PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Macintosh style change problem

I just installed BIAB 2023 UltraPAK and something strange is happening with the style changes.
I'll attach some screenshots. I choose a realtracks style for my song in the style picker and play it (screenshot 1), then I go back to the style picker, pick a midi style (screenshot 2) and click ok, return to the main screen and find all tracks still in real track mode, three of them set to silence, only the drum track plays (screenshot 3).
Something similar happens when I try to change the style halfway the song in the bar settings, sometimes it works, sometimes only one of the tracks gets changed, sometimes it seems not to work at all.
Any suggestions are very welcome. I am on a macbook pro 13" with OS 10.14.6.
thanks,
Martin

Hi,

You mentioned that you go to the StylePicker and choose a new style. Do you mean that you are changing styles at a bar? (i.e. F5 bar settings).

The problems you are seeing are probably a result of changing between a MIDI style and RealStyle in your song. Band-in-a-Box cannot switch from MIDI to RealTracks (or RealDrums) on a single track. There are ways to work around this limitation - for example, you could use two different tracks, one for MIDI and one for the RealTracks part, and then mute/unmute each track as appropriate. Is that what you are trying to do?

hi Andrew,

They are actually two problems:

- If I have picked an overall style in the stylepicker, I see the result in the menubar and mixer. Then I go back to the stylepicker and change the style, I close the stylepicker and expect the change to display in the menubar and in the mixer. Sometimes it does not appear at all, sometimes when I change from realtracks style to midi style, it shows the drums track as playing, but all other tracks get set to 'silence', and are still showing up green as realtrack. Problem is it does not happen all the time and I have not yet found a sure way of reproducing it, when I do I will put an update here.

- The other problem, changing style in bar settings, this does happen if I change between realtracks styles (for instance changing latin to swing). Part of the first style (for instance a loop) keeps playing while it should not be in the style I am changing to. Muting it as a work around will work, but I might be muting a track that is actually supposed to be used in the new style...? I will try to get a reproducable example of this problem as well.

By the way, don't know if that could be done, but wouldn't it be helpful if the stylepicker gave some warning signal if you try to change between midi and real style in bar settings ?


UPDATE
I have done some testing on the first problem and I might just have chosen a very unlucky style to begin with.
I will attach some screenshot and try to explain what happens, I also rendered the song and can upload the result if that will help.
I started out with the _GOSTOSO.STY Gostoso Half-Time Bossa Funk. Demo-ing the style sounded different than playing my song, but I thought nothing of it at the time. But there seems to be something wrong with that style, it does not play a half time bass, it plays what seems to be a quarter time bass (once every two bars). And this seems to effect the style change I made in the bar settings. I reproduced the problem in a 32 bar/1 chorus song (factory default settings, only screen layout changed). In bar 5 I added a style change to _JSTM_B.STY Modern Jazz Swing Quartet.

The result is as follows:
The bass does not change at bar 5, it changes at bar 9 and then only the sound, it is still in wrong timing.
The piano does change at bar 5, timing seems ok.
The drums also do change at bar 5, timing is ok.
The loop does not change at bar 5, it does not change at all, it just plays on where it should have changed to a guitar track.

Since I heard the loop go on and the bass not really changing, I gathered the style chage did not happen, but it does seem to happen, just incorrectly, possibly caused by the faulty bass in the Gostoso style.

Hope you can help me out here.
best wishes,
Martin

Hi Martin,

Yes, there are two issues here.

- Tracks can't change from one type to another (including Loops). And yes, I agree some information about this would be good in the F5 dialog perhaps, or in a flash message. You need to add the second instrument to another track (you could use a utility track) Then you mute the first track after that point, and mute the second track before that point.

- There is a bug with style changes and half-time RealTracks not changing at the correct bar. I think you would need to use the same strategy until this is fixed.

I understand tracks cannot change from midi to realtracks or vice versa, but just to make sure I understand what you mean, I change from one realtracks style to another realtracks style and I am wrong to expect that the loop in the first style would change to the guitar in the second style ?


Is there any way to check if a bug or strange behaviour is already known ? This has set me back a lot of hours I might have worked on music in stead of doing bug-hunting.

Thanks for the help,
best wishes,
Martin

It's not an unreasonable expectation, but no it can't do it currently. We should issue a message with information about this when the style is changed - and then people would know what's going on rather than being confused.

Any kind of warning would have helped a lot :-)

And my other question, about maybe publishing a list of known bugs, or is there already such a thing around ?

And still another (new) question: where would I report small cosmetic 'bugs' (the Additional Song Settings window does not fit on my screen and displays only half the OK and Cancel buttons).

thanks,
Martin

Thanks

From your reply I take it I can report bugs/inconsistencies here, I came across another small one: in the menu 'Edit/Song Form/', 'Song Form Begins at' and 'Song Form Ends at' do not get updated when I change them in the main window, while 'Total Choruses = ' does get updated. Saving the song does not change this, I have to close the song and reopen it to get the menu updated.