midi track. When I have  switched, the midi was different or nonsensical. But often it does work. BIAB is a good composing tool.

[Misha]

"But often it does work" 

That's the spirit!

Content wise BIAB is amazing, if you are into bread & butter genres, but to get the most of it you have to dig in.  What most people don't realize, it can do partial regeneration of RTs on the fly.  That is the true power of BIAB as it uses material from same recorded session to offer variants for segments that might not fit well from initial generation.

[Terry Kelley]

Well thank you for the encouragement! I’m going to go hit F4 multiple times for my own satisfaction!

 

[Sock Monkey]

Yes for me any of the real tracks never converted into midi successfully at all. It’s like playing a guitar part on a keyboard. It will sound like a piano not a guitar.  
 

 

[Glenn Stanton]

i use BIAB real tracks to generate solos - i'll create a project with the chord changes for the solo section(s) and an approximate style (or sometimes a wholly different one) and rerun the solo generate over and over until i get a performance i like (much like a session where it's being created by the player on the fly) then solo the solo track and export it. guitars and sax seem to work pretty well, many others are not so great. i don't use the MIDI because it never sounds authenticate, and converting it to MIDI is very seldom something i would do either.

Edited yesterday at 04:30 PM by Glenn Stanton