PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows God, I feel like a newbie.

Okay, I recently upgraded to 2024 from the special that PGMusic offered. Now, I haven't been really using Band In A Box a lot in recent years, so a lot has changed since the time when I was the one offering solutions. How time flies and things change!

I've been having some serious issues with BIAB 2024 and I want to put them out there for people.
First, I'm having problems with Audio. The audio in my computer is working fine. I have a Creative Labs sound card and am using the digital ins and outs to go to external A/D and D/A converters. That is working perfectly. Cakewalk is working perfectly. Band In A Box is not. If I open the program and open up a song, no audio out. I have to restart Windows, sometimes multiple times to get the audio driver to work. Then, today, when I finally did get the audio to work, I went to record into a song, and only the bass track played back. Clicked on the individual parts, muting and unmuting, and I finally had to select a different style to get all the parts to play.

Let me say that I installed over Band In A Box 2023, but reinstalled everything, including all of the Real Tracks (which took me over a day to download).

Then, in recording, it didn't record the keyboard part. It did earlier, however, but then didn't next attempt, and of course, 153 bar song, I didn't notice until after I went to play it back.

Second: I'm using Bomdia+ as the style, a six-part MultiStyle. I don't have 'Choruses' in the song, it's all one chorus. So, to create a soloist for the middle part of the song, I either need to somehow convert it all back to three choruses, each chorus having the appropriate style parts, A/B, C/D, and E/F. I don't remember if that's possible or not. What I would really prefer to see in the Soloist Dialog is the ability to say 'Solo from Bar # to Bar #. This way, I can create the soloist and then export the song parts to Cakewalk on work on the melody and other stuff there. The song I'm working on, I want a piano for the first part, the soloist for the second part and then a brass instrument, trumpet, coronet, etc (not sure which yet) for the last part. I can generate a soloist for the whole song, and then delete what I don't want in Cakewalk, but that's not really how I want to work this. It shouldn't be too hard to add that capability.

I don't know if I need to do a complete uninstall and reinstall, something I do not really want to do since I didn't save the RealTracks when I downloaded them. I'd have to redownload all of them. (Should have bought the hard drive! LOL)

Anyone have similar issues, or know of anyone who did and offered solutions to get it working again? I'm a long time user, and it just seems to me a lot of these issues should have been worked out by now. No offense, Peter, I understand that programming for a Windows system can be difficult, but it always seems to be 'something' that prevents me from working until I go in and do something to fix it, and it works until the next time I want to use it and it's broken again.


GRRRR!!! Okay. Now it won't record MIDI. I can see the MIDI data indicator on the Thru track, but it's not recording. When I go into to the Record MIDI dialog and it says 'Record MIDI to' it giving me the option of two Real Tracks or Utility tracks. I selected one of the Utility tracks, and now when I touch the keyboard, it stops recording. If it's just playing back and I press any key, the playback immediately stops! So, now, I can't even play along with the song, let alone record on this.

This is immensely frustrating.

Gary

Hi Gary. Sorry you're having trouble. Let me comment on the first of the three issues. A few years ago BIAB started defaulting to the WAS driver for audio, and I know in my case, my Focusrite sound card that I had at the time choked on it (my current Presonus card does work). I could select the Focusrite ASIO driver, but I normally saved that for my DAW and just chose MME as the audio driver in BIAB. So, try that - either ASIO or MME in Options, Preferences, Audio, but since it's possibly a Sound Blaster I would try MME first.

Write back and see if that helps.

Gary,

When the audio is not playing in BIAB, it's usually a driver-related issue. Try setting your audio driver to MME and see if that helps.

When you are recording, which track are you recording to?

Regarding the soloist. The soloist dialogue does allow you to choose what bars you want to have the solo across. That option is available via the "Custom" button (see the image below).



Alternatively, if you select the bars in which you want a solo by dragging the mouse across them, you can then right-click and select "Multiriff" from the menu that pops up (or press F8). Multiriff allows partial regeneration across a selected range of bars.



It is also possible to access partial regeneration in Audio Edit by selecting (within Audio Edit) the range of bars or parts of bars where you would like to place the solo.

I hope this information helps.
--Noel

P.S. I see Matt answered while I was putting my post together. It seems that he and I both agree about MME

Hi Gary, sorry to hear you're having trouble!

A couple questions - where is BIAB installed, on your internal storage or external? Do you have any other audio software running at the same time as BIAB? Which build version of BIAB are you using? (You can find that from Help > About Band-in-a-Box, next to where it says Version 2024).

As Matt mentioned, try out the different options for audio driver type. MME is usually the most stable and reliable so that's usually the one to try first. Otherwise, let us know what audio driver type you're using - this is found under Options > Preferences > Audio.

With certain tracks not generating, the first thing to try is a different song (or preferably a new empty song file) with the same style that wasn't working. If the tracks still don't generate there, rebuilding the Stylepicker often helps. Check if any of the tracks say "N/A", as that indicates that the particular Realtrack is not found - you can see what content BIAB has found or not found by going to Help > What Add-ons Do I Have (but do a rebuild first).

For the MIDI not recording, make sure the record dialog is set up to record MIDI and not audio - there are two black drop-down menus to select which track you're recording onto, try setting Record Audio to None and Record MIDI to an empty Utility track. Also, ensure that no other audio apps are running, as they may try to lock onto the MIDI device and prevent it from working in other apps.

Rather than using the Soloist dialog, in your case it's likely better to build a soloist manually using the MultiRiff feature - in short, you can use it to choose exactly where a soloist (or any RealTrack) plays, as well as regenerating parts of the track instead of the entire track. There's a tutorial on it here:

If you continue to have trouble, a complete reinstall might help. Also, since you have the 2024 version, you can still order a hard drive - send an email to sales@pgmusic.com and we can send an order link for it, as it's not possible to order the drive on its own without one of us creating a custom order for it.

BIAB should not stop recording or playing when you play your MIDI controller. It sounds like a setting may be corrupt. Try this - close BIAB, then go to a File Explorer window and navigate to your BB folder (usually c:\bb), then in the Preferences folder highlight the "intrface.bbw" and "MySetup.DK" files and delete them. Then run BIAB again and try recording. Deleting these files is a hard-reset for your preferences, so you'll have to set up your audio and MIDI drivers again.

Please let us know how it goes!

Man, it's great to see you still kickin'
Missed you 'round here

Simon, Thanks for the information. I couldn't believe that I couldn't do specific bars for the soloist, but I guess I had forgotten about the Custom, even though I was looking right at it. Earlier, I had selected the Utility #1 track to record the MIDI to, it kept defaulting to a Real Track for some reason and wouldn't record. Of course, there was stuff on there already, but this time, I tried again and was able to record a MIDI track to the Utility #1. I'll be trying to record a second MIDI track to Utility #2 later on.

As I said, I don't want to reinstall, but I do thank you for the suggestion about going ahead and picking up the hard drive. I think I'll do that. I probably will go ahead and delete the install and reinstall it. I know how easy it is to get corrupted files and maybe that's what happened.

I've also talked to Ember via chat and she's going to be looking into a couple of things. I'll keep you informed on what's happening and as I told Ember, we have the best tech support at PGMusic and I'm thankful for all of you and your help.

Gary

Hey Bob, how are you doing? Life has been weird, there's no doubt about that. Things have changed significantly for me in the past few years, I lost most everything in a foreclosure, then eviction, homeless for almost three years. Thankfully my sister saved my keyboard and some other stuff, but I lost a lot. I was working for a bit, but got laid off a year ago, and haven't been able to find work. So, I'm semi-retired, looking for work, but have a Social Security income. I have a few dollars from retirement accounts, but really not much. I've been living in a room in a house. I don't have enough money or income to even get a small one bedroom apartment, and the low income housing I just applied for denied me because of some court issues from my previous eviction. Thankfully, I have a friend who just bought a house and is looking for people to move in with him. So, I know the other three people who are going to be there, all close friends, so that's good.

I still have my ancient PA800 keyboard, but have been wanting to replace it with a new Korg PA5X-76. Saw a 'mint' used one for only $3,600, and I have that money from my retirement account, so if after the move I have enough, I'll be getting that. Maybe put the PA800 on sale. On Reverb, even though it's like 18 years old, they're still getting $1,200-1,500!

But, I haven't been playing much, and I need to get back into it. The guy that I moving in with and one other person both are guitarists, Christian music, so I hope to be able to utilize Band In A Box to flesh out some new music for them. It would be nice. They know of the program, but not really all that it's capable of, so we might be putting together some music for a new album sometime in the future. Maybe, depending on if they like the concept or not. But, it's a desire on my part.

In the meantime, I'm still alive, still doing the things I need to be doing, and God provides for the rest. Oh yeah, one of the biggest things is I've returned to my Christian heritage, and for that, I am very thankful!

Gary

Gary, if you are using the Band-in-a-Box plugin with Cakewalk I have some thoughts to share with you.
1. The plugin does not recognize MultiStyles. It will respond to the first A/B part marker pair but not C/D, E/F or higher pairs.
2. The plugin track audio outputs do not always default to outputs 1-2. Sometimes the audio outputs default to sequential pairs. When that happens you will only hear the audio output of the first track. Click on each track's output box, highlighted in red in the screen shot below, and you can manually set each track's audio output to 1-2.
3. Cakewalk "likes" 24 bit files. Band-in-a-Box creates 16 bit files.

Hi Jim,
I've already discovered that Cakewalk does not support Multi-Part styles or songs that have more than one style in them. So, for this particular situation, it was only in Band in A Box. One of the nice things about having two monitors is I can put BIAB on one, and then Cakewalk on the other, and just drag and drop the files from BIAB to Cakewalk, and that way, I do get all the styles, since I'm dragging audio files.

Thanks for the input!

Gary

Okay, update. The MME driver seems to be the best audio driver for now. I again can record into BIAB via MIDI, although I don't know how long that will last. I've sent an e-mail to PGMusic to take Simon up on his suggestion to get the hard drive, and I'll uninstall and completely wipe my C:/bb directory and reinstall when it arrives and then see what happens. I've also deleted the .dk file and the Interface file.

So, we'll see where that goes.

Thanks Simon and Matt for the suggestions.

Glad to help. Let us know your progress.

I dunno, this is driving me crazy in so many different ways.

I'm recording a song. With the MME audio drivers, all is working well in that end I'm able to send data from the keyboard to the computer without BIAB stuttering and crashing. So, my song is Strangers in Paradise, and it's one big chorus instead of three, and I'm using BOMDIA+ Multistyle A/B is the song's first chorus, C/D is the middle Soloist part and E/F is the last chorus. A/B should be a piano and E/F should be a Coronet. I recorded A/B and stopped and saved the file. I recorded that part on Utility 1. On Utility 2 I went to the bar where that second chorus begins and recorded it using the Coronet patch.

BUT, when I go to play the song back, both Utility 1 and Utility 2 are playing the Coronet patch. Both say 'Instrument 0 <No Patch Change> even though I've clicked on both and selected the patch I wanted, it's playing the Coronet patch.

So, okay, I know that Band In A Box will support a patch change on a channel, and it should be able to recognize the patch change, but it doesn't appear to be. Both instruments were on Channel 1. So, I put the Coronet on channel 2. Now, on Channel 1, I get some sort of a picked bass, and on channel two, I get the piano I want on Channel 1. I put the Coronet back on channel 2 and it worked . . . once, but the channel 1 is still a bass, even though I went in and intentionally changed it to Grand Piano.

I've ordered the hard drive and I'm not sure when it will be here. I'll be moving this weekend and next week, so I'll be a bit out of touch for a for a bit while I get that sorted out. Right now, once I get the program again, I'm going to save my songs and user files/styles and then wipe the entire C:\bb directory and start over again!

That happens because you're using the default synth, and both tracks are sending on the same MIDI channel. There are a few ways around it - change the MIDI channel, use a different synth, use a second instance of the default synth, or use a Hi-Q Instrument Patch.

To change the MIDI channel, right click a track and choose Track Settings And Actions Dialog - MIDI channel is just to the right and down from the centre.

To change the synth plugin, click on the Plugins tab in the mixer, then to the right of the track name you should see "Default Synth" - click on that, then choose any of the plugins in the list. If your default synth is the included CoyoteWT, choosing that again will run a separate instance of the plugin, meaning that anything sent to it will be independent of anything sent to the default instance.

To choose a Hi-Q instrument, right click on the track and choose Select MIDI Instrument (Patch) > Select Hi-Q MIDI Patch Plugin, then choose an instrument from the list.

Keep in mind as well that specifying an instrument or plugin on the Thru channel does not affect the chosen patch on whatever channel you're recording to.

MIDI channel 2 is used by the Bass track by default. Channels 5 and 9 are unused by default, however it's better and easier to use a separate instance of the plugin for each track when working with a lot of MIDI like you are.

Please let us know how it goes! The hard drive shouldn't take too long, as we ship with couriers - usually only a few days to North America.

Simon,
I use an external Arranger Keyboard. I had changed all the MIDI channels in the dialog, but forgot it reverted back to default when I deleted the interface and .dk files. So, that part was something I had forgotten to reset and I can understand why it did that.

This is just so frustrating, because I make one change and then go back to audition it, and things flip back to the 'wrong' way.

I'm going to put this thread in abeyance until I can reinstall the program and see what's happening.

Gary, my understanding is that Options, Return to Factory Settings, Most has the same** effect as deleting those two files, but it keeps your driver settings. You are also prompted to Save your settings which you can retrieve later. This is what I do.

** there was a conversation within the last year that deleting the two files did something more that Return to Factory Settings does. This surprised us since we thought they were the same. Perhaps Simon can clarify.

Gary another thing to try is booting up Band-in-a-Box in "Safe Mode". Safe mode instructs the program to launch using the factory default preference settings and ignore your preference settings. This allows you to test program operation with the default preference settings without altering your preference settings.

I copied the instructions from AudioTrack's +++ post +++ as I couldn't find anything about safe mode in the manual.

Note: You will be creating an empty file. The correct file name is important. Make sure your computer operating system is set up to allow you to see the file label and the file suffix.

Well, thanks Jim and Matt. I've already ordered the drive, it should be here Monday. However, I'm also moving in the next week or so, so I'm going to be tearing down my setup here shortly. I am not going to be able to get to this until after I put it all back together, and between the move, setting everything up, getting the household set up, it's going to take a bit. So, I won't be doing anything.

I've had a couple of BIAB installs over top of one another, so doing a completely new install is probably not a bad idea to begin with anyway.

I'll come back to this in a couple of weeks.

Gary

Okay, I'm back. I've had a hectic week with the move and all, and we're still unpacking and trying to settle in. I have everything set up so far, and BIAB seems to be working pretty well. I'm still having an issue with playback of recorded MIDI tracks, however.

I have a Higher Patch File which I use for my Korg PA800, and I'm having issues selecting the proper patches from it for playback. Same song as above. I have Bass, Piano, Drums, Guitar 1 and Guitar 2, 'Silence' and Sax. The 'Silence' are the brass parts for the E/F section of the BOMDIA+ style I'm using. So, to record MIDI tracks I'm using the Utility 2 track.

(One thing I would really like to see in the next version, and it should be a really easy lift, is anywhere that offers MIDI Patches, instead of just the standard GM patch list, if you are using a .pat file, the option to select that file. In fact, Peter, since some of us do use .pat files, and usually only one of them, it would be nice to be able to select a specific .pat file and make it the default for the entire program, so if a dialog opens up and you need a patch, if you've selected a default .pat file, it loads that one instead of the standard GM list.)

Anyway, even if I select a patch off of the .pat list, it still defaults to whatever sounds. I've changed all the track channels, so 1 is melody, bass is 9, etc. I don't know how to get the song to play the instrument I want. Also, in this song, the first 54 bars I want one instrument, the middle bars are the soloist, and the next 50-some bars I want a different instrument, and I'd like to be able to go in a select the instrument from a .pat file, and get it to stick!

Gary