Hi,

I have a song that I set to a realtrack style. So to share this song with a BIAB user who has the most basic version I decided to make a copy of it but switch it to a midi style. So now it does not play all the instruments that the test of the midi style says it has. Should doing this not be as simple as choosing a different style and you are done?

I just tried creating a new BIAB file with selection of a mini style and I get the same thing. All I get are the drums which are realdrums.

Thanks,
John

John,

What do you mean by "switch to a midi style". What style?

Also, by default, BIAB is set to automatically replace midi styles with Realstyles if a suitable one exists. Unless this is diabled, it's possible that a Realtrack-based style has been substituted for the midi style.

Your best (and to mind 'easiest') plan of attack with your friend is simply to save the normal version of your song as SGU or MGU and send it to your friend as an email attachment. (When he opens it, his version of BIAB might make the necessary substitutions.)

In that email, tell you friend that if tracks don't load when he opens the files then he should change the style to some particular style and give him the names of a couple of suitable style. Note, though, that it might be that he doesn't have the midi style you name, either, because the entry-level version of the program have reduced midi styles as well as Realstyles.

If you give him some general style specifics, that will help him home in on a suitable style if he has to choose one of his own. For example... EV 8, tempo 110, rock.

Hope these thoughts help,
Noel

• my latest song: What A Crazy Thing (cowritten with floyd jane)

Hi Noel, thanks for your response.

The midi style is one I selected in the style picker where I selected for it to show only midi styles. I just grabbed one that was jazz swing. So the instruments show as yellow except for the real drums which shows as green. No instruments are muted. All instruments are balanced middle. It should be playing the midi tracks but it is not. The only thing I did is go thorough and change all my songs to have real tracks (it set them all to MRU extension). Now it seems I can not run midi tracks for some reason. It still saves the copy as MRU where as in the past the midi use to be MR1 etc. Maybe I need to do a reinstall (I am running the external USB drive).

The style selected is definitely midi because all tracks are yellow except drums.

I like your idea of just sending my file with the real tracks style mainly because that sames me work. However this problem really should not be happening and I am concerned the same problem will occur on his/her end (it seems like a bug to me since it should not be happening - it should not be complicated). I actually for pure practice purposes prefer midi because it is a lot faster (I hate waiting for the track build and for practice I don't need perfect sound). I only changed them all to real tracks because others in our jam group complained they were not real tracks. Only about 10 in our jam group of 27 have BIAB. The real book chords are too complex for them so I am moving to The Vanilla Book to try and get higher participation in the jams. The idea is to create 400 vanilla book BIAB files in midi so they can buy the $135 basic version of BIAB which mostly has midi tracks and they can practice being sure they are using the same chords that BIAB will be playing at the jam. Most in our jam group will not pay $600 for this program (I am predicting zero will pay that kind of money just to practice). I think on the other hand they may be willing to pay $135 for the basic program. So if this is a bug it may be costing PG music money.

John,

Have you created your songs using midi files from the internet? This could be causing the problem you're experiencing.

I don't know anything about MRU files. They are not something that I have ever come across with BIAB.

BIAB generally saves files with MGU settings (if there is a melody present on either the Melody or Soloist track) of SGU if there is no melody.

If you have loaded a midi file into BIAB and, as a consequence, the melody track hosts that midi file, then the file will be saved as and MGX file.

If the in-built midi styles are used, these are the ones that start with ZZ and they used to be available from the old Style menu, the file saves as MG1, MG2, etc., (I think but I'm not sure).

When you say that you can't run midi tracks, what do you mean by that? Do you mean that they automatically change to Realtracks or that BIAB generates and plays but you hear no sound?

Regards,
Noel

• my latest song: What A Crazy Thing (cowritten with floyd jane)

Have you tried to disable RealTracks? Under preferences click on Realtracks/RealDrums and uncheck enable. This will disable both and only allow MIDI to play.

Note that RTs and RDs tracks will not sound identical to the MIDI versions. If you want them to be very similar you will need to purchase Melodyne Editor. They will not be perfectly identical as Melodyn can't convert slurs and a few other techniques but the notes will be the same. You may need to do a little editing as of right now no audio to MIDI is perfect. Only you can determine if such a purchase and time is worth it.

Lastly the quickest way to achieve this is to search the Internet for a MIDI file of that song and work with it in RealBand.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

Are you getting any midi sounds? Or is only audio playing (RD, RT's). If that is the case then you sound synth is not connected.

One other thought, I assume you are not simply removing the RT's and replacing them with a midi patch? If that was the case, many real tracks do not have any midi data associated with them. So in this event replacing a RT guitar with a midi guitar would not generate any sounds since there is no midi data on the track.

OK, that is all I got.

Hi guys thanks for jumping in.

To Noel:
The midi styles were not from the interenet. They are the ones that come with BIAB.

After your reminder about the ZZ, I tried one I use to use almost exclusively which has the name ZZJAZZ.STY and it does the same thing (only the drums real track can be heard). I saved this file after I changed to style ZZJAZZ.STY and once again it still saves it as .MGU where as it use to save it as MG1 if I remember correctly (for sure it had a number at the end).

I tried closing down BIAB and restarting BIAB by double clicking on the file which has the ZZJAZZ.STY style to see if it would try and regenerate. Yes BIAB does do a regenerate so it seems to think it is a real time style when it is in fact a midi style. So this seems to be the problem. Switching to a midi style does not tell BIAB it is a midi style attached to the file. So essentially because it is trying to run a real tracks style it can not play any of the midi tracks. Having said that I tried creating a brand new BIAB file while BIAB was running and I set it to a midi style and once again it could not play the midi tracks (not sound on them).

To MarioD:
I tried clicking preferences, RealTrack Settings, and unchecking the top left checkbox called "Enable RealTracks" and this did not fix the problem.

I tried clicking preferences, RealDrum Settings, and unchecking the top left checkbox called "Enable RealDrums" and this took out the real drums so I hear nothing. The program is still trying to generate realtracks.

I reset these checkboxes so I don't screw myself up in the future.

To Dan:
I am not getting any midi sounds. Only the real drums is playing. There are no real tracks in this style so that would explain why read tracks are not being heard. I would say that your idea is correct except for the fact that BIAB is still trying to regenerate and as far as I can remember it never did a regenerate process when I was running the above mentioned midi style in the past (I did that for maybe 4 years before I set up the jam group).

So just in case, how would I check to see if the sound synth is connected? There have been no changes to this machine as far as I know.

My Final Comment:
It could be that no one ever goes back to Midi style except me and therefore this is the first time this bug has surfaced. Maybe I should report this to PG support. I could tell them it is still trying to do a real tracks style regenerate and does not realize I have selected a midi style.

John,

Thanks for the added information. It's very useful.

I use midi-only styles regularly and I have not experienced any problem with them. This would tend to suggest that there's a setting on your computer that needs adjusting.

The mostly likely setting is found in "Options | Preferences | MIDI Drivers".

Have a look at the top image (IMAGE 1) below and follow the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and set those settings the same that I've indicated on the graphic. These setting include making sure that the "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" (#3) is selected under "MIDI Output Driver" and removing the checkmark from "Use VSTi/DXi synth" (#5) for the moment.

If there is still no sound...

...after making the above settings (which are the default settings so it's ok to leave them although I suggest activating the VSTi/DXi synth if you have one installed), then your problem is probably due to the fact that the MIDI volume is turned down on your soundcard. This is a Windows setting (not BIAB).

To access this, right-click on the speaker icon. With my Windows 7, that icon is shown below (#1 on IMAGE 2).

Still on IMAGE 2... Select "Playback Devices" and then select "Speakers" (#3) and "Properties" (#4).

Moving to IMAGE 3...

Now find the MIDI Synth volume and check that it's turned up. Also check that it hasn't been muted. If it is muted, there will be a red circle with a diagonal line through it that covers the speaker icon. Just click the speaker to remove the muting.

Does this help?

Regards,
Noel

Also...

If any of the ZZ styles work for your song that you want to share, use one of those. Your friend should have those, too.

Regards,
Noel

• a recent song I wrote: I Like Walking Beside You

Hi Noel. When I click "Options, preferences, MIDI Driver" I get the attached message. So I did that install and it fixed the sound on the missing tracks. However I still get a reasonably short regenerate. Would that be due to the fact that the drums are a real track? I suppose each new real track adds more regeneration time.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

John

I'm glad you got it sorted.

And, as you say, because the Realdrums need to be generated from audio files, there will be a slight delay while this happens.

Substituting Realdrums from MIDI drums can be disabled. Just go into "Options | Preferences | Realdrums" and deactivate the "Substitute Realdrums for MIDI" checkbox. Then you'll have MIDI drums when you load the style.

Regards,
Noel

• an early 2017 song (co-written with Janice & Bud): I Won Life's Lotto

Okay thanks.

I was checking out the Melodyne Essential editor and that is pretty amazing.

Yes it is. It's great what it can do. If you're thinking of purchasing something, you check out zPlane too. They have something very similar. There are also clips on Youtube for both.

This is a great product for monophonic tracks. It will not work with polyphonic tracks.

Also, AFAIK, nothing will convert RealDrums to MIDI.

So then am I correct in thinking that they use the Melodyne editor product to fix up each new track as they create a recording. For example a vocalist's track after they have laid it down while listening to the rhythm section with headsets. Also any solo lines such as guitar leads, trumpet, sax, etc.

I thought there was a product someone was working on that they hoped could pick up the individual notes of a band, guitar chord, piano chord, whatever. I don't remember the name of it.

You can open your Biab SGU in RealBand save it as SEQ, your friend can open it in his RealBand with all the RealTracks & Drums, he can also save it in his RealBand as an SGU and open in his Biab just so long as he's not on a Mac

Thanks Pipeline.

I just tried reading the BIAB SGU file into real band. The timing of the melody is out of sync and it seems to have skipped the drums which seems strange since everything is a real track in the SGU file. I thought there was never an issue with this. Later I also saved it as SEQ and tried double clicking it and BIAB is not assigned to windows as a Program for this file type. So I opened BIAB with another file and tried (file, open) in BIAB and it does not show the SEQ extension as a type of file it can read. I am not that good with real band actually and some of the members of my group may be even less skilled. This idea may not work that well.

I am thinking now that I will let them download the SGU version with my chosen realtracks style and their BIAB may simply detect that it does not have my style and theirs would assign a midi style or maybe even allow them to choose another real track style. It has been a long time since I did this when a friend sent me a BIAB file with a style I did not have. I think it happened twice and one time it did the conversion and another time it had some sort of issue. Since I can't really remember what happened that well I think I will just have to assume for now it will work out on their end. It will save me a lot of time if it does. They may have a much newer basic version of BIAB that I did way back then so the odds should be pretty good that any bugs in this conversion process will have been fixed.

Does this work:
Transfer Biab Songs to RealBand

Watch: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ltdqsiudd96lubp/BB_to_RB.mp4?dl=0
Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ltdqsiudd96lubp/BB_to_RB.mp4?dl=1

An SGU can be opened with RealBand & Biab, an SEQ can only be opened with RealBand or PowerTracks.

Melodyne Essential is monophonic. Melodyne Editor is polyphonic version, see here:

http://www.celemony.com/en/melodyne/what-is-melodyne

Scroll down to the bottom for the comparisons.

I have Melodyne Editor as it will work with chords. In fact one time BobH played a G major instead of a Gm. In Editor I took the B and moved it to a Bb, i.e. G to a Gm.

I would wait to see if there is a sale on it.

PS - I just checked and Sweetwater has $100 USD off sale going on right now:

https://www.sweetwater.com/c701--Celemon...89_t-1510578345

Good luck.

Thanks Pipeline. I will check into it once I get my jam group going again and either they have a problem with playing my BIAB file or I decided to bring some of the jam recordings from the Behringer UFX1604 into real band. I suspect the second reason is the most likely reason I will get around to checking out your video.

Thanks MarioD. It could be a while before I got interested in Melodyne since right now I am in the middle of trying to restart my "jazz Karaoke jam group" which might some day be renamed "Jazz BIAB jam group" :-) However I have a friend who records a lot of stuff and puts it out on soundcloud and facebook. He might be interested. I passed the info on to him. I hope he does get interested then I can ask him about it every month when we go for beers :-)

Now I remember you put me on to the UFX1604 and I bought 2, Thanks again.
Behringer UFX1604 Recording Midi

You bought 2 UFX1604! That's cool. I am glad it worked out :-)

I would not mind learning to feed a guitar triple play midi pickup into the mixer somehow and record it in real band. Not now (too overloaded) but someday.

It shouldn't be hard to record your triple play into RB. Just pick a softsynth, set your input to your triple play and your output to a master or bus.

So if I understand correctly I get a soft synth (a software running in my computer the takes midi input and creates synth output) then have it take the input of the triple play and feed the output to the master or bus of the mixing board. The triple play comes with its own software so I am assuming that is classed as a soft-synth software.

Currently I feed BIAB from my notebook/laptop computer into the mixing board 12th channel and that goes out to a USB hard drive to record all the tracks. So I am wondering if this setup would work.

1/ Wireless Triple play into the notebook via the wireless box which is likely plugged into the computer's USB (same computer which is running BIAB) and into the soft-synth software (maybe triple play's software).
2/ BIAB coming out of notebook to the mixer via the 1/8th inch phono.
3/ Triple Play Synth software output coming out of the notebook (maybe via the 1/8th inch phono).

The 1/8th inch phono output works fine according to my ears :-)