PG Music Home Forums User-to-User Post your own Tips and Tricks here I want to end a song on a sustained long fade out bass note.... how can I do this?

On the last bar where you want the sustained bass note to begin the fade and assuming you want the bass to be solo'd:

Enter the last Chord like this: G.b Where the chord is the last chord of your song.

. This mutes all of the instruments except for the bass and the bass will play the chord solo

That solves the first issue. If you play your song at this point, at the last bar, all instruments except the bass are muted. However, the bass continues to play quite busy patterns but you want it to hit the last chord note and hold, sustain and fade.

There are several ways to accomplish this and the solution is dependent on many factor including what version of BIAB you have, how many RealTracks instruments you have available, the song structure itself and so on. You may have to search out what best suits your particular situation.

Here's what I did and I suggest you try this first. This solution applies only to RealTracks and I assume your song is using a RealTrack Bass. MIDI is simple to solve because you can edit the notation.

I created a short Chord Chart to program a solo bass ending in my song. These are the steps I took.

. Confirm what RealTrack bass you're using. in my random test song, the bass was RT 3122:Bass, Acoustic, PophalfnotesPush EV 120

. Open the RealTracks Picker. The idea is to search for a similar bass RT I can use to create my held chord and sustained fade. Here's how I searched and found my second bass RT.

. In the RT's Picker, at the bottom, in the Filter by box: Type in Bass, Acoustic, PophalfnotesPush

You should type in what ever the description is for the RT you're using.

In my search, there was a similar Bass RT result - It was 3121:Bass, Acoustic, PophalfnotesPush RT by the same artist and the only difference between the two RT's, was the tempo. I only need one chord so this RT will work without issue. I was lucky and found a suitable instrument with the same artist using the same instrument so my substitution will play and sound without the substitution being noticeable. If your BIAB package has more than the minimum RealTrack instruments, you should be able to get similar results.

First, I'll explain why you need to substitute the Bass. You can likely open the RT's Picker, search and select the RT you're using in your song and select the HOLD box to force the instrument to play Held Chords. The problem is this changes the entire track to the bass playing held chords. You want the bass to play normally except for the last chord of the song, hold that chord and sustain with a fade. To do that, we will substitute the last bar of the song with another bass instrument and program it to hold, sustain and fade. This will not have any affect on the first bass part.

Here's how to program the substitution without having to use a second track.

. Prepare the Chord Chart for the programmed ending by;
. Open Song Settings Window and deselect the Generate 2 bar ending for this song.
. You need to have 4 bars of blank chords beyond the last bar where the bass RT will sound the Held Chord. For instance if the last chord is bar 60, extend the bars to 64. This allows the held bass chord to fade naturally.
. Place your cursor on the last bar, this is where you want the bass held chord to sound out.
. Open Bar Settings Window. (F5)
. Near the top of the window, select the RealTracks Button.
. The RealTracks Changes Window opens and select the Bass Track
. In the Change RealTracks To.. box type in the RealTrack Bass you previously searched for and decided to use for the substitution. In my test, I typed in 3121 to replace the 3122 bass. Type in the number and hit OK.
. OK to close the Bar Settings Window

On the Chord Chart, the last bar should be colored red and the chord followed by 1 period and a b
and there should be 4 blank bars following that bar.

Generate the song to activate the substitution and the Style Bass should play normally until the last bat at which time the Bass will change to the second bass and sound a single held chord, sustain and fade.

Love this!

Thank you!!!!

..Deb

Thanks, it works in Mac version of Band in a Box .

Will post to Sound Cloud as soon as I possible when I clean up the song .