PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic BiaB White Paper (May 2024)

Eight of us recently came together as a team and agreed that there was a need to write a White Paper on BiaB.
The kernel of this idea can be found here.
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=105576&Number=810096#Post810096

Our team consisted of:
AudioTrack
Cerio
Gordon Scott
Jpettit
MarioD
Rob Helms
Rustyspoon#
and myself

The purpose of the white paper is twofold. Firstly, to examine BiaB’s current state of development as a computer-assisted music creation tool and secondly, to describe an end-user-centric vision of what we believe Band-in-a-Box ultimately should become.

We would be interested in thoughtful feedback in what we produced.
What did we get wrong?
What did we get right?
What could be improved?
What did we omit?

If you reply, please copy and paste the relevant text for clarity. This will help us understand the specific section of the paper you are referring to. It will also help us better appreciate the point you are making. We plan to update this paper when sufficient changes to the program or in the industry happen.

To anyone interested in joining our humble "think tank", we need motivated individuals with something relevant to say on the subject. The following skills and attributes would be particularly useful to us:

1. Mastery of BiaB
2. Skillful musicianship
3. Project management experience
4. Technical writing and strong English skills (the ability to articulate a vision)
5. Experience with technical graphics
6. Familiarity with other music software tools such as Plugins
7. Understanding of good software design practices and GUI layout
8. AI experience

The paper can be viewed or downloaded here.
BiaB White Paper (May 2024)

WHITE PAPER
8.Realistic Live Tracks: The software excels at creating realistic live tracks (stems) that
follow your chords and are performed by live musicians. This feature, which predates
AI, can save you time and assist in songwriting and practice. It includes RealTracks (RTs), RealDrums (RDs), and Super MIDI tracks (SMT

Should include UserTracks, loops, and more importantly, Artist Performance Files

PG Music: -----
UserTracks.

These are like RealTracks. You record a WAV file along to a standard BiaB song (SGU). Put it in a folder (the folder’s name is the name you want for the UserTracks), and then put the folder in the RealTracks\UserTracks folder. You can add multiple sgu/wav songs to the same folder to get more variations.

UserTracks are user created audio files that can be used the same as RealTracks and are capable of creating audio that is omitted from the current list of real instrument recordings or playing patterns of strumming or fingerpicking or otherwise custom patterns of an instrument in which BIAB's database doesn't contain.

PG Music: -----
Loops.

To make these, you just make WAV or WMA files (m4a for Mac), and put them in the C:\bb\RealTracks\Loops folder.
Loops can be:

1. Nature sounds (no tempo stretching or transpose).
2. Drums/percussion sounds (tempo stretched, but no transpose).
3. Pitched sounds (tempo stretched and transposed to current chord).

PG Music: -----
Artist Performance Files.

These are audio files, that you put on a track, that can also have the MIDI transcription of it. People hear the audio, and see the MIDI in notation/guitar tab etc. For example, if you are a great bluegrass fiddle player, you could put your songs in this format. People can listen to your real playing, see the notes on screen, slow them down etc. - all inside Band-in-a-Box where they can do other things like solo/mute other tracks, mix them etc.

Artist Performance Files are used by PG Music in several different ways such as converting edited RealTracks into audio files that BIAB will save. They preserve material by preventing regeneration, are an advanced version of freezing a track, allows all of the audio editing features of BIAB, auto naming, and auto-loading of saved audio into an existing SGU file. APT's have orange color coding for ease of identification the same as RealTracks, SuperMidi and Midi tracks.

Artist Performance Files are used by users to create custom audio recordings that BIAB does not have the RealTrack data to generate. This can be custom licks, song specific strumming or drumming patterns, midi converted to audio tracks, merging multiple tracks into stereo stems, vocal tracks, backing vocal tracks, bounce mixes, bus mixes, APF's allow BIAB to function as a digital multi track recorder with the capability to expand a project of any year or version of BIAB that has audio capability to perform, record and contain more than the physical limit of eight or twenty four tracks. APF's function the same as virtual tracks on digital hardware recorders.

I suggest the list of positive features should include this board which itself speaks to PG Music’s dedication to its customers. How often nowadays does one find a civil well moderated board? For most companies you have little choice for an opportunity to express opinions other than product support, Facebook groups or Reddit. I think PG Music’s tolerance of the way some (but not all negativity) is expressed speaks volumes.

Bud

Bud, duly noted and good point.

Although this board is not part of the BiaB software per-se, it is a part of the BiaB culture and is mentioned on page 6 of the paper.

"There is also a vibrant online forum available where all things music is discussed.”

I do hope "vibrant" is the best word

Charlie, this is beyond my "pay grade".

Hopefully someone on the team can address this.

Perhaps I sounded a bit defensive in my original comment but as a contributor to the BiaB beta test group for years I do have some insight into the dedication of the BiaB team.
They are amazing folks.
Cheers,
Bud

Interesting paper.

I've got a couple of thoughts.

The main one is: What users must BiaB target in order for PG Music to continue to be a viable company?

I suspect that the primary BiaB user is an older user who is interested in reproducing tried-and-true musical styles.

While the price of BiaB is reasonable, it's not exactly inexpensive. A user who wants to create backing tracks will quickly discover the version they want is the one with all the RealTracks. That's likely to be someone with disposable income.

On the other hand, if someone is just looking for something to practice with, a more minimal version of BiaB is an excellent fit.

I'm not well acquainted with contemporary music, but it doesn't seem a niche that BiaB is well-suited to fill. My oldest son is the only one interested in creating his own music, and he shows zero interest in using BiaB. Then again, he's not really into computer-based music creation, preferring to record live instruments.

So I can't really say what sort of market opportunity BiaB might be missing out on by not catering to other groups. But certainly, there's a need to make sure that new users continue to come on board, or they will be faced with an ever-shrinking user base.

There's also a need to maintain the current user base. Certainly, there's a lot of cruft in BiaB. The Mac version seems to be continually behind the PC version. Too much change to the base product - even streamlining existing functions - could lose a portion of the current users, with little gain in new users.

As I see it, AI presents the largest opportunities and threats to BiaB. At the moment, most AI programs seem to be targeted at minimizing the amount of effort by the users, while giving the maximum result. I doubt this target audience would be interested in using BiaB.

On the other hand, these AI programs are capable of creating much more targeted results. For example, they could certainly be trained to output an instrumental track in a particular style that follows a given chord sequence. That's a direct threat to BiaB.

While the current quality of AI tracks is fairly low, I believe this is a function of how the stems are ripped from the source material. But I've heard RVC vocals replace vocals on a Beach Boys track, where the resulting vocals were higher quality than the original recording.

Certainly, AI can be trained to up-sample instruments.

Better funded companies are likely to have access to a massive library of music, and thus capable of creating high-quality custom stems for an end user matching virtually any style in their catalog.

I've suggested before that BiaB could train AI on its own tracks. In theory, this could allow more variety and flexibility to come from existing tracks. In theory, it could also be used as the basis of converting MIDI to audio performance. But while being able to shape the performance at the note level would be useful (for example, to render a specific motif), I'd prefer to maintain a looser level of control. For me, part of the fun of BiaB is treating RealTracks a collaborator. So being able to specify tags at the point of regeneration ("less busy", for example) is something that I'd like.

After all, if I wanted MIDI level control, there are already many excellent VSTi libraries that do exactly that.

But again, being able to supply an excellent product to their base is what BiaB is all about. What's the point of offering rap if very few rappers would use BiaB? That's doubly so when other AI programs will soon be able to offer similar services.

just some ideas from a previous life in strategic tech marketing.
think ACED IT.
i feel bb/rb will continue to be around and a success long term if....the products are...

A = accessible
C = cheap and address the latest contemporary trends.
E = exciting to use
D = a disruptor in the market ...
I = innovative
T = tremendously easy to use.

to attract a younger crowd i feel its important to do the following..
..get young creator influencers on board
..get exciting reviews in music tech mags that young creators read..
whether in digital or print form
..lots of vids showing how to create 'modern songs'.
the problem is what is IN one minute might not be the next.
..get big name contemporary artists behind the product who get hits with the product.

fnally for people who create orchestral sounscapes maybe issue a version called orchestra in a box.
ie covering the instruments one might find in a typical symphony orchestra.

just some ideas. bottom line keep the product EXCITING.
because us humans love excitement.

i sincerely hope pg continues to be around for many many years
because its an interesting ride for us users....and if pg does it right be a continuous stream of xmas presents. for us users.


hsppiness.

om 🇨🇦🇨🇦 🇬🇧🇬🇧

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.

You might find a place for this in your paper. BIAB Style List for May 2024. This is a listing in Excel format of the BIAB "STYLES". A total listing of 9751 may be a tad low, but I am sure, not by much.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IdZ19YcVfUcxRblefHU7BLKn7BMskyr6/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113713904073416507892&rtpof=true&sd=true

Looks like this...


Quick Pivot Chart...

You might be best all to go over to the Reaper forum and do this as Reaper will let the end user add functions and features with scripting, this way all the users interested in this can contribute and something will be done TODAY having control of things.
What can we do to change Biab ? nothing, I can hack a few things but basically you can't do anything to fix or change it.
UJAM did not wait for things to be fixed, they just made something that works.

+1

For example, Logic Pro 11 keyboard player (session musician) is pretty advanced right out of the gate. Far from perfect but delivering capabilities I would love to have for BIAB tracks and styles.
Yes, Logic’s chord entry needs improvement, and more styles are needed.
But the ability to adjust the performance of an individual performer is significant.

And AI seems to make MIDI just as good as real tracks.

Dan, can you elaborate on the figure of 1750? What does that relate to?

The spreadsheet lists up to row 9752. All BIAB Styles are approximately 11,140

Opps, typo combined with a small correction to pivot table. The pivot table now shows 9,751 individual style entries for all the Genres. That is how many I have after collecting for 25 years. I corrected the Excel file and re-uploaded.

om, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I never heard of ACED IT before. I think this very much applies here.

I'm thinking we should have had a section specifically dedicated to marketing; perhaps titled
Marketing in the 21st Century to 21st Century Musicians or similar.

Any interest in writing 1 or 2 pages on the subject for when/if we update the paper?

Here is what the Harvard Business Review has to say about this.
https://hbr.org/2021/07/how-to-design-an-ai-marketing-strategy

BT.

good marketing advice.

let me say from a marketing perspective everyone complains these days about how inaccessible some companies are.
ie layers of telephone menus and various other bugaboos.
drives my wife and friends nuts.

to pg great credit pg doesnt have this problem.
so im impressed with pg accessbility.

fyi recently i contacted a company whose gear i was interested in..
i often do this before putchase to see the quality of support.
i just didnt hear from them for a long time...and even then they didnt answer my questions. so i didnt buy the product.
cext la vie.

as i said A = accessible...etc
T can also mean treat your customers as you would like to be treated...the old saying...do unto others etc etc.

happiness.

om 🇨🇦🇨🇦 🇬🇧🇬🇧

I realize that such positions typically demand a 6-figure salary, but we can't do anything close to $US 100,000.

However, we do have a generous benefits package. As Marketing Director you can work remotely from home, hire as many as you see fit to build your team and not work weekends. Plus we offer a self-directed, 0% company match 401K plan where you can buy whatever stock you want. And to top it off you'll have unlimited, unpaid, sick time and vacation!

Thanks, Bass Thumper!
Here is a GTP summary of the recommendations.

Summary of Recommendations from White paper (not in in particular priority):

• Utilize Machine Learning: Incorporate algorithms to simulate musicians following each other’s tracks. (i.e. Bass and Guitar track syncopate or match rhythmic phrases)
• Enhance User Interface: Focus on improving the UI and workflow, using modern software design like panels to avoid modal dialogs. (zero modal windows)
• Reduce Redundancy: Keep the best features and remove obsolete ones. (adopt philosophy of less is more)
• Improve BiaB Plugin Support: Ensure full-featured capability for generating real musician tracks, with a redesigned core backend for efficient track generation.
• AI Partnerships: Collaborate with educational institutions and consulting firms to integrate AI capabilities into BiaB. (transcription, stem splitting, progressions)
• Diverse Music Genres: Include all music genres by hiring appropriate programmers and recording artists.
• Song Structure Understanding: Develop a system for the software to understand song structures like Intro, Verse, Bridge, etc., setting up for future voice activation. (knows when to build, break and when to repeat)
• Simplify Menus: Reduce redundant menu items and remove outdated methods. (so that intuitive beginners can figure out without help manual)
• Add Features: Introduce floating point tempo (planed), VST3 support (with route ins to outs) (partially planed), audio tools in tracks view (existing editing tools) and remove the 255-bar limitation (for songs in double time).

These recommendations aim to modernize BiaB and enhance its appeal to a wider range of users, from novices to professionals, ensuring its long-term success in the competitive music software market.

If there is anything else needed for the BBPlugin post Here