I've been trying (a lot) and searching here in the forum, but I couldn't find a good solution. It's driving me crazy. I'm sure I'm missing something. The problem is simple. I have a frozen track (a RealTrack). I'd like to transpose it. Here's the things I tried (in BIAB 2023):
1. I transpose the whole song. All other tracks get transposed, but not the frozen track (understandably so, this is fine obviously).
2. I unfreeze the track, transpose the whole song, play back (without regenerating anything! just the normal playback) and the previously frozen track is now in the new key, but it has been regenerated (even though I never told BIAB to regenerate). This not what I'm trying to achieve, obviously.
3. I unfreeze the track, transpose the whole song, then refreeze the track (before any playback), and then play. The frozen track is still in the original state, no transposition happened
4. the following actually worked, but there's a catch (a big one): I edited the track in audio edit, selected the whole track, and applied the edit / transpose function. Done. Track transposed. That's what I wanted. However ... now my track, in the mixer, is called "Artist" (in orange color), the track name was changed to "user edited ...etc etc", so it seems that it lost its "real track status", so to speak, so I cannot treat it like a Real Track anymore (I cannot unfreeze, regenerate it, change a riff or two etc etc). It looks like an audio track, not a Real Track anymore. Pretty inconvenient. This method is ok only if I am 100% sure that I will NOT change the arrangement of that track anymore, ever.
So, my question: is there a simpler / more intelligent / more convenient way to tell BIAB that I want to transpose a frozen Real Track without losing the "Real Track" status?
Hoping this will help others too.
Thank you!!

I'm no expert but in my experience changing the key always causes regeneration.

I believe the answer is No.

Really interesting question. You have given a thorough description, and you tried the solutions I remember trying many years ago. I applaud your method.

Unfreezing is necessary to transpose, as you discovered, and of course that will change the track since that's a feature of BIAB.

Since you have BIAB 2023, you now have the ability to regenerate a part of a track, and with patience, perhaps you could reconstruct a track you could live with.

It is true that once you convert it to an audio track, you will experience the mixer track color change and there is no way I know of to go backwards. For that reason, I sometimes do my transposition using another program, and that leaves my BIAB track alone in case I ever did need to revisit the song. The catch, and yes, it's another big one, is that no stereo editor can transpose much more than a full step, at best three half-steps, without introducing artifacts.

No one yet knows, but since it is a stated goal of PG Music to make the tracks more 'equal', perhaps in a future version of BIAB this problem will be addressed. By this I mean, you can transpose MIDI all day long, or change the tempo, with no problem. I don't know if it's technically possible, but a Wishlist post could ask for some way to keep the content frozen when otherwise unfreezing the track for transposition. I suggest this because frozen tracks are not saved with the song as full audio tracks; only the instructions are saved to play back the frozen track as those instructions dictate.

Hope that made sense.

This is something Biab could be made to do as I can do this in Reaper keeping the same track sections and simply transposing each item, just so long as you are not transposing too many semitones at once to sound like userstracks do.
These are actual RealTrack sections, I can add or minus any pitch shift amount to all the items:
.

What I do to get around regenerating and winding up with a different version of the track(s) is...

I unfreeze the track, go into Bar Settings, hit ok, then double click on a bar to start generating the tracks. But not regenerating. Then refreeze.

It's a pain, but that's what I've been doing for years.

There needs to be a version of play button that doesn't regenerate with new versions but just regenerates the chords. (or Maybe Shift/Play)

Thank you all for your answers, much appreciated

@Matt yes, I also hope that PG Music will add this feature in the future. After all, the advantage of the multi-riff option, which is truly fantastic, is limited by the fact that by freezing that perfect track of yours you're also committing (unwillingly) to that key. Which is a pity, as it takes away from the great flexibility of BIAB. And, as you said, since frozen tracks are not saved with the song as full audio tracks, but only the instructions are saved to play back the frozen track as those instructions dictate, then it should be relatively easy (I guess ...) to allow frozen tracks to be key shifted while not losing their "RealTrack status".

@musocity yes, just like you, I also work on a separate DAW. Transposing tracks in a DAW is not an issue. My question was about how to do that in BIAB with frozen tracks, and that is relevant (for me, at least, maybe not for others) because I really love the multi-riff function of BIAB, which naturally leads to freezing tracks, obviously. But, if we want to transpose a frozen track, then we lose the multi-riff / regenerating flexibility, and if we want to keep the multi-riff flexibility, we can't transpose. Unless there's another way that escapes me.

Anyway, as Matt suggested, this is one for the wishlist.

"My question was about how to do that in BIAB with frozen tracks"

As I said Biab can be made to do this easy enough the same way Reaper is doing it. The tracks section in Reaper are the same source sections Biab uses, Reaper plays these direct from the RealTrack folder, Biab will decompress then load them into RAM. Reaper has not created any wav files or loaded into RAM.
All the wav instructions in a frozen SGU can be transposed by adding or subtracting to the current pitch shift amount thus keeping the same riffs.
Are you looking to shift 1 or 2 semitones or a lot more ?

The same can be done to convert an FX guitar RT to a direct input guitar RT by just changing the path in the frozen SGU, keeping all the same riffs but DI.
The same can be done with stereo RealDrums converting the same sections to Stems.

Thanks Musocity, but I don't use Reaper - I use Presonus Studio One, and I'm extremely happy with it, so I don't plan on changing. But thanks, interesting stuff though.

I'm not saying to use Reaper to do this, I can do the same in Studio One, I'm just saying you can post this in the wishlist as it should be an easy thing for PG to implement.

If I understand the OP correctly he would like to transpose without regenerating. So, if a particular RealTrack has distinctive riff components on bars 1-4, then after transposition that distinctive riff would still be on bars 1-4 but now it would be transposed.

I think this presumes that each distinctive riff component is present in all keys or that BIAB can transpose those riff components successfully.

But I wonder if that is the case. On many occasions I have noticed solo RealTracks seem to offer different riff components in different keys. I have had RealTracks producing an awesome riff but when I change key and regenerate (many times and even with Multiriff) I cannot seem to find the same distinctive riff.

Does anyone know if ALL unique riff components are available in ALL keys on ALL RealTracks?

Hi John,

I was thinking this, too. I've found the same thing as you. When I change keys and generate the riffs of solos, the material is different from the original key. Even after many regenerations, the difference remains. I'm pretty sure that this is because RTs are created from blocks of audio and not on a note-by-note basis. I get the impression that the artist who recorded those blocks of audio had a set chord progression to follow and the interpretation of the chord progression was left open to the musician.

--Noel

At least in my case playing horns, the key does make quite a difference in what I play because I want to stay within the range where the timbre of the horn sounds best. There are also patterns that any honest horn player will admit are easy in one key and challenging just a half-step away in either direction. Sure, we should be able to play some lick in any key but it won’t happen equally smoothly. And shift the key as little as a major third and several notes go out of range.

I think if riffs where repeated in different keys you would not have as much different material.
Allowing transpositions gives a lot more. That's what's good about Alt+F8 being able to create your riffs bar by bar or note by note. If you disable transitions this will allow a better range of pitch shifting the whole track.

This allows transpositions, some are +- 2 semitones:


This is with transpositions disabled:

<< 4. the following actually worked, but there's a catch (a big one): I edited the track in audio edit, selected the whole track, and applied the edit / transpose function. Done. Track transposed. That's what I wanted. However ... now my track, in the mixer, is called "Artist" (in orange color), the track name was changed to "user edited ...etc etc", so it seems that it lost its "real track status", so to speak, so I cannot treat it like a Real Track anymore (I cannot unfreeze, regenerate it, change a riff or two etc etc). It looks like an audio track, not a Real Track anymore. Pretty inconvenient. This method is ok only if I am 100% sure that I will NOT change the arrangement of that track anymore, ever. >>

Yes, it's possible to treat it like a Real Track again (you can unfreeze, regenerate it, change a riff or two. It is now an audio track, not a Real Track. This is a very convenient and a critical component to the function of recording audio in BIAB. It also works similar to a DAW Bus or can be used for advance recording techniques like overdubs, sub-mixes, punch-ins and bouncing tracks. Bouncing tracks in BIAB is very useful for older versions prior to the introduction of Utility Tracks.

The file has been converted to an Artist Performance File. This type of audio file has been included in BIAB since 2011 when recording audio feature was introduced. One of the components of an Artist Performance File over the years is it functions as an advanced freeze option. There are many components to the total of the feature such as automatically saving and naming the audio file, changing the Labels name and description to Orange, and most importantly for your use above, automatically Transposes the track. However, it's possible to unfreeze it, regenerate it, and change a riff or two.

A more efficient way to convert the file to an Artist Performance File without using the Audio Editor is to Right Click on the track to be converted, Select Track Actions, Save Track as Performance File (WAV, M4a) Once this is done, the track will transpose with the other tracks. To continue edit the track, such as adding riff's and regenerate, the Artist Performance File can be either erased to be replaced with an updated track or edited as an audio file.

I would vote for a future improvement to include transposing while keeping the frozen tracks. I've wanted this before from time to time, and the more people use multi-riff the more there will be complex customized frozen tracks that would be a pain to reconstruct when the program might be able to do it automatically. It seems to me that the program must actually know all the information it needs to do this, so perhaps it would not be too hard to implement. However, if the key change is too great, perhaps some of the notes or chords would be out of range in the new key, and a warning notice might be needed to make this clear that it is impossible. Still I like the idea.

Before multi-riff, I was in the habit of making many copies of the stems of a song, each regenerated, and then cut and pasted a single comp in the DAW, which I know a lot of people did. In that case, transposing wasn't an issue. But with the introduction of multi-riff, which is a real time saver, this feature-request seems like a no-brainer.

Referring back to your original post and its 4 points. converting the track you want to remain frozen but transpose can be accomplished by converting the Track to an Artist Performance File. APF's have been included in BIAB since 2011. They are very versatile and capable of much more than just transposing.

While it is best to do as much editing as possible to a track before converting, it is possible to undo, edit, erase, regenerate an APF. An existing APF can be saved, another created and this process can be repeated as many times as necessary allowing a user to revert back to any of the prior renders. Multiple APF files can be merged into a APF stem.

If I've edited a file and freeze it for more than a short temporary preservation, I consider it to be most likely in a more permanent state, my normal work flow is to convert that track to an APF. It's the safest and most advanced way possible to preserve an edited track in BIAB.

Thanks Charlie. After reading your comment, here's my experience:

- I transformed my frozen RT into an Artist Performance Track (I went back to the manual to make sure I was doing it right). Biab worked a little bit. After it was finished, I didn't notice anything new in the track. I was expecting some change of color or some other way to show me that track now as an APT rather than a regular track. Nothing like that. Ok, I said to myself. Maybe I am not supposed to know.
- so I transposed the song and, obviously, my frozen track now APT was NOT transposed. In fact, I doubt that the APT transformation worked at all. Anyway, I regenerated everything again, and BIAB froze at 97% of regeneration.
Voilà, not-so-rare Biab experience. We love bugs.

I tried again with the same song, same outcome. Maybe the song file is corrupted or something. So I tried with a different song. This time the RT converted to an APT correctly. And I was able to transpose it. BUT ....
1. There's a notification in the middle of my BIAB window showing "generation real tracks 94%", stuck there. I can play and do everything, but with this notification in front of my eyes, like BIAB was still regenerating (it's not - it's stuck). See picture attached. Once again, a bug. I'll add it to my insects collection.
2. Anyway, regardless of this fresh new bug, now I have my "orange", transposed Artist track. Great. Now let's say I want to regenerate (now, ideally, I may want to regenerate only parts of the track, just like a regular track, but even regenerating the whole thing would be a step forward). How do I do that? I looked in the manual, under Artist Performance Track and Regenerating. Nothing found. All right. Let me try the more common approach of "blindly exploring the jungle of options", as it is often the case with us BIAB aficionados. Here's what I found:
- right click on the track, generate / select and generate real tracks (obvious, right?). Not so fast. Now BIAB wants me to select a RT to generate. But the name of the original RT has disappeared!! What if I want to regenerate my APT a month after I worked on it? BIAB should KNOW what RT that APT was generated from, right? Or should I keep a booklet in which I write down the RT from which my APTs were generated?
- I'm persistent. Different route. Right click / track actions / regenerate window. Ok, I click "OK regenerate" and BIAB politely tells me that "There is no Real Track on this track. Would you like to select one?". Ok, now I am convinced that BIAB is making fun of me.

I am running out of options. And patience.
I just don't see how do you regenerate APTs (and much more, as you implied in your post).
I don't see it in the manual.
What I see is the usual jungle of options, sprinkled with our daily dose of bugs.
But I'm sure it's my fault. Would you be so nice to nudge me into the right direction? Once you have an APT, how do you go back to its original RT status? Because that is the whole point: once you have a APT, or a transposed APT, is there a way to revert it to its original RT status?

I turned my beef into a steak. How do I reconstitute my beef?

Respectfully, I think you completely miss the point.
Charlie said that it's possible to regenerate APTs. I have no reason to doubt him, and I'm curious to see how it's done. Or, maybe he's wrong, like you seem to promptly assume, but let's see what he says, shall we?
I imagine two possibilities:
- if APTs are nothing but rendered audio, then it's impossible. It's like restoring your steak into a beef.
- if APTs are rendered audio files with some attached information about how BIAB created them (which RT, which tempo, which chord / riff for each bar, plus whatever other info is needed, which must be relatively little information given the small size of BIAB song files) then yes, in theory BIAB should be able to read that information and recreate the RT that originated the APTs. It seems clearly possible to me. Maybe it's not the case yet, contrary to what Charlie says, but it is certainly possible. In fact, it seems like a desirable feature to have, as that feature would allow you to "freeze" any track, so that you don't lose all the fine tuning that you performed on that track, while knowing that once you've frozen it you can always go back and change something (like transposing, changing tempo, changing some riffs, whatever).
Hope it's clear now.
You have the steak, but if enough information is there then yes, you could go back to the beef - in this case.

Good discussion topic. I only wish this was better understood by all, including me.
Here is what GPT says.

<< But I'm sure it's my fault. Would you be so nice to nudge me into the right direction? Once you have an APT, how do you go back to its original RT status? Because that is the whole point: once you have a APT, or a transposed APT, is there a way to revert it to its original RT status? >>

It's not really a fault but just inexperience with a little known but very powerful option. So, how do you turn your steak back into a side of beef as MoultiPass asks? Here's the way to revert an APF to its original RT status:

RT click on the track to reveal the drop down menu
From the drop down menu, select and click Track Actions\Kill Audio and OK out of the window
The APF and orange color will disappear and the original RT will display
Click generate/play button to generate a new RealTrack -- The track is blank at this point so, play will not generate a new track. Generate/Play button (F4) is required.

Originally Posted by DrDan

Good discussion topic. I only wish this was better understood by all, including me.
Here is what GPT says.

Almost good information but look closely and the Chat GPT is referring to Artist Performance Tracks that are prerecorded tracks by professionals for PG Music - Not a user created Artist Performance File. They are not the same.

They are the same but different. They are created exactly the same but serve different purposes to BIAB projects. Artist Performance Files are utilized in projects more as a UserTrack. They were introduced in 2011 along with the Record Audio feature. At that time, Legacy Tracks could not contain audio. The APF was how audio files could be converted so that any Legacy Track (except drums if I recall) could contain audio. This freed up the Legacy Tracks to be used to record new Midi or RealTracks and provide SGU files with more than just the 7 available tracks and single audio track. The Audio Track, while the only track for recording audio into BIAB, the recorded audio could be converted to an Artist Performance File and moved to another available Legacy Track resulting the one audio track could be used multiple times in a project.

The BIAB Mixer functions as a MultiTrack Recorder and back in the old times, audio engineers/mixer/ producers would use a 2nd recorder to bounce tracks to so that more tracks could be recorded than the main recorder had. For instance, a four track like the Beatles used in their early records, while recorded on a 4 track recorder, engineers used a 2nd recorder to mix and bounce the original 4 tracks to a track on another recorder and free up channels by erasing the audio from those tracks and recording new material. The Artist Performance File served the same function in the BIAB Mixer.

As I noted Artist Performance Files are not considered Artist Performance Tracks but a form of UserTracks. Here's what PG Staff say about Artist Performance Files in the UserTrack Forum:
<< -----
7. 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 audio files saved as either WAV or M4a files and are associated with the BIAB SGU file of the same name. When a Track from the BIAB Mixer is converted into an Artist Performance File, the converted file is automatically saved in the same folder as the SGU file and the converted file has the same name as the SGU file and will open whenever the SGU file is opened.

As I said Biab can be made to do this without creating any wav files, the transpose amount is just set to the source wav/wma file section in the frozen SGU:

Transpose Frozen Tracks

Thank you Charlie
I tried your suggestion. I have a feeling right now that this area of BIAB is buggy, and that should be addressed. The reason I'm saying this is that I tried going from frozen to APT with another song (not the one that gave me problems yesterday) and I got the same problem that I reported in my previous posts (no transformation of a frozen RT into an APT, rendering notification stuck in the middle of the screen). That makes it 2 songs out of 3. I think PGM should be looking at this (the process of transforming a frozen track into a APT, it seems buggy to me).

So, I tried again with a brand new song, built from scratch, just to test what you suggested. It worked as you said. Yay.
But ... there's a but.
Now, I really don't want be annoying, at this point I'm insisting on this feature (or lack thereof) just as a way to suggest a potential improvement for PGM, nothing else. It's not a crucial feature, at all. I'm not bothered by this, at all. I'm just trying to help out for future developments.
Once you go back from APT to RT you have to regenerate, as you rightly said, because once you "kill" the audio, the track is empty. Well, that defies the purpose of it all (or, actually, half the purpose). What I have in mind is not just going back to a RT status (which is half of the story), but going back to the specific combination of riffs / audio segments that constituted my frozen track. Now, again, this may look like reconstituting the beef from a steak, but for the reasons I explained above, I don't think it is necessarily so. I think BIAB has all the information to do, potentially, just that. I'll explain again what the advantage of this would be, maybe for those who didn't follow this thread or never thought of this possibility.

1. Let's say you have a RT that you carefully, painstakingly "designed" by using the partial regeneration feature, or the multi-riff feature (truly wonderful features, by the way). You designed the perfect solo part with all the phrases that you like. Now you freeze it of course, cause you don't want to nullify all your work by accidentally regenerate
2. Days later, or months later, you realize that you need to transpose it, because your singer needs a little help. Or maybe you want to change the tempo a little bit. Whatever. You can't do that with a frozen track. What you need to do is to transform your frozen RT into an APT and that allows you transpose as much as you want, just like Charlie described. That's all fine and well (provided that you don't encounter bugs, like I did).
3. This is half of the story. The other half is ... let's say that, at this point, you want to change just a couple of bars of your beautiful solo, without losing every other part of it. You can't. You can go back to RT status, like Charlie suggested, but now you have to regenerate the whole track. Your well designed solo is all gone, if you go back to RT status. Yes, you can rebuild it piece by piece, like you did the first time, but it's pretty annoying to redo everything that you already did in the past. Not the end of the world, obviously, but pretty annoying. Maybe you don't remember all the beautiful phrases that you originally found (obviously there's workarounds: you could use two tracks for the same solo: one with old phrases that you want to keep, while muting the phrases you want to change, and one with only the new phrases, generated from the same RT, loaded in this second track ... it works obviously, but it's not very elegant, and it can become cumbersome when you want to change more and more things over time)

In summary: either you have the flexibility to change parts of your frozen track (but you can't transpose it or change tempo etc) or you have the flexibility to transpose and change tempo if you go from frozen to APT (but you lose the ability to change parts of the performance: at that point, either you change everything or you change nothing). This seems the current state of affairs to me. And, it seems to me, that this limits somehow the wonderful flexibility that the multi-riff and partial regeneration features potentially provide.
Again: this is not too important. I'm not claiming that it is. There are many more important issues or potential improvements to be made, for sure. It is just another suggestion for PGM. Hope it helps.
Thank you again Charlie.

You are not being annoying Mr. Thomas. I applaud you sticking with it and curiosity to know more. You're correct through points 1 and 2.

Briefly about point 3, it's possible to retain an Artist Performance File audio, restore it as a RealTrack for editing and not lose any material. Meaning a APF can revert back to a RealTrack without regenerating new material and losing that well designed solo. BIAB provides the flexibility to change parts of the performance and retain what you want to save.

The attached screenshots show the WAV form as it appears in each step of converting and restoring the track from a RT to a APF and restored back to a RT.
I've reached the maximum attachments with this post so I will add a screen shot of the original and restored track side by side in a separate post.

Screen Shot of the original RT and the restored RT after conversion to an APF and back to a RT.

Charlie thanks again. But I'm afraid I miss one step. How do you get from the empty track (after the "kill audio" procedure) to the end result, the restored track, identical to the original one? Thanks

Press the Play button.

Ok Charlie. Thanks again. But it doesn't work me. I'm more than one way. I'm just giving up. It's not so important, and 2024 is at our door so ... we'll see if there's improvement in this department. What I found (in my case):
1. it works exactly as you say only if you don't touch the APT. If you transpose it, for example, and go back to the original RT as you suggested, the original composition (the original riffs) is lost. You have to regenerate. But, if you can't touch the APT, what's the point of going from unfrozen to APT? I don't see the point, really. I'll just stick with the frozen track. But that's not all ...
2. Sometimes, when I go from frozen to APT (without touching anything, no transposing, nothing) the volume of the track is drastically decreased. So much so that even when setting the APT volume to maximum is not loud enough. Very odd.
3. Sometimes, when I go from frozen to APT, the whole track is moved ahead of some significant time (like more than a bar), so that the APT track is completely misaligned with everything else. Very, very odd.
Again, I'm not wasting any more of my time or anybody's time on this. As I said, it's not important. It might be useful that PGM takes notice that the APT transformation seems to be a buggy, buggy feature. At least in my case, in my system, with my songs. Your experience may be different, I don't know. I'll just live with frozen tracks (which seem to work fine) and, if I need to transpose something, I'll just use an external DAW or an audio edit app.
Thank you for all your help, anyway.

Drag it to WAV then drag in an empty track then transpose:
EDIT: this is just an easy way than messing around converting to APTs.

Thanks for sticking with the process as long as you have. Regarding your points; In point 1, the first six words up to your bold 'only' reflects my experience with Artist Performance Files. I've used Artist Performance Files since 2014-15 era and never experienced the issues from all of point one after the bold only - through the entirety of points 2 and 3. I can't speculate to why you get results different from mine. I don't believe it's buggy for no other reason that as much as I use the feature, I would have run into the same errors you have and I haven't. My demonstrations prepared for you were all quick and easy one take renders no different than all other times I've done it in the past. Musocity's copy/paste method also works and I believe a better option than exporting to a DAW.

Charlie
I have no reason to doubt what you're saying. I'm sure that the APT is a very solid feature. Still, I did experience those bugs that I mentioned. Most likely there's something wrong with my system or my installation, who knows. Good thing I'm not going to use APTs, as it seems that they do not allow to do what I was looking for. Anyway, I just upgraded to BIAB 2024. Maybe the fresh install will fix some things for me. And I'm excited about the new features. Life is good, in December :-)

No problem sir. I'm sorry we couldn't get it to work for you. Don't know why as the program can work like you want it to but seems to have a mind of its own. Maybe PG Staff will see this and prepare a patch to get it working the same for everyone. Enjoy 2024 and the new features.

How to transpose frozen tracks in BIAB 2024

Select Edit Riffs, select all riffs to transpose:

I've put in a feature request to add this, on account of how popular this particular forum thread is.

HOWEVER

Please keep in mind that transposing a frozen track would require more pitch-shifting up or down, and pitch shifting more than a semitone or two tends to sound weird and glitchy. This is the nature of the beast, as literally every pitch shifting engine that exists will break down at a point.

If you use Avoid Transpositions in the song settings this will give a better range rather than adding to something that already has +2 semitones.

Correct, however it'll also give you less variation in the riffs BB can use to generate your song with - bit of a double edged sword.