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VideoTrack,
"You can also use the Melodist or Soloist to create such fills"
That was the power tip I was hoping for. Thank you!!! Excellent. Glad that helped. You're very welcome.
BIAB & RB2025 Win.(Audiophile), Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors, AKG K271 Studio H'phones
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I kind of addressed this in the other thread.
Essentially, you can add measures to the project and/or shut off the automatic intros and endings function..... and build your own.
This is easy to do in Band in a Box. I use this to get the structure of the song the way I want it from the first note to the last.
If I plan on playing a part myself..... I will have a drum track there to keep me sync'd to the timing. In my DAW, I can always mute that timing track later. I use volume automation in Sonar to open up the areas I need to drop in a solo or a fill, for example.
Do all your preplanning for the song..... structure, style, tempo, key, verse, chorus, bridges, intro's and of course, endings, in BB where it's easiest to make the changes.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Guitarhacker,
Videotrack caught my line of thought. A piece of soloist, together with some holds/stops, change of instruments, solo/mutes or even style should be sufficient to make a nice intro. "Intros" are challenging regardless of program etc. (at least for me) It is first "impression" of the composition. Soloist tracks definitely add more flavor.
The video on custom ending was helpful.
I wish there was similar video on intros, done for actual song, not just a simplified example, to see the workflow and various tips/tricks in single place.
P.S. In hardware arrangers there are usually at least 3 intros available mixed/based on the rest of the song. I know that BIAB does not offer that, but it would be nice if:
You create 1 intro and program would randomize stuff based on data/sound of your intro to give you somewhat different sounding choices to experiment with and tweak later.
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"In hardware arrangers there are usually at least 3 intros available mixed/based on the rest of the song. I know that BIAB does not offer that, but it would be nice if:
You create 1 intro and program would randomize stuff based on data/sound of your intro to give you somewhat different sounding choices to experiment with and tweak later."
Actually BIAB does offer this feature and it provides a lot of flexible and complex choices equal to what most HW Arrangers do. You can create and audition as many Intros as you desire. There is no limit of 3-4 variations. Then, if you are satisfied with any of the fully customizable auto intros, you can manually create one as others have detailed the steps here in the post.
BIAB intros are Style Based but the entire data base of Styles and all the instruments, whether RealTracks, Midi, Supermidi, Loops, Samples and Audio are available for use and completely customizable. The Intro can by one particular Style and the Song a completely different Style and even a User Created Style. All of the Intro instruments can be different than the Song Style instruments if you want them to be.
BIAB generated Intro's can be selected prior to entering the Chords into the Chord Chart, during entering Chords or after the song structure has been completed. Even months after you've completed a song, open an SGU file and instantly you can generate an Intro.
Try Edit\Song Form\Intro Bars
A Window opens with lots of options and variations. Simply audition the options, apply variations and select your favorite. Manually mute/unmute instruments, create fade in's, Fade out's, rests, holds and shots, change Styles to the options and variations of the Auto generated Intro chords and you have nearly unlimited options to create your own custom intro.
Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 09/28/18 03:16 AM.
BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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Charlie, thank you for reply. Jim already explained most of this.
It is going back to our "adding tracks" discussion.
You do not have much instrumental choices in first chosen style. I am talking mostly about drums here and also some accent stuff, licks etc. So they do not get overused throughout the song.
Yes, you can tweak them, but in most cases it is awkward. The only true power feature that resolves this is: "change style at the bar" But I found out the hard way that unpredictable things start to happen when you choose one style specifically for the intro (not your main style) and then switch to your main style.
I hope I am making sense.
More tracks would resolve this easily and also choices of drums from other styles at "Count in" menu.
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If you're familiar with arranger keyboards I totally understand where you're coming from. I have a Korg Pa1xPro the first generation of their Pro series. I would love to have the new Pa4X but it's expensive.
That's the reason I got into Biab in the first place to get similar functionality as an arranger in software that was affordable. Of course the big difference is Biab is not real time and you are not controlling it as the song is playing, everything has to be set up ahead of time then generated.
To your questions I still think Real Band is better suited to what you're trying to do than Biab is but Biab can work too. I just like using a DAW for this because as you mentioned a DAW is linear, you can see everything as tracks.
Just one example, you talked about wanting to revert back to whatever you had set up earlier in a song. RB does that easily and you don't have to render everything to audio to do it either. RB has the Bar's Window where you simply highlight with your mouse entire chunks of your song and move them anywhere you want including both midi and audio.
If you used Style A at Bar 4 for 4 bars then used Style B for 8 bars then Style C for 4 bars and want to go back to Style A you simply highlight the Style A 4 bars section and paste them anywhere you want. Your song could have 12 styles in it and you can cut/paste any of them anywhere. You're not limited to styles either, you can mix and match any one instrument from any style both midi and RT's. Or you found something on the internet that would make a great intro so you can download and import that if you wanted. If it needs some audio editing or triming to make it fit, no problem RB is a very good audio editor.
I'm not going to explain RB in detail here, you can learn about that program by reading and posting questions on the Real Band forum. I've always said that newbies to these programs should spend an equal amount of time on both because only then will you learn what each one can do for you. They're related programs with similar functionality yet completely different.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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"You do not have much instrumental choices in first chosen style. I am talking mostly about drums here and also some accent stuff, licks etc. So they do not get overused throughout the song."
Regardless of the instrument, whether it is Audio, Samples, Loops, Midi, Supermidi or RealTracks or in any combination of these different sound sources, the instrument limitation you're placing on BIAB Intros stem from your lack of knowledge of BIAB programming capabilities and not its functionality. It seems you are (no pun intended here although it's a good one) thinking "in the box" of the way BIAB is marketed rather than how it can be made to work.
BIAB does not have to be programmed to choose a Style of selected instruments, enter chords and generate a sound track. The 8 Mixer Channels can all be used for programming a single track of one instrument at a time. Finish an instrument and move to the next. In your example above, that would be drums. A single render of a BIAB project 4 bar intro could be 32 instances of midi drums. Four bars of your 96 bar song could be a single render of a guitar part comprised of 16 different guitar RealTracks arranged into a single 4 bar stereo render of a riff. Created once and used 50 times in your song. All of this done in addition to the Main Song structure and arrangement. BIAB, simply stated, does not have the limitations you credit to it.
Here's two examples using BIAB with its current 8 Channel Mixer:
An example of a 4 bar intro programmed with only midi: Each Bar of every Channel can accept a patch change. 4 bars X 8 Channels = 32 patch changes which equates into 32 different instruments in your 4 bar Intro.
An example of a 4 bar intro programmed with only RealTracks: RealTracks accept an instrument change every two bars. So, a track of 4 bars in an intro can have two separate RealTrack instruments. 2 instruments per track X 8 channels is 16 different instruments in a four bar intro. In any combination. Each instrument can be different. It can be a combination of a few instruments alternating throughout the song. Very complex arrangements can be quickly done in BIAB in nearly unlimited combinations of length and with the instruments they're comprised of. A subtle benefit here is they can all play simultaneously if you want.
The BIAB Intro can be programmed separately from the remainder of your song's Main Style or Styles. If you have a 4 bar intro that will ever require more than 32 instrument changes, feel free to let us know and i'm sure you'll get the assistance for your project.
It's not an awkward process at all and is very straightforward.
Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 09/28/18 06:48 AM.
BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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Charlie, I understand what you are trying to explain... I do not think you understood what I was aiming at.
Ok, I got my Chorus/Verse/ending figured out. And... I want to work on intro now. So I insert 2-3-4... as many bars as I need at the beginning, but lets say I do not like the drums that are present in A or B for my Intro... I want to use parts of style C and parts of style D for the intro.
Tinkering with style changes at first intro bars, after I assembled most of the backing track, did not work for me on several occasions. Commonly 3 things that happened: a) unpredictable results b) song would just not play (nothing happened on press of play button) c)All chords would turn red. would start playing and then stop.
Basically, funky things start to happen when I start to completely overhaul intro of already established composition using style change from the start of the song.
The easiest way I found was to completely redo intro is to assemble a new project in BIAB just for intro, output it to separate WAV files and do a little collage in DAW of choice
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You can either manually program an intro, verse, chorus,bridge or outro manually and individually as I detailed above or if you prefer, you can program your own custom MultiStyle with up to 24 different part markers and alter Styles in that manner.
From the BIAB manual:
Band-in-a-Box MultiStyles are styles that can have up to 24 Substyles; original Band-in-a-Box styles had two Substyles, "a" and "b." Band-in-a-Box MultiStyles typically have four Substyles, but may have up to twenty-four, selected by using part markers "a" through "x."
You can easily make your own MultiStyles, either from scratch, or combining parts from existing styles to make a MultiStyle. For example, if you have 10 favorite Country styles, you can quickly make a single MultiStyle that has 20 Substyles available within the same song.
BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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Charlie,
thank you, but I believe there is a disconnect here...
I am aware of features of BIAB.
I had a specific hiccup in specific workflow. That's all.
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No problem. Others may get something from our conversation.
BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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I ran across the same problem you are describing a year or so ago, it seemed the song file somehow got corrupted and wouldn't play. At that point I couldn't find any way to recover, other than delete the file and start from scratch.
Can you duplicate the problem on a predictable basis, is there a specific sequence of events that cause it to happen every time? I wasn't able to when it happened to me.
If so you can, contact support about it and report a bug. Or even send them the sgu file, they could maybe figure it out from that.
Last edited by BlueAttitude; 09/29/18 06:48 AM. Reason: Better English :P
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Charlie, I think I know what Mike is talking about. It involves adding a new intro to a song that has already had lots of stuff done to it. That has to be done up front before you've created the rest of the song. If you try to do that after it turns into a mess. Maybe that has changed in the last year or so, don't know.
It's not something I do because if I'm going much beyond the basics in Biab I'll use Real Band instead. Many people have posted the same thing, use Biab as a fast and easy style generator to get an idea of what you want then move it to RB. Especially something like using multiple styles in the same song, using tracks from different styles along with intro's, repeats, coda's, tag endings all that fun stuff.
Biab makes my eyes ache when it gets that complicated, RB is so much easier and can do the same thing without all the drama. Well, you still have to learn RB too but after that it's much easier. At least for me.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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I probably misunderstood him. Adding intros that causes problems has not been an issue I've run into but both you,Dave and Mike have so I've just been lucky. Glad Mike got his issue with the intro on his project worked out.
BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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I agree with Bob. Don't try to use BiaB as a DAW. Quickly go from BiaB to a DAW regardless of what ever the DAWs name is. It could be RB, Studio One, Sonar, Reaper etc. YMMV
Unclear if the pianist is a total beginner or a professional jazz player?
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Mario, yes, as soon as the track is more or less sketched in BIAB, I render it as individual files and to Cakewalk it goes  It is all comes down to this: "Note, that style changes at Bar 1 result in overall style for song changing."Maybe initial topic got slightly carried away. To summarize latest replies, it is probably a wish list item to be able to "import" drum parts/breaks for intros from other styles other then initial style to alter intro after song is laid out. So my workaround is to output additional drum tracks and chop them in DAW and just try different variations for Intros. It is not difficult, but I do not like to jump from BIAB to DAW. Since they share same audio resources it takes time to go back and forth... Saving/Opening projects, closing/opening software, rendering, importing audio, trying again... going back.
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