When my BIAB song uses only midi within the style I can export the tracks and immediately make use of them as MIDI in other software. I wondered if it was possible to also export the real tracks as additional audio tracks to any actual midi tracks in the song?



John Lundrigan

You can export some of the RealTracks as midi as well. I've never done it, but I KNOW there is video tutorial of how to export them as midi. Check out the video tutorials on the main pg website page for more info, it CAN be done.

Trax

Or the HELP file within Biab as well. Export Realtracks as midi.

Thanks Trax, I'll look at that tomorrow

You should be able to export the Realtracks as Audio easily.
If you need them as MIDI it can be hit/miss. Some Realtracks have MIDI transcriptions (done after the fact by others) and some don't.

If you can handle them as Audio in the other software you can easily Export them as such.

John,

This thread will help, too.

www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=414444#Post414444

Regards,
Noel

Thank you for the help Noel. I do realise that when I export to MIDI that I cannot have midi tracks where RealTracks are used. But I thought I could export both the midi and the realtracks audio in similar way to the export of the melody/soloist tracks. I this way I can combine both the audio and the midi in Ableton to complete the song.

Regards

John Lundrigan

John,

I don't think I'm following what you want to do. The title of this thread suggests that you want to export Realstyles (i.e. styles containing only Realtracks) as MIDI. Your above post seems to be saying that your are meaning styles that contain a mixture of MIDI and Realtracks.

As rharv has indicated, Realtracks can be exported as MIDI if they contain notation. I talk about this in one of my later replies in the thread that I linked you to in my previous post. Such notation is MIDI and it's a transcription of the Realtrack. The transcription is not always 100% accurate. As mentioned in the linked thread there is a setting that needs to be activated to save Realcharts in a MIDI file.

If I am interpreting you wrongly, please give me an example of a style and the tracks it contains and what you'd like to do with those individual tracks. That will help me understand your request a little better.

Regards,
Noel

Hi Noel, basically I have been exporting my BB songs to Ableton as pure midi. The BB song had all midi styles. I use the 'Save as' MIDI to do do this. This worked a treat. When I tried this with songs that contained RealTracks I discovered that I only got midi data from the BB song tracks that contained midi and nothing from those containing RealTracks.

Of course this seemed obvious to me since the BB RealTracks are just audio. But I wanted to know if I could export the MIDI to a single misi file and also have the rendered RealTracks that I could also insert as audio tracks in Ableton. I had done this to some extent by taking the BB audio melody track and adding that to the midi in an Ableton project.

I hope I've done a better job at explaining it this time.

Regards

John

John,

Thanks for the added information. I suspected that that was what you were meaning but I wasn't sure. Thank you for clarifying.

A couple possibilities spring to mind...

IN BIAB
(see IMAGE 1)

1. Right-click on the BIAB drop zone(#1 on IMAGE 1).

2. Select 'Options' (#2).

3. Activate 'Drag n Drop' and deactivate 'Drag MIDI as audio' (#3).

4. Resize both BIAB and Ableton so that they sit side by side on the monitor and then drag tracks from BIAB to Ableton.

5. If that doesn't work, drag tracks to the drop zone and then navigate Ableton to \bb\DragDrop to find and then open the files.


IN REALBAND
(See IMAGE 2)

1. Open Realband.

2. Load the SGU/MGU file and generate.

3. Save the tracks using "Render | Save all tracks (wav/MIDI)" option.

Regards,
Noel

Thank you very much Noel. The RealBand solution using Render works just fine for me. I did try the BIAB solution but there seems to be a tug of war with the sound card when Ableton starts while I'm in DAW mode with BIAB. But the RealBand solution is just fine.

One thing bothers me a bit and I think you told me how to calculate this when importing my audio track to Ableton. It's how I align the tracks to start at the correct time (including the MIDI). You've helped so much that I almost hesitate to ask.

Regards

John Lundrigan

John, this could happen if both BiaB and your DAW are using ASIO drivers. I have BiaB using MME drivers and my DAW using ASIO drivers and I never had a problem. YMMV

That's a good point, MarioD. It didn't occur to me.

John,

In relation to lining tracks up, all you need do is:

(a) Set the tempo in Ableton exactly the same as in BIAB/RB;

(b) Keep in mind that, by default, both BIAB and RB will save a 2-bar count-in at the beginning of each track.

The above means, that if you load every track in so that it aligns to the left edge of the Ableton's work area, then you song will begin at bar 3 (assuming you've matched tempos between RB and DAW).

What I do in Reaper is to set my bars so that they begin at -1. This means that bars -1 and 0 cover the 2-bar count-in and my song starts playing from bar 1 (just like BIAB).

Hope this helps,
Noel

I can't thank Mario and Noel enough. Your advice has let me get on really well. I changed the drivers in BIAB to MME as Mario said and now can easily drop the tracks to midi or wav according to the track type.

When I had the tracks in Ableton at the same tempo as the original I was able to set warp on the tracks and that allowed me a reasonable range of tempos for the project.

One thing I did find odd though is this. When I rendered to WAV/MIDI from RealBand I didn't get an option for the destination folder, the rendering was saved in a sub folder of the original BIAB song which was used as a source for RealBand.

I thought that since these were stand-alone audio and midi that I could move the folder to another location. After moving the folder I found that the only tracks that would move to Ableton were the Midi and the RealDrums WAV. All the remaining RealTracks would not transfer to Ableton. I thought that perhaps I had exited RealBand before rendering was complete, so I tried again and confirmed that it was saved but I got the same result after I moved the folder. I tried playing the tracks individually using VLC. The RealDrum file did play but the RealTracks indicated an error saying that it could not find the file path. I moved the folder back to where it was generated and, what do you know, the RealTracks played properly and I could move them to my Ableton projevct. I can't really understand how it remembers the original location?
It's not fantastically important but it is a puzzle.

Kindest Regards

John