Hunh!? What did I done? No drum tracks in my midi files!

PG Music Home

I was cruisin' along and creating a solo when all of the sudden the program stopped and there was this rapid click, click, clicking cycling ... almost like a vibra slap.

I hit stop, restarted and everything was going along fine in the song I was working on.

I loaded a midi file and noticed it had no drum track ... couldn't hear it and couldn't see it in the piano roll or notation. Thought that was weird, so I loaded a midi I had made earlier from a BIAB song .. no drums. Shut the program and reloaded ... no drums in the midi track. Shut the computer and and rebooted and reloaded ... no drums in the midi track.

Opened the midi files in another midi program ... Anvil Studio ... and drums in the midi tracks.

Is this some known freak problem, or am I just digitally cursed?

Prado

:Your have the weirds.

Drums are on midi ch 10.

Try and go to prefs and change the midi from one thing, save it, and back to what you want.

Probably will work.

If not reboot.

If not return to factory settings.

Last resort before Hari Kari, is goto C:\bb\interface.bbw and kill the file and restart.

Bonne freaking chance.

Whenever something unexpected like that happens in BiaB, the first thing I do is shut down all programs and reboot the computer. Sometimes resources get mangled.

If the reboot doesn't solve the particular problem with BiaB, the next thing I try is Options -> Return to Factory Settings, which solves such problems about 99% of the time.

Study the situation in the Return to Factory Settings, it is a good idea to grab a snapshot of your settings while the program is still behaving so that you can make it revert back to your Custom Settings when you need to do this, rather than the Factory Settings.

--Mac

It's early in the morning for me ... and I won't have time to fire up BIAB before I go to work.

But, I woke this morning and sat bolt upright with an 'incredibly stupid' self-affirmation flashing through my mind: "how about my drum tracks are on the Melody channel? You idiot!"

Yes, isn't it true all imported midi tracks are on the Melody channel ... sort of like a Type 0 midi file, so they won't show up in BIAB piano roll/ notation unless or until they go through a style conversion? Or not?

However, this doesn't answer why the drum track was not audible, which does not relieve me of all problems.

I'll follow the good advice tonight.

Prado

Drums are on channel 10. You can change that by accident. Or some soundfonts don't have drums. A number of possible fixes. Once you shut down, reboot, start the program, and load a demo song, you will know if something is amiss. Then we start troubleshooting.

Sorry to continue hypothesizing when the program is not open in front of me ... but to be crystal clear ...

Yes, I know that GM drums are always on midi channel 10. But I thought when a midi file was imported to BIAB it resided on the 'melody' track, which apparently also has the capacity to function as a full multichannel midi port. Or how else could this occur?

As you know a type 0 midi file all resides in a single track.

I was thinking that even though an imported midi track necessarily plays the drums on channel 10, it wouldn't show that channel 10 midi track in the piano roll or notation in BIAB ... since in a certain sense it isn't there yet.

Are you saying that any imported midi file, even though it is ... for lack of a better word ... 'hosted' on the melody track, still shows up in the BIAB piano roll or notation windows? I haven't been using the program long enough to have cemented what 'normally happens' in my mind.

BTW There is no problem with either seeing the drum track or hearing it when a BIAB song is loaded or newly created.

Prado

There are I think 3 ways to import midi files.

And there are Midi files that are written however the original guy did them and type 0 and 1 files.

And there are overrides you can use, for example I use the Soloist with zero info on it and use midi ch 5 to send chords and changes to my voicelive harmonizer.

So in short yes and no. You need to analyze the file, which if you use the interpret chords midi function you might get a better idea of what is going on. Since I have almost never used this function I was repeating the oft used mantra, shut down, reboot, re-start, and evaluate, then return to factory settings. Then use a file you know works, then back to the problem one.

This just eliminates a host of potential minor things that often go awry. Sometimes other software grabs a midi port, or some other program gets in the way of I/O. Eventually I learned not to surf the web while using band in a box, and not to watch a DVD at the same time etc.....not saying you are, but some software is insidious and takes over the computer. I had a pdf file that played a midi when loaded and after using it had to reboot the computer for some reason. Whoever did that bit of trickery (a training course), and Adobe hijacked the ports or midi function.

If you have the time and inclination the Live Help with guys who do this all day is the better solution should the obvious not cure the problem.

Quote:

Yes, isn't it true all imported midi tracks are on the Melody channel

Yes. ("Track" not "channel.") Try this: Fire up BB, File Open => open the midi file. (Do not be fooled by all those chords in the chord grid. No midi data have yet been generated by BB. The data in the underlying sequencer are all from the midi file.) Click on the Seq button. Choose the melody track. You should see a row for each channel for which there are data - including the number of events in each channel. Do you see channel 10? If not, and you know there are channel 10 data in the original file, that's a puzzlement of the highest order, deserving of a priority call to British Columbia.

Quote:

However, this doesn't answer why the drum track was not audible, which does not relieve me of all problems.

Could be simple explanation, like the sound source Ch. 10 volume went to zero, etc. (Could be a rogue controller event in the midi file?) First make sure the data are really there.

-Ron

OK ... Thanks to all.

While my surmise that I was victim of my own ignorance turns out to be true (alas, once again!) ... I've learned something that will help me a lot.

Short story/ explanation. I wanted to set up the 'parts' correctly in my midi file before I used the stylemaker wizard so I would know where the drum fills were located to more easily identify them.

The drum wasn't coming through while auditioning ... so I decided to solo the drum track to just listen to it alone. Of course I heard nothing, since the drums were on the melody track along with all the other data ... and once the melody track was muted in soloing the drum track there was nothing to hear. Then of course, when ... having a brain freeze about about the midi data being only on the melody track ... I went to look in the piano roll and notation windows, selected the 'D' and I found nothing ... heh, heh ... because there was nothing there!

The song I happened to pick as it turned out had an extended no drums intro (didn't realize this til later). So, prior when I quickly auditioned it in Anvil Studio and moved it along to the center section, there were my drums where they were supposed to be!

Some times it's good to wake up in the morning and flash: "Oh, how could I be so stupid!?"

On the other hand, I'm now extra positive as to where imported midi files reside and, with Ron's help, have learned a lot more about that groovey 'sequence' window and all it's hidden delights.

Prado

Good Job. To be honest the program has a way of humbling me at least once a year. I know it's me, but I've learned to buckle down and figure it out. Once or twice around the block and it becomes evident that the wide range of hardware and and software plugin stuff makes it harder and harder to provide support to people who are new to the software, the terminology and the nuances of the programming.

It seems to be one of those things that the more you put into the input end the more comes out of the output end.