I bought BIAB again (I purchased it in 2005 and in 2008) because of one particular feature: The Conductor. I am a solo musician going to play out, and I want to be able to stomp on my foot switch and jump around the song as inspiration hits me... you know, extended solos, repeat a verse, bail out...

But it totally does not work! Even customer support confirms it does not work. Then I found some old postings from back in 2012 that were complaining about it. WTF?

Has anyone ever used it like this? I can't be the only one out there that wants to use this product in this way. Other than this I love it - great for practice and for backup.

Perhaps if more people complained about this the chances that they would actually fix it would go up. Comments?

John,

Regarding the foot switch ...

I cannot see anything in the Help file in relation to the Conductor that says it's foot-switch friendly. It's certainly midi keyboard friendly and can also be operated using the QWERTY keys on a computer keyboard.

Can you please give me some insight into what you do to get it to jump back and forth between sections, loop sections, etc.? How do you control where it goes with simply a foot switch?

Also, have you tried it with midi-only styles to see if there is a difference?

I know very little about the Conductor and I'm eagre to learn more.

Regards,
Noel

Hi Noel,

If you didn't notice I now accidentally have two forum accounts and two threads open about this topic.

I will eventually use a foot switch (which just sends midi notes) but it doesn't matter if I use that, the keyboard, or click the conductor window buttons with my mouse. The problem has nothing to do with the input method.

I'm guessing that this might actually work with MIDI only - no real tracks. I'll have to test that myself to see.

Thanks for your replies, by the way.

-John

John,

Just in case you don't know ...

To be able to get midi-only styles in later versions of BIAB, it's necessary to disable two auto-substitute options.

These are ...

1. Under "Opt | Preferences | Realtracks"




2. Under "Opt | Preferences | Realdrums"



Without these options disabled, BIAB will automatically substitute Realtracks and Realdrums in place of midi.

Regards,
Noel

So to test this theory, I turned off those settings as you suggested. I created a brand new song and selected a MIDI style. I created sections on the conductor screen and here is what happened:

As the song played, I pressed a conductor key. The black box moved to the CORRECT place in the song but what was actually playing was as if I had not pressed anything - the song just kept playing but out of sync with the chord screen.

Conductor not working has been a big disappointment to me also. I've complained publicly and privately but rarely get even an acknowledgement. I do know that at one time (pre Real Tracks) it did work perfectly.

With modern laptops BIAB has been rock solid and reliable for many years now. I believe the Conductor working well could generate significant sales from people who would use BIAB live. I'm unaware of any competing products anywhere close.

John, OP, you could call PG Music and get your two forum accounts straightened out. It's actually not permitted to have two (I realize it's by accident).

As for the Conductor, sorry, I haven't used it but you're in good hands with Noel.

CORRECTION:

When I have 100% MIDI instrumentation, it works perfectly.

So that's it... Conductor only works with MIDI instruments. I've been testing over and over again... THAT is what they have to fix!

John,

That's a fine bit of detective work. It's handy to know that the Conductor is a midi-only tool. Thanks for posting the results of your work.

Noel

Several years ago I was doing duo's and tried using a laptop and the Conductor. I got the Conductor working fine with both RT's and RD's along with midi of course. What I found worked best was to have it jump at the next part marker. My problem wasn't the Conductor it was using a laptop on a gig in general and trying to get the other person to understand how it works. They're used to simply jumping to a bridge or middle of a verse and expecting me to follow. If you're doing a solo then that's not a problem.

The Conductor doesn't work that way, you need a little lead time and it just didn't work for me. Too big a pain in the butt and I wound up using a Korg PA1xPro arranger keyboard. Everything is played live and I control anything I want, vamp a section, extend a solo, vamp while somebody is talking, change keys, segue between songs, anything. For live gigs an arranger is the way to go not Biab assuming you're a decent keyboard player of course.

The reason nobody is responding with exact directions how to use the Conductor and why PG isn't putting more time into it is because nobody cares because it won't do what we really need it to do. What we need is for it to be telepathic!

We're stuck with manual computer commands and that is simply not good on a gig. If you really need that get one of those 16 pad sampler controllers and you can call up songs with the different elements loaded onto each pad. Hit one and the bridge starts instantly and also shuts off the verse that has been running and so forth for every part of the song.

The vast majority of people using Biab tracks on a gig are either simply hitting play and letting the song play through or rendering the tune to mp3 and running any one of a number of mp3 players from an iPad or other tablets or phones and leaving the laptop at home.

Bob

Yes, that problem has been reported in this forum several times during the last years.