PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic DISCUSSION >> ODD TIME SIGNATURES.

I think it's just one of OM's word contractions... cel == cell.

FWIW, in this context I personally would interpret cell as meaning a box on the screen into which one would type a chord, so I would expect 4.4 to have four such cells, 5/4 to have five, 6/8 to have 6 and so on.

For me, BiaB fails a little right from the start, because I interpret the chord entry as having only one or two cells per measure. Entering commas to get chords on the second and forth beats of a 4/4 seems clumsy to me... rhetorical question, but why not use space or tab to advance by one cell and tab or enter to advance by a bar/measure. It's probably quicker and easier to get to individual beats that way than juggling whatever and commas within one bar. I presume it made sense when they first did it...

I also imagine that some combination of history, data structures, file structure, code, user resistance(?), etc. is what makes them appear so reluctant to change things.

I feel sure that this statement is correct on everything, except perhaps for 'user resistance'.

I think the original design architecture only ever contemplated a maximum of 4 beats to the bar, and that is so hard-coded in so many places that re-engineering this presents significant challenges.

Gordon.

re cels...good explaination. its just the way my mind works.
i use the cel concept in my mind to correlate the divisions graphically i'm looking at.
of course there is the issue of what might happen within one cel.

for example from my understanding talking with jazz friends in the past...freeform poses
a problem cos various things might occur between beats....
so one cant be exactly strict within the context of a beat ?
so for me and maybe i'm stupid but i thinking of a cel in the context of anything musical
note wise that might be occurring within the cel.
a corollary...maybe a bad one...lol...think of 6 houses...
their contents can vary over time. maybe on monday house no 4 has 3 people in it...
because a friend has popped over to watch the telly...but that evening only 2 people are in the house. thats sorta how i see things.
then the issue of microchords is something else.

from what ive seen of your posts gordon you obviously are way better at music theory
than i..i'm a dunce by comparison...kudos to you.

Mario.

lets make a deal....lol.
if you help me figure out how to get the s1 trial...i'll address solution to rb giving you a hard time and frustrating you.
if you agree to the deal...where i'm getting hung up with s1 trial is after account set
up and dloading s1...i get this licence screen asking for a code i cant find.
so please do the following if you can...pretend you are a person wanting to get the s1
trial for first time and see if you get hung up at the same spot as i.

as to rb...just like bb genning the tracks is the same in rb.
eg select the mission 1 style demo thats in the stylepicker ie 5/4 140 bpm.
then gen it...and notice after a short wait the tracks will appear in rb tracks view.
includeing the default synth has been set up...eg coyote.
next step is KEY...in rb make sure that time sig is set to 5/4 AND bpm set to 140.
THEN playback to hear the song.
tell me if this works for you. IF it DOES notice the cel divisions in each bar are 5
correlating with the numerator of the time sig set....rather than the standard 4.
NOTE i'm NOT trying to push rb at you...i'm just curious what is bugging you in rb.

happiness.

om

PS...audiotrack i agree with your hard coding point. i had the same prob in industry when
i had to take over a B I G app...we finally decided it would be a huge cost and many man hours
and resources to solve.

I'd intended to write "perceived user resistance", but failed. Ho Hum.

Yes. I deliberately stayed away from those for the moment. Although one set of 'microchords' per cell seems reasonable, I'm not so sure how well it would work with eighth-note beats/cells.


Hmm ... music theory is one thing, actually being any good at music is quite another. I started very late and I continue to struggle. I suppose being a jazz enthusiast just makes things more complex, perhaps especially for a techie mind ... I get too bogged down in the theory, so I'm not free enough. Ho hum.

Gordon, I agree with you on the cell comment. I always think in terms of measures and beats and never cells.

I think the code for BiaB is very old and locked in on n/4. I also think we are locked into having to accept that limitation.

I have always told my students to learn music theory but don't let it get into the way of making music. That is learn theory to expand your knowledge but don't let it dictate your playing. Use it to augment your playing. YMMV

om, 1- I tried to get the demo version of Studio One Pro but because I am already registered I couldn't get to that page.
2- forget about it. I DLed Multitrack studio and like you said I imported a BiaB 6/8 and 5/4 song into it and it lined up and played perfectly with the beats and measures, i.e. cells. However like RB when I saved those Multitrack Studio MIDI files and loaded them into S1 they reverted back to 4/4. With all of your trials also loading and playing BiaB files perfectly it is obvious that S1 is the problem/anomaly/outlier.

Thanx for all of your investigative work.

No, that sounds right to me, though others will disagree.

My grandfather was a piano tuner and played by ear. I asked him if he'd teach me, but he said "It's not the right way ... you should have lessons and learn properly".

As a child in a single-parent home in a house of multiple occupancy in an inner London slum-clearance area, we had no money for a piano or lessons. I dropped music early at school to focus on engineering, so I had no tutoring at all until I was almost 60.
I've almost always been good at anything to which I turn my hand. I thought music would be the same, as did my friends. Nope, not this time. I'm now trying to push some of that theory learning more to the back, but it's a struggle and I'm now in my 70s.

Gordon, I feel your pain. I'm 78 and I have a hard time learning new stuff. Plus at my age if its not necessary and it ain't fun I ain't doing it. That is why I'm not trying to learn RB as I find it difficult to use, i.e not fun. I DLed Multitrack studio and had it up and running in about 10 minutes, i.e fun.

My advise it to just have fun with the piano and don't worry about theory. Once you get better at playing then learn a little theory at a time. Plus there are many on these forums that are glad to help you if or when you get stuck.

JAOM, i used MTS for several years. I loved it. It had one issue that moved me onward. I do not like the comping features in it. I actually moved from Cakewalk and Powertracks to N-tracks studio and quickly to MTS used it through 4 versions and in the meantime RB was born. I then started to add Reaper into the mix but felt confused and tried Studio one since it came with my Presonus interface. MTS is slick smooth and quick. It is easier to mix in that just about eveything else, it just lacks a real good comping setup other than copy paste. Actually i am so unbelievable busy these days that after beta slowed down i had to focus on other matters. I will get back to DAW work soon. I have been creating a nice catalog of BiaB backing songs. I have nearly 30 so far. With hundreds yet to process.

I'm glad other have found it so, worried I may be one of a few ..
I also have no issue using RB, or Reaper .. or any other DAW, except as JOM & others mentioned; some others can be a pain to get set up and running.
If I need to install an installer just to get it, well that's frustrating .. like Kontakt. I have it, but sheeesh

// I want to get work done .. like now! So I resort to familiar tools quite often

Bob MTS is a great little DAW no doubt. I stopped using it when i got Studio one, then left that when they kind of cheated me out of a version. I finally upgraded Reaper and bought Harrison Mixbus 32C on a sale and i like those two. Still sometimes i miss the absolute simplicity of MTS.

Mario. thanks. your good people.
anytime your stuck on something in rb...just
post in rb forum and youll get help.
if were me re 5/4 in s1 i would contact the s1
forum/support. i'm sure there must be a solution.

Rob Helms...and any apple users reading this.
ive never tested it but notice there is a version of MTStudio
for ipad.
Rob...have you tested MTS on your apple ?
re comping...maybe go on the MTS forum and make a feature
suggestion ? i like what jeff did in rb 2024 viz comping.
i use it for vocals etc.

All.
whether paid or free...from all the daw trials imho you could do
a grrreat song with any one of them.
as the daw marketplace is sooo competitive the array of features
in any of the daws...whether paid or free...is amazeing imho.
just blowing my kilt up...lol.
taking just one paid one as an example....
samplitude music studio.
this daw for the price of a meal out has a huge feature set.
however to really appreciate it one needs to spend some
time with it in order to get the most out of it.
even the free daws like waveform free or podium free offer
very impressive feature sets.

frankly for me i like the lean daw approach.
eg MTS or Podium with small exe sizes.
(a reason i like also reaps v2....kiss concept.)

whats blowing my kilt up is i got this 140 buck cheap fanless mini
pc to replace an ageing pc i was useing for the net.
for s's and giggles ive been trying the daw trials on it.
been surprising. but of course even though it got the ok from
latency mon and surprised me with its low dpc count...which is
good for music production...its single thread score is way under 3000
that i recommend for music production. so i wouldnt load it up with
resource hogging plugins and loads of tracks.
its got a low end processor with emmc storage.
however one can hang eg ultra fast m.2 drives off usb.

in closeing fyi...as ive never done a song in 5/4 before out of the loads
ive done over the years. i'm trying to use the mission1 style 5/4 as
a personal challenge and as a base for a little vocal scat
i came up with that lasts 2 minutes.
if i get it the way i want it..i'll post a very rough demo on
my scloud.

happiness to all.

om

No i have not test MTS on apple since it works the same as on PC so i do not feel the need nor want to spend the money. I stopped using it for a certain reason and that has not changed. I never discourage it's use as it is a really solid program. It was just one single thing that it has that i did not like. The rest is head and shoulders better than most programs. I did play with the iPad app once but i don't like recording on an iPad.

When i was using MTS that was the time that the Reaper revolution began. Every forum board you went on the "Reaperites" were attacking! it was like a wave and it caused a rather weird hatred of Reaper. It did not matter what issue you brought up their answer was to switch to Reaper. Slobbering fanaticism! I Loved MTS because it simply got things done. In particular i love how you could drop either audio or midi on a track and then in the FX slots add a synth or a audio plugin and it treated the tracks the same in regard to processing. It also looks GUI wise like a simple old school tape machine of sorts. No need for a tracks and mixer view the main view did both at the same time. My only reason for leaving it behind was that as some of the other programs developed the ability to comp tracks became a bit more refined than MTS. Still it does have a nice copy paste ability from one track to another. But i like the take lanes in Reaper and other apps. Yes i reconciled with Reaper. i just stay away from their website and ignore the "Reaperites"! It seems they have calmed down a bit, or the other programs have become so much better that they are not running ahead anymore. Or maybe i am just a bit more tolerant now?!? hhmm maybe that is it. yeah, let's call it that!

rob...
I just wondered if you tried mts demo trial on apple.

btw i cant find a trial of harrison daw mixbus.
does one exist ????

happiness

om

I love that. If I still had students, I'd steal that line.

I think it's important to know theory, at least at the basic level. The rules are rules, and they make sense, but it's nice to break the rules, too. That's where imagination and creativity come in, but without the framework, it's much more difficult to do this. Sure, there will always be great musicians who don't know theory, but they are the exceptions to the rule. Most of us aren't that exceptional.

I don't like RB because of the lack of advanced MIDI editing tools. I can do a lot of things with MIDI on an old Master Tracks Pro app that I cannot do with Real Band. (Of course, there are other things RB can do that MTPro will not.)

There is a wonderful change filter in MTP that when making global changes to a track or song, I can only apply it to specific circumstances.



Say, if I want to change just the snare drum on a drum track, and just the 3rd or 4th beat of the measures to perhaps play 5 clock tics behind the beat, it's easy. Highlight the track shift everything 5 beats to the right, but invoke the change filter to only use the snare drum note, on the selected beats, and not disturb the rest of the drums. Without that filter, I'd have to do it one measure at a time.

The filter can be applied to any global change. All the dialog boxes have the option to use the filter, here is one example of many.



Click the Use Change Filter box, it takes you to the change filter dialog, and you can make specific edits on a global scale.

Almost any editing tool can be rung through the change filter in MTPro, and that saves me countless hours of time.

So RB, even just for uncommon time signatures, is out of the question for me.

When doing my Band-in-a-Box Fake e-Disks, I'm reluctant to use microchords for 2 reasons, (1) they are not backwards compatible to older versions of the app and (2) sometimes with certain styles they just don't sound right.

I want anybody to be able to use my products, and I want them to be able to change the style to whatever they like.

That's where the BiaB hacks come in.

In some ways the maximum of 4 beats to a cell is a hindrance, but for other things it can be an asset. The creative hacks needed to get around that limitation, also opens the door for the ability to do some things you couldn't do otherwise.

I'm glad BiaB has prioritized back-compatibility, and don't mind the creative hacks needed to get it to work the way I want. I've done 51 fake disks with hundreds of songs in each one, and have never been unable to enter a song. That speaks well for the versatility of this app.

So put on your thinking caps, almost everything is possible.

Notes ♫

ALL.

i need a little help.
i came up with a song idea as a challenge for me on
mission1 style 5/4....as ive never done a 5/4 song before.
however heres the prob...

in the pickers for rt's and rd's...in the lists i dont
see which session musos can be used on odd time sigs like
5/4. am i missing something ?
twould seem to me there needs to be extra columns in the pickers
which content can be used with OTS's.
if anyone knows what pg content i might test for a 5/4 song...it would save
me a lot of detailed work auditioning lots of content that might not apply to 5/4 styles.

Meanwhile.

i tried to get a trial today of a daw from a big well known name.
the hoops it looked i would have had to through is mind boggling.
dont these orgs realise they could probably do more biz if they made trials
easier to demo ? i think once again MTS is the right way.
fast dload and install and give the potential buyer a couple of tracks.
there must be a better way to protect ip rather than asking
people to go thru' hoops.

Notes.

re midi filtering in rb etc... your comments surprised me as i always thought
between the piano roll and rb filtering there were sufficient filter
options. for other users benefit i would suggest you create a wishlist.
maybe also jeff yankauer will read your comments and offer some solutions.
i normally dont get into deep filtering so i bow to your obvious deep
experience in midi.

happiness to all.

om

You won't find RealTracks or RealDrums in 5/4 because BIAB doesn't natively support that time signature. There are no RealTracks or RealDrums recorded in 5/4.

In BIAB, 5/4 is made up of a bar of 3/4 and a bar of 2/4. In other words, it takes two bars to make each bar of 5/4.

However, filter for 5/4 in the Style Picker and you will find samples. But they won't be single bars of 5/4. To the best or my knowledge, there aren't any. Others may know more.

In RB
If the SEQ file has a 5/4 time signature set, generate any RT/RD .. experiment
Let us know .. try any 3/4 or 4/4 RT/RD and let us know if it just 'Generates' .. in the desired time sig
In BiaB, I dunno, might work ..

Of course you can save time by looking at the RT description. Trying a 'ballad picked acoustic' when you're looking for a rock/groove feel would be a waste of time

/that said I HAVE stumbled onto things .. just mashed grunge drums, mandolin, acoustic, banjo, rock guitar, and funk bass together just to experiment, can be fun and provide unexpected results in that they all worked together (kinda)

http://masteringmatters.com/stuff/UrbnM1bc.mp3
/not odd-time on this particular one, but shows that experimenting can be fun
//my previously posted odd-time song also used various unrelated 4/4 RTs , so it can work