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

Mario.

yes pg does very well re accessibility.

All.

i would just like to mention a wrinkle in cleaning up legacy systems and i DO realise lots of pg users want various legacy and other issues fixed....

heres a case study...

once i was called into a very large organisation to manage the renovation and modernisation of a huge legacy system...
the issues were...
...a zillion lines of source code
...lots of hard coded tables which couldnt be updated rapidly as users wanted.
...execs who didnt understand the rea!ities of making changes untill i sat them down with the coders and heard the execs then apologise.
...a massive internal user base of thousands
..a external customer base of more than a million people.
and that was just the start...lol.

in summary a challenge even though the programming team was the best available on the market...brilliant in fact.

now lets look at how the above system came about.
answer was basically a desire in the IT group to keep everyone happy always.
but the problem is a systems group can never achieve nirvana.
its just the nature of the system development beast.
one major issue is often user groups cant agree....for various reasons.
in the above case i often felt like a referee...lol. even with user sign offs still one user group might be happy but another might not.

you still see the same today viz 'everyone wants certain standards as long as its theirs'.

now re pg i suspect the legacy and other things the user base want addressed built up over time...ie pg didnt purposely decide to create problems.
they were just trying to keep all the different user camps happy.
eg maybe one group of users might want feature A but another group
of users might want B.
so things build up over time. the positives being bb has a plethora of features no other music app can match...the negative being sometimes it takes a time to locate bugs.

lets take modernising the gui for example.
some user groups might want the same gui they have got used to.
others want fancy shmancy modern groovy graphics.
other users might want to customise the gui any way they want.
i might like the gui one way but another user might think my way is junk and want another way the gui is presented.

thus its a real challenge for the coders.
the major issue being how do the coders keep everyone happy without ballooning the amount of source code to be maintained.

in the case i first described we had to make very difficult decisions so the system didnt become unable to manage.
this of course teed off some users as they didnt get their needs met.

frankly i feel for pg because keeping all the diverse user camps happy is one heck of a challenge. also a coder group is often limited by the platform and os they are developing for. ive got a few grey hairs to prove it...lol.

do i have bugaboos with bb ?...sure...but haveing been on the developer side of fence i look at what pg have achieved as rather remarkable...warts and all. given the many challenges.
lets look at the glass as half full because where would we all be without the tools provided by pg.
here is a small canadian company that has built a world wide diverse user base.
with this come various challenges at both the technical and the user level.

i know some people get frustrated...but lets also look at the positives
at the same time.

hopefully pg can reach a point of all users being happy...but its incredibly difficult for any tech company to do so.

happinesx to all...

om. 🇨🇦🇨🇦 🇬🇧🇬🇧

Bass Thumper,
good effort and thank you for including humble bits of my contribution. This resonates very well with Poll thread in BIAB Windows forum section started by Rob.

Skipping "new" feature wishes & ideas aside, I think it is safe to assume that most of us, with very few(!) exceptions want:
Bugs & underdeveloped features fixed, redundancy gone and significant workflow enhancements which includes UI (BIAB and PLUGIN)

It is my firm belief that those 3 items are essential / pre-requisites going forward. One cycle of fixing and deep cleanup would go a long way.

I believe that the two most significant responses so far are from J Pettit and the last one from Rustyspoon#. These are very concise and clear objectives. Let's just say for the record that PGM has always listened to the customer/user. they have consistently added valuable feature sets to the software to make users happy. The problem sometimes is US! we ask for things that may or may not be prudent considering all the things that have gone before. Sometimes what happens as mentioned above is features get added and never quite get done before the cycle repeats. This is why for the last few years many users ask for a halted new feature year. Completed or upgraded features can be considered "New" in a sense because they make the system better.

The workflow enhancements mentioned in Jeff post to me are super vital. BiaB is an incredible piece of software, it is not just wide but deep and rich with features and tools. However there are many things that are difficult to find, can be done multiple ways, some of which are less intuitive. Clean up and simplification in my opinion will not drive away older customers, it will instead enhance their experience. Especially if the improvements are detailed in nice tutorials. BiaB is the best single creation software available. It takes two three or more other titles to do what it does. I urge Peter and his incredible team to work to keep it ahead of the game. What this paper urges is to trust your customer base we are out there looking at the industry and tinkering with other things, hut our heart is here with you. I do believe this software has a long future and can be viable to younger users. To do that it need to do exactly what was detailed in the synopsis provided in the white paper and especially in J Pettit's short concise list. To me the following three things are vital and important.

1. fix all the longstanding and features and bugs that are constantly asked about.
2. clean up redundancy and workflow items making the program features easier to access.
3. continue to refine and update the plugin along the lines of how it was improved this year.

One really strong suggestion i would like to add is to go over to the reaper forum and watch the Kenny Gioia videos. They are very short and very informative. We get tutorials here but to me personally they are more slanted towards marketing a feature and less about really teaching how to use that feature in an everyday setting. Many features in BiaB remain hidden under a deep layer of confusing menus. Lack of clear instruction i personally believe has also hurt RealBand over the years. I firmly believe it is better than it gets credit for.

+1
Back in 2015 why were more users not onboard then rather than knocking things ? there would have been big changes by now
programming language upgrade delphi to c++ [CONFIRMED]
I post so much stuff that seems to go over the top of most and it usually takes years for users to catch up and see the story, then the penny drops. I posted all the play direct Reaper stuff also will virtually no interest or support from other users, I keep posting all the stuff about 6 months Win 6 months Mac craziness.
More users need to get onboard for there to be significant change, try these things out that I show, go deeper into things. I posted stuff on UJAM instruments using bb chord track years n years ago, but it only just catches up now.
When I came to the forum I was not a musician I was a technician that fixed amps for muso's and they wanted me to create tracks for them, I had to learn how all this stuff worked, through total frustration I had to learn and come up with ways to solve issues, I don't create tracks anymore for artist as I gave up and been trying full time to make Biab better so it won't happen to others.
You guys are just starting on trying to get big change, I'm worn out now from giving it all out for years n years and just feel like giving up

MC, what is your point in bring this into this discussion? Not arguing here just asking for clarity. We are having an open discussion regarding the current and future needs. There was a discussion behind the scenes for this paper when it was written but no one felt the need to discuss the language written in. It really does not matter. Delphi or C++ both are kept modern and that is really not the issue. The real issue is to encourage a halt in bolt on new features in favor of completion of existing ones and upgrading the workflow with removing redundant menu commands.

Please share some thoughts along those line we would like to hear everyone's thoughts on what was suggested.

"VST3, Don't understand the delays"
For VST3 to be implemented in Biab Delphi then Mac it has to be done by PG from scratch,
whereas if it was JUCE C++ it would all be there ready to go, things are easier to implement.
THINK BIGGER, NOT LIP STICK.

We are thinking big. The problem is what your thinking is never going to happen. They will NOT rewrite BiaB in C++. I understand your point but it does zero good to continue to push for things beyond the scope of what will happen. If this were not true then you my friend would not be exhausted from asking for 10 years.

My point is let’s discuss what can happen, not what can not. I hope this make sense to you.

Rob.

re goiai vids...spot on.

i often wonder if a very simplified thinned down bb version might be well received. for example for years in addition to rb/bb i used the reaps v2...which has a lower time to learn for a newbie than diving into the latest reaps version with lots more features.
i dont know why i like reaps v2 so much...maybe its cos ive deve!oped lots of tricks. but sometimes KISS just works.

in conclusion maybe small...intermediate...and advanced versions of bb ?? but the negative is added work for coders...
sometimrs unless highly modulised subroutine tricks are used.... for example once we built a lego bricks type app. worked quite well
cos some users only wanted some modules.
maybe others will disagree but lego approsch can work possibly.


just some ideas...

om 🇨🇦🇨🇦 🇬🇧🇬🇧

You are not thinking big, you are way behind, you want to get out of the 90's thinking.
Band aids and lip stick won't work. You have an old car, and you are trying to polish it up and put pin stripes on it.
Have you not seen the writing on the wall with Logic ? Look how well UJAM works, dig deeper and study how it works. I had to do a lot of explaining in the other thread how it all works as users had the wrong notion, once you understand then you can see the potential of it all, and then the penny drops, and you are out of the box.

Go with the lip stick for old Biab but put more focus into a future, "out of the box thinking" it's called:

If I can get any real time signature I like, any number of bars, any tempo map, instant easy nondestructive editing, as many tracks as I like, as many song tabs as I like, direct play of any audio format compressed/uncompressed/multichannel I like, a Win, Lin, Mac version at the same time with the same features, Live Arranging, and they have something called "VST3".
What are you giving me with Biab that will turn me on ?
Video: Reaper-Biab-BBVST-Vocal-Drum-Stems.mp4

Full Screen

Amen!

It's a focus that products, particularly software products, so often lose in the pursuit of features and tick-boxes.

Focus first on a product that's easy and a pleasure to use and have a standard method to get to extended features. I've pretty much always taken the view that if something is technically logical to do, the product should do it, even if I can't at the start see a reason why anyone "would want to do that". Partly because, once the logic is established, it's quite often easier and partly because it's often turned out that there actually is a good reason why someone might want to do it.

Look MC, i understand what you are saying but do you not see that it is insulting to continue to label folks as small thinkers to continue to alienate others by referring to them as living in the 90s this has not done you well in the past. We are thinking of the future, but of a future that is possible, If you can't see that maybe we are not the ones missing the point.

Look Robb, do you not see that it is insulting to PG to have this BiaB White Paper (May 2024) telling them their software has issues and it needs fixing. PG knows what is best and it does what is best for its customers. There is nothing else possible than what PG give, let it go ! you crazy dreaming up these things.

Gordon, very well said.

The other day we watched a short documentary on Steve Jobs and Japan. Apparantly he was influenced by certain simple and beautiful Japanese art. He was also influenced by the Sony corporation (led by Akio Morita), known for simple, elegant, logical designs (think Walkman). I'm not saying that BiaB is not logical (I'm too much of a novice user to make that claim) but as an engineer I definately value logic and technical elegance.

From my experience, the companies I worked for (and our suppliers and customers) did not embrace Apple products at all. Those products were considered to be for the "artsy-fartsy" folks, not for serious engineering work; right or wrong. And I never used or owned an Apple product mainly because I disagree with their closed business model. However, it is clear that Jobs was a genius and his products were innovative, elegant and cutting-edge. I think at one time Apple had a marketting slogan: Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication, or something like that.

And from personal experience I can tell you there is great wisdom in writing code that is logical; especially if others on a team will be editing and de-bugging it. I have certainly made my mistakes especially in my early FORTRAN punch-cards college days by not spending adequate front-end time to design the overall layout of my programs. Later on in my career, I learned from those early mistakes. The pro-programmers I worked with had a term for such poor quality; they called it "spaghetti code". Once, again, I am not linking this to BiaB in any way, but rather speaking generically.

I think this documentary is inspirational on technical and business levels.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/3016148/

[/quote]

Clearly not.
Too busy writing white papers and arguing about programming languages.


The barbarians are at the gate…. Beating the walls down.

Wake up people….. To the WALLS!!! To THe Walls!!!

MC, I disagree.
The White Paper is no more "insulting" than the Wishlist forum; and neither vehicle is insulting.
Moreover, have you not read the 12 items in Section 3?

Fortran is a powerful language for many tasks, but it isn't the easiest language in which to write neatly structured code.

Keeping designs and code neat, elegant, consistent, readable and digestible takes a lot more planning than people often realise, but it usually pays back plenty. In a typical compiler white space and meaningful cost nothing in the final executable. Meaningful names cost when one first writes them but normally pay back when revisiting. Design the the user interface and data first.

I'll try to watch the video tomorrow.

Edit: For user interfaces I often used to make movie-type storyboards, sketched out by hand for people to consider, critique, draw and write over.

Fortran?
Really?

That’s where this thread has gone?


I need to smoke more weed..

"Look Robb, do you not see that it is insulting to PG to have this BiaB White Paper (May 2024) telling them their software has issues and it needs fixing."

I am not Rob, but in my view the purpose of the "paper" was politely summarize what was mentioned earlier in several parts of the forum. Suggesting what was suggested before. Most of us do care about the future of BIAB and it seems the right thing to do - to have a civil and constructive discussion. While I disagree with some points made and some wording, I do believe this document has value as it mainly focuses on feasible changes that will probably make program more appealing to general (and advanced) users.

Don't you think it would be much easier to say: "Rewrite software from ground up and make us all happy"? Probably yes.
My 3 cents, is that very likely in not very distant future AI assisted legacy code refactoring software would be able to do some heavy duty magic. Who knows. For now, it is pretty clear from Poll post in Windows section what users wish to see in 2025. Peter has acknowledged that thread and possibly it will impact some decisions for the next cycle.

P.S. What I think is impolite is bombarding many threads with Reaper "solutions". Musocity, have you ever thought that only >10% of BIAB users are on Reaper and most likely will never switch their DAW of choice? You come up with interesting and sometimes brilliant ideas for BIAB+Reaper, but most of us will not go that route. Perhaps suggest that PGM creates Reaper forum section for Reaper users and I will support you in that request.

It's not insulting ! nor should my comments to think bigger be insulting.
I post Reaper videos/gif/pics to show how modern things should work, this should give ideas to users that can be applied to Biab.

Don't look at it as a competition between Reaper & Biab, learn from Reaper, try it ! AND GET SOME MORE UNDERSTANDING, to help PG, not to say get rid of Biab and get Reaper !!!!!!
Honestly guys, get ya thinking cap on.

Users say things are impossible to do, I just do them and show with actual real working examples.
I can't limit my own thinking and ideas to match an older way of thinking so as not to offend, this is basically what I'm being asked to do.
Again and again and again, with LOGIC the writing is on the wall and it's in bold type.
Do you not remember the fighting PG did against 64bit, they were totally happy with 32bit and JBridge.

It's too far behind as it is to be thinking that lip stick will fix it.

MC, I have to say that most of what you say is not making any sense to me.
I fail to see the relevance of all your Reaper posts.
FWIW, I use Studio One and am more than happy with it; it does everything I need and I've barely scratched its surface.

Make no mistake, I have zero interest in Reaper at this time, especially when I see none of your Reaper work on the Showcase.
Put some quality work on the Showcase and maybe I'll have curiosity.

"It's too far behind as it is to be thinking that lip stick will fix it."

While BIAB has quite a few shortcomings, 2024 update proved that we can get away from modal workflow, that regenerations can be MUCH faster and content (MTP) library finally is standardized. If most known bugs fixed + features completed, redundancy minimized, workflow and GUI tightened, it should make a significant impact. If that maintenance is the "lipstick", let it be. I don't mind a pretty BIAB.

P.S. Please don't go into Live Arranger as I explained earlier why it can't be easily achieved using existing RTs/RDs/SuperMidi/Loops/Midi tracks. You will end up at the fork where you will simply either:
A) loose ability to regenerate new material or B) every time style will play differently (musically).
It's doable, but Arranger styles will have to be (very) manually produced as separate format with the "best" parts chosen. And that "best" is very subjective.

This says everything as to why you need to think bigger with Biab, because there is zero understanding and zero interest in the Reaper posts Biab can't be helped and will remain in the 90's with lip stick.
Can I play wma direct in Studio One, NO
Can I import Biab frozen SGU track sections into Studio One, NO
I have made lots of scripts for Studio One, don't you think if it was possible I would not do the same for Studio One as I did with Reaper, do you think I haven't tried ?

How do you expect to apply zero interest and zero understanding to make Biab better ?
Get wisdom, get understanding then you can improve Biab.
If I come from Logic or Reaper what are you going to give me in Biab that will really get me ? nostalgia ? childhood memories ?

"Make no mistake, I have zero interest in Reaper at this time, especially when I see none of your Reaper work on the Showcase."
Life's Short (Video Render)
Time Will Tell (Video Render) Aired on CMT 2010

Can you guys not see the whole story now as to why Biab has been stuck in the past ?
You think from the get-go there has not been knocking of suggestions from the day I came here with users fighting like crazy with protectionism keeping it in the time warp past ?

Even after all this programming language upgrade delphi to c++ [CONFIRMED]

Try Reaper, get wisdom, get understanding then come back and talk to me, until then just use lipstick to draw me in.

Muso, you obviously didn't get what I was saying. Arrangers have pre-dictated sections. They are not randomized. Given current workflow/structure defaulting on particular segments of RT's to map to arranger section you will be brutally limiting / freezing that section for arranger part. What if it can be made better through partial Regen, whole Regen or manual manipulation? How will arranger be handling that??? To make anything useful of this concept, every style has to be VERY manually curated, and even then it might not be the "right" generation user is after. Or "B" you will have arranger parts generated/played differently every time. Who would want that?


P.S. I have Reaper, it is not my DAW of choice. As I mentioned, try requesting a separate Reaper forum section, I will support that idea. If granted, you will spread your Reaper wisdom without polluting other threads where people have no interest in it, focusing on folks who care to know what Reaper does and what it doesn't.

If you don't understand how Biab works, and you don't understand how Reaper works, how can you help Biab, is it not the blind leading the blind ?
Can we go over to the apple forum and sell them on the ideas you have for Biab ? maybe they will decide to have a devolution in technology.

And you guys still can't see why Biab is stuck in the past ?
Is it really a baffling mystery ?
If it's nostaligiaware you want I can fully understand.

I don't care how Reaper works. I have no interest in Reaper. (as I mentioned earlier)

BIAB randomizes generations - bits of recorded takes unless frozen. Sometimes you get decent results per X bars, sometimes you have to assemble from different parts. What to not understand here? In your version of "arranger" you show opened audio files marked/mapped for individual arranger part. Who decided that those are the best choices for that specific arranger part? You - dear musocity! Grooves can change significantly musically if proper partial or whole generations are applied. Are you the ultimate decider on what would work best for arranger Part A, Part B, etc?

You have UJAM, you have NI Session Guitars these work as Live Arrangers, you have Ketron Live Arranger Keyboard. They have SOURCE files.
There is no reason why Biab cannot do the same from SOURCE files. Did you even try the SFZ files I uploaded ?
If you have no interest or understanding in Reaper then you can't help with Biab, and certainly not with Logic and iPad, again the writing is on the wall.

If you want business as usual, keeping Biab in the time warp past, then please by all means, keep doing what you are doing and don't look deeper into things, limit it all to the limit you know, don't go beyond whatever you do, heaven forbid if you wake up in the middle of the night with a revelation.
If anymore users come here with ideas that are beyond your limit of understanding, get rid of them, that'll work, that is the best thing to keep it way behind.
Don't seek and you will find, Don't knock and it will be opened.

musocity,
apples vs oranges. Ujam groove patterns ARE mapped to specific key switches and they are "shorts". They were manually curated. Randomization is a very manual process in Ujam products. We are talking about complete multi instrumental segments here. People (at least most I know) who use physical arrangers for backing, have no interest in deep programming. They want to style to just play and be the best it can be. I am not saying this is not possible with BIAB content, I am saying it will be a very manual process of creating such styles with the best takes for specific parts. Not only these specialized styles have to be made, a very user friendly editor has to be in place, specifically designed to alter styles (grooves, instruments, volume, FX etc.) But the main thing, if one day it will be considered, it should have strong feedback from people who professionally use arranger keyboards. Keeping in check THEIR needs (not mine or yours).

I don't wake up in the middle of the night by "revelations" you are describing. I maintain that pre-requisite to any significant additions should start with addressing current issues, unfinished features, redundancy check and focus on workflow. From the Poll thread, it is clearly evident that most folks want exactly that. At least for now.

I don't know about most of what is being discussed here .... Nor do I care. I just want to be able to use BB to make the tracks I want and for them to sound like professional players doing it.

That's as complicated or as simple as I want it to be.

Herb, topic got derailed by "Reaper can do it better" and has little to nothing to do with original intentions. If you think that BIAB doesn't need any improvements, sure that is a valid view.

We think in similar ways. I've used storyboards and flow diagrams on the conference room whiteboard to do exactly that; consider, critique, communicate, draw and write over.

I wonder how applicable a storyboard would be for smooth music-creation workflows using BiaB.
I'm guessing more than one would be needed to address the different ways BiaB is used.

+1.
For Decades (truly) BIAB was without peer in its niche in the industry.
Not anymore. It’s still a leader but others are out there,
others now deliver capabilities that some of us think would be great to have in BIAB.
For example, the ability to modify the performance of an individual AI musician as demonstrated by AAPL in the latest release of Logic Pro to me is a great thing. I want that.
I would no longer need 237 Bossa Nova styles but only 1 or 2 (or even 5) and then I could tweak each player till my hearts content. I could modify the accompanying midi if I wanted even more control.
Definitely a great thing to someone who uses BIAB 99% to produce backing tracks.

I continue to believe that the standalone Win/Mac version of BIAB has a limited future.
I feel it should die a graceful death as its users graze out in the far pastures.
The plugin is the future. Others much wiser than me (Native Instruments, ToonTrack, etc)have already demonstrated this in spades.

The mechanics of how they PG Music does it is, to me, none of our business. It’s only important that they do. PG Music wants serious $$$ every year for the product. They need to continue to demonstrate its worth that $$$.
Even if they write it in Fortran.

There is a thing called RDS (Reaper Derangement Syndrome).
Because I show Reaper working with Biab content 1000 times better than it can in Biab this is somehow sacrilegious. Rather than LEARNING from the examples it engenders RDS that blocks all rational thinking and hurts feelings.
If I go over to the apple forum and suggest similar things it will not be rejected or seem out of place and sound weird.
You are seeing an actual Live Feed of how Biab has actually been held back in the past in real-time.
It's old guard loyalty at its best, with others too afraid to speak up as they might be cancelled.

mrgeeze,
"I feel it should die a graceful death"
I disagree about the "death" part.
Not sure if you are familiar with small software called Chord Pulse. Last major update was many years ago, with only small maintenance fixes every couple of years. Developer clearly mentioned that there will not be significant further development (perhaps that will change). The point I am trying to make, it's solid as a rock and (mainly) bug free. It is still available for purchase and thousands of people enjoy using it for one reason or another. I hope, in the future something like this can be done with BIAB and muscle is put behind the plugin.

I have ChordPulse and suggested some features for it, but it just works as it should.
The Plugin is up to 6 now and still don't work because of the old ways of working in the Delphi Biab.
I can't see how Biab main app can last into the future 6 months Win 6 months Mac, no one seems to answer this. You can't cling onto something like this as hope for the future, surely.
You should not have to be rendering to wav files to get it into your DAW with real time signatures that don't match Biab fake ones.
If you are using it as a band in a box, where you press a button and you have a backing band and don't get out in the real world you may be happy with it.

Rusty,
Fair enough. Perhaps Not necessary to kill it. Put it out to pasture rather than take it to the slaughterhouse. Plenty of good products out there aging gracefully with no updates for years. So perhaps A reasonable effort toward a last stable release may be worth the effort. Perhaps. Spend every other $$ on the plug in. The plug in will, imo make or break the company in the future.

Personally I'd settle for a bit of AI in biab in future versions, I think the PG developers will move biab on at their own speed, regardless of how many so called white papers are written, or how much is written about it here.

If its makes users happy though to keep talking about it, even though for the greater part, its simply "armchair" or wasted talk, I suppose that is ok too.

Hate to cherry pick a comment, and I only allow myself one or two really dark negative postings here in the forum a month, but I could not pass this one up. I just have to remind you all that the 6 stands for 6 ficken years of this! So if this is the future of BIAB, count me out.

I'd posted this in personal messages, but maybe I should put it here to show why I now struggle mentally with BIAB...


Import of MusicXML still puts the anacrusis notes at the beginning of the bar, not the end; the delta sign for Major chords is still ignored, it's dropping some first chords in bars and using the second chord instead; it doesn't handle the first and second ending from the MusicXML, if I ask it to not insert extra melody notes, the melody omits most of the second time through (OK, fair enough), if I ask it to insert the new melody notes, I get (I think) both the new melody notes and the section B notes simultaneously; it doesn't handle the D.S. al Coda, nor does it seem to accept a D.C al Coda as a substitute, but that may be my bad. It still doesn't allow the D.S. or D.C. in a single chorus song.

All that before I even get to the point where I can tell if changing from multiple choruses to a single chorus still trashes the melody.

I spend hours sometimes trying to isolate and accurately report issues and nothing changes

I think I can't do this any more.

You and me both brother!

And after 6 ficken years my energy and enthusiasm has dropped 60% while the Plugin has gone nowhere
but other developers have advanced with great software/iPad and Plugins and RealTracks Live Arranger keyboards and modules, because they listened.
But PG...
"They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will"

Everyone seems to have a DAW that they like and use.
ALL the Reaper examples are because I CAN open an SGU directly in Reaper I CAN'T DO THAT WITH ANY OTHER DAW ON THE PLANET EARTH !
The whole idea of the PLUGIN is get the generate code out of the old delphi into JUCE C++ while cleaning up all the old limitations that hold it back, into ANY WIN, LIN, MAC DAW, iPad or Android.
This will give the same as I demo in that nasty horrible Reaper in your favorite DAW.

Wake up guys, other developers are writing it on the wall.

Nowadays I dunno which is more tiresome...yearly BIAB updates that never quite get finished or the incessant droning about Reaper and C++ and old guard and on and on and on. If I were PGM I'd have probably closed this forum, cleared the decks and required everyone interested to sign up again with new guidelines for conversations! I guess that's why I don't have a forum!

FWIW, I think the BIAB White Paper idea is a good one and the contributors have done something positive with it.

Forget Reaper Derangement Syndrome you will now have Logic Derangement Syndrome
look out guys it's gonna getcha !
I'm gonna start posting lots of Logic.

I like this concept! Additions like this to BiaB would be fantastic.

These might come in handy Mario:
https://help.apple.com/pdf/logicpro/en_US/logic-pro-user-guide.pdf

A quick comparison of music tools that have chord tracks. I only show this to promote a normalization of terms and paradigms.

Although you may not have thought of it this way, but BIAB was the first tool to have a Chord track where musicians followed it. Now there's more competition in that space.

Session players Is a good name for a musician playing a particular instrument.
I've always thought that BIAB should use that analogy more predominantly. It has recorded over 100 real musicians playing in thousands of instrument styles/phrases. It would help the company and new users to think of it that way as opposed to made-up terms such as real tracks, real drums or super midi tracks.

Logic pro is the first in the industry to have machine learning session players where in contrast BIAB has recorded live session players for two decades.

Rather than having a never-ending database of tens of thousands of styles to weed through, let the customers think more about the instruments that they want to use track by track to create their style.

BIAB styles are a good starting point for people looking for a traditional sound.
However, I see the industry, thus customers, focusing more on Instruments and Session players for their next track.

This would cause a pivot in the Hierarchy with more emphasis on the Instrument and style of playing it (swing/shuffle / tempo / note duration, syncopation, pushes, emphases, in pocket/ahead of pocket) but could greatly improve the process of creating music if done clean and proper.

Food for thought...

More LDS:

The Logic Chord track
In a Logic Pro project, you can access the Chord track in the global tracks. You can add chords to the Chord track and have all the Session Players in the project follow them, playing in sync with each other. You can add chord progressions to the Chord track, and create chord groups that you can copy or loop to reuse the same sequence of chords in different parts of the project.



Region chords
Session Player regions can contain region chords. You can add and edit region chords, and you can choose a chord progression for a Session Player region.

When a Session Player region contains region chords, it follows those region chords rather than the chords on the Chord track. You can also have a Session Player region follow the Chord track instead of its region chords. You can copy and paste chords between regions, paste chords from the Chord track to a region, and paste region chords to the Chord track.

I suspect that this is actually not correct. Have you ever tried opening an SGU song in RealBand?

Yes, been there, done that:
Import Frozen SGU Tracks Utility Audio Tracks Missing
Improved DAW integration

+1

Logic’s session players are pretty amazing. Would love to have some of those features in BIAB.

Too many BIAB styles. Overwhelming. The ability to significantly modify the players instead is a nice approach.

Logic’s session musicians sound like real players, NOT midi musicians. Arm them with high quality sound modules (ToonTrack, NI, etc) and you have something that sounds very much like BIAB real tracks. That is worth checking out.

If and when AAPL delivers a set of basic styles and a better chord entry interface it will have a serious contender to BIAB. Its not there yet,imo.

I have spent so much time here trying hard to improve things while other software now seems to be way ahead in the game.

What I have been saying is that there are too many "different" instruments.
Rather than listing something as a "Clean Electric Guitar"
it should be "Fender Electric Guitar" "Telecaster Electric Guitar"
they should all be recorded "DI" on the same instrument, same levels
forget recording with FX this gives too many that won't match a change in pattern
so, all these guitars below can be put on the same track as changes in style/pattern that will be seamless as they will all be using the same FX, even changing from rhythm to soloist
Then some intelligence matching can be used to find the substyle/variation for that instrument.

I even made up a UserTrack for this very reason
Multi Variations UserTracks Feedback ????? [Resolved]
but things are very slow around here to catch on.

MC, the reason some resist you is because not everyone uses or likes or needs Reaper, and showing how to do things in Reaper just frustrates those who do not care about reaper. Do whatever you feel like doing post what you want, but you have to admit at least to yourself when you post 20 straight posts on a new thread and NOONE responds it is a clue as to what others think. We don't dismiss your contribution. They are helpful at times. But at your own words you are exhausted from it. So, for your own sake take a break. You say BiaB is way behind the game, but most of us see that it is still light years ahead, and the others are just now starting to catch up. Some new ideas like Logic 11 is cool but it only does so much and will require growth of it's own. Some of your suggestions have played a part in the process, but you are not the ultimate authority on the subject. Every last one of us have played a part, and every last one of us use BiaB, our favorite DAW, pet Apps, useful Plugins in a different way for different reasons. PGM has to take into consideration their entire customer base, and not just those who want to do what you suggest. If i have never said it, thanks for caring about this so much during the years, but please relax and let life happen. PGM will do what they feel is best. Customers can use it as it develops for what they wish or not as needed.