OK guys, forgive me I am only a drummer, so,.....
Anyway, just got BIAB Megapak. I want to make more drumless music for me to play with, and learn more about music to be more musician, and not "just a drummer."
Here is my question, I have entered chord changes from songs into BIAB and gotten some really cool results, but not what I was looking for. I understand styles affect the song results, but the songs, while they sound cool, sound nothing like the songs they are supposed to sound like! LOL! I would like to know how do I enter specific note values, so I can say a rest, followed by 2 1/8th notes played as a triplet, etc.
Really look forward to learning a lot with this program, and sorry for such silly questions to start with.
Thanks in advance,
Tom

Hi Tom

Firstly, Welcome to the forum!

When you mention 'specific note values', do you perhaps mean creating your own MIDI drums, or using the Chords for input but creating a rest on certain beats etc?

You can create a Rest for any beat in a Chord by following the Chord with a period character (1 dot)

From the help:
C. indicates a C chord that is a Rest.

C.. indicates a C chord that is a Shot.

C... indicates a C chord that is a Held Chord.

Nominate instruments that are supposed to play during a rest, shot, hold etc like this:

C.bd will put a Rest on all instruments except for Bass and Drums

Check out the help under "Rests, Shots, and Holds"

You can also Rest only certain instruments

BTW: No questions are considered silly on this forum!

Hope this is at least a starter

All the best

Trev

Hi Tom welcome.

BIAB will definitely be a great investment for your time. It has lots of uses.

But I wondered, if you learnt a little keyboard - some simple stuff, it will orientate you in the world of harmony, which you need to understand, in order to progress. I am just guessing of course..

I started on trumpet, but it was only when I got to play the piano that it all fell into place - its about the visual map of the keyboard, its versatile capabilities.

Z

Hi Tom,

Welcome to the forum. I am new here also. I am not sure just what you are looking for in a song you are trying to create with Band In A Box. Also I also do not have much experience with this software.

I sort of got the idea you may be trying to create a cover tune or some original that you have a very clear idea in you head what you want to hear.

While a ton of stuff is possible, just putting a chord structure in place and picking a style will not create a cover tune. For example, the intro to "Riders On The Storm" by the Doors has a descending organ line that does not exist in BIAB.

To get something like that there are a few ways someone who does not play organ can do it, none of which are simple.
You can write it out note for note in a notation software and have a midi synth play it out. That gets complex real quick even for someone with a lot of technical understanding of both music theory and notation software.

I really understand why a drummer would want to learn more about what other players are doing.

I am not a drummer so I have a huge desire to know more about drum lines and what the drummer is doing and thinking.

There are many demos in BIAB and when you load them you can see how someone put things together and what that sounds like.

I may be best to start with something simple and see how to put that together.

Best of luck with all this and feel free to ask questions.


Cheers,


Billy

Videos and How To's

http://www.pgmusic.com/videos.bbwin.htm

DE

Thanks all! Lots of help! I am headed off to work now, and have onc appointments later this week, and next and,.... LOL! Will go over this when I have a little more time. I appreciate all the help greatly.
So far as the keyboard goes, I had some piano in 9th grade, and picturing a keyboard in my head is the ONLY way I can remember the scales! LOL! Yeah, I try remembering "whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, etc" but it is really the keyboard that allows me to remember!
I don't want to be one of those drummers who does everything he knows in every song, or is playing super hard during guitar solos, etc, you know where the guitar player is looking at you like "You know, it is your turn shortly, what are you going to be able to do you have not done already!" I want to serve the music, and properly participate in the "conversations" or the other instruments to I am adding to the music, not taking from it.
I truly appreciate all the help here, and really look forward to growing!
God Bless
Tom

This is one of the biggest misconceptions of this program. It doesn't sound like a specific song because that's not what Biab is. Nowhere in the documentation does it say you can use Biab to create a song specific cover of whatever tune you're interested in because that's a copyright violation from the PGM's pov.

However, you can do it but you're jumping into the deep end of the power users pool right out of the box.

Without going into a 5 page detailed answer start with the styles. Biab is governed by styles and you can write a style that contains the exact or very close elements of one particular song. Understand though once you write that style it's really only good for that one song. If you use it for a different song it's going to sound like the tune it was written for but with different chords.

The next thing is freezing tracks. Working with midi only, not the RT's you can take a Biab generated bass track for example and going into the midi sequencer edit that bass track to match whatever you're looking for. Once you do that you have to remember to freeze the track otherwise as soon as you regenerate the song again Biab is going to regenerate the bass track according to the style and wipe out what you just did.

The third thing is loops. Lots of songs have repeating patterns or hooks. You can either find a loop of that or create it yourself and put into Biab's loop folder. You can assigned it to any instrument part you want. That alone is a whole other discussion.

That's enough for now, there's other power tricks available but again Biab is not designed for this. It's designed to give you good backing tracks to play along with in a style that could be "similar" to certain songs. For creating covers you're better off using Real Band which is a whole other discussion.

Bob

Not to jump in the deep end of the pool or to hijack this thread but I am using BIAB to do backing tracks for a cover duo and for the most part I am able to get an acceptable backing because we are able to play keyboards, guitar, and guitar synth over top of the backing. How is RB better at making backing tracks? Is it because it is easier to record tracks into? When I tried RB it still uses a style that may not play exactly what I would want. Here is an example (a stupid one at that) I want backing tracks for Louie Louie....all the chord progressions are the same only difference it the starting bar the organ plays a E note then goes to A....not much but a signature start. The chord pattern doesn't change but chorus and verse are played in an entirely different rhythm. I can play this song in my sleep but the best I can do in RB was to get adequate bass, drums, and a simple chord strum. I know I can easily do backing tracks for this playing each part myself in Sonar but I use it as an example that would easily explain the issues I have run into. Don't get me wrong because for what I need BIAB will work wonderfully I just want to understand how to corral it into playing some parts a bit more specifically. Thanks for all the help as this forum has made my learning curve a lot less steep.

Welcome to the forum :-)

Do you own a set of Tux Tails?

I can play the drums

Kidding.

There are demo videos of Biab on the support page. Be sure to go through some of them, they helped me when I had specific questions about Biab.

In the style list, you can search by specific song or band and if there is a match, the styles will get listed in the right column of the style menu. Make sure to have the "All Styles" (top left of menu) hi-lited by clicking on it before entering your search terms. This will eliminate the unnecessary styles that won't match.

Most of the Biab styles were built around specific songs/bands. As an example, the AWB style (Average White Band) was built for the song Pick Up The Pieces.

Or,

Choose the blank.sty 4/4 and start selecting your Real Tracks to "roll your own" style for a song.

If you get stuck on something, this forum is the friendliest on the internet and people help each other here, like family.

Welcome to the family.

Trax

RealBand specifically lets you regenerate portions of tracks or the whole track, create multiriffs and is a DAW so you can cut/paste and copy riffs into tracks once you have created the authentic sound you want. RB allows you to have multiple tracks of the same instrument with each creating a unique version of the chord progression. RB is more intuitive to work with plug-ins and VST's. RB can import multiple audio and midi files. RB is better suited to edit midi files. BIAB is not a DAW and RB is.

Thanks for the help, and the video was AMAZING! I used to edit Video for paid TV programing, what you did was an amazing amount of work! Loved it!

Thanks for answering my question.....seems I need to dig deeper into RB because it sounds like it would be easier to get what I want. I was having an issue with it not playing the style demo when I was using ASIO4ALL and had to switch to MME to get it to work. Still have to sort that issue out. Thanks again.

That's exactly what you do in RB if you need a signature lick or feel that you can't play live because you're playing something else. In RB you simply play the exact part on another track and then fade it in and out as it fits with the generated style parts. Once you get good at crossfade looping with no pops or other glitches, nobody but you would ever tell that you just switched from the backing parts to a part that you created and then switched back again.

Also, you can cop a trick from the rappers and sample a couple bars from a commercial recording and paste that in too. RB will let you import a CD file and convert it to a wav. That's a bit tricker because you have to spend some time using RB's audio editor to get the part to match the key and tempo but it's fairly easily done.

Bob