PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums RealBand A few quewstions about Realband?

Hi Folks,

Jazzmammal posted a verly helpful reply in the biab forum hope he doesn't mind me copying it here,

"Oh yeah, RB is very cool. First 48 tracks. Second the regen of individual bars but most important you can create several different versions of any part by using different styles. Think about that one, you're using one style in Biab and it gives you all the instruments. Lets say you're curious what a different guitar part might sound like. In RB you simply arm a blank track and generate a different part based on a different style just for that one track without changing the original generated track. That means you can go back and forth while the song is playing between two different guitar parts or 3 or 10 for that matter. Some can be RT's some can be midi parts. Can't do that in Biab.

I do this a lot with drums. One track could be the basic beat, a second track could be percussion and the third might be a third style for just the C section or whatever. Using the track mute buttons you can audition these different parts while the song is playing. Don't forget you have the substyle variations to work with too and that brings up another "trick".

For each track in RB you can change the chord grid. Think about that one too. You've generated your basic song using the chord grid with substyle part markers. Those markers will force drum fills in addition to varying the style. Change the chord grid for a new drum track keeping in mind you still have the original one, that won't change. That forces a fill in different places without altering the substyle for the other instruments. You can also change the chords and substyles for any single instrument so you might have the guitar playing somewhat different chords and substyles from the piano.

Almost forgot, this works as long as you do NOT have the checkbox "Regenerate whole song" checked!

This can get quite complex but it gives you a lot of flexibility. The key thing to remember is RB is a audio/midi recorder and sequencer. Each track stands on it's own just like any other recorder you may own or used to own. You can experiment all you want with certain tracks without changing what you don't want to change.

When you mix this you can use the volume nodes to mute and activate different parts of all those tracks and wind up with a good mix.

Some of this you can do in Biab but it's clunkier and you only have 7 tracks so you can't experiment like that. Biab is great for basic song creation, pick a style, load in the chords and hit play. Simple, and that's good enough for lots of folks but when you really get into it and you want to add this or that or think gee, what would that nice guitar part I hear in another song sound like in this one then it's time to move it to RB.

Bob"

A few things there I was totally ignorant of for example, how do you change the chord grid for a particular track?
And how do you add for example a different midi style for a particular track or selection of a track?

Thanks a lot for any help.
Musiclover