I'm a new user and have had some success putting together songs combining both midi tracks and real instrument tracks generated by RB, but have experienced some frustration with song endings that call for a sustained last note, for instance holding beat one of the last measure for sustain on all the instruments using the chord symbol followed by three dots. It is generally not a problem with midi-generated tracks as you can go into those afterward and edit the notes and their durations. But with real instrument-generated tracks the sustain does not seem to work. It would be nice to, for instance, have a realdrums sustained cymbal hit on the last note, or a sustained realbass note, but can't figure out how to do this. I'm wondering if any of you have suggestions as to how you deal with this. Thanks.

In the generating section of Realband (the band just below the rows of icons) there is a box for generating a 2 bar ending (adjustable). You have to select the number of bars in the 'from-thru' settings to allow for those two bars, not in front of it now, but there is a way to get it to cooperate better.
It is still not as good as it could be.
I'd suggest a possible adaptation to the real tracks that offers a sustained chord ending as an option... lets pile on the wishlist section of the forum!

Right. We've been told by the top boss that Holds are not currently implemented for the RealTracks.

Time for a lot of old-time fadeouts until we get something that works on holds...



--Mac

I think PG has created a monster because all the rest of it is so good that it just seems silly to leave off the ability to add an actual ending to a recording. At this point, I think it's obvious to PG that there are some gaping holes in the program just from a practical sense - getting a usable end product. However, you can get creative and make it happen. Here's an idea that worked for me...

Many of the slow tempo styles sport sustained chord endings. I was playing around with one of the country styles - Fast Country Ballad w ResGuit (120 RS) - (though I'm a jazz guy myself) and it has the same really abrupt ending that just sort of cuts off. I know they call it Real Band but there's nothing 'Real' about that. The last chord of the progression I typed in was a C chord. So, I started a new BB file and did 8 measures of C using the style _CBALAD1 Slow Ctry Bal w PedSteel (65 RS). The ending for it was actually a nice sustained C chord. So, I saved it and opened my first song in Real Band and pulled the wave files from the slow version into it. I went to the ending chord of the slow one and copied separately each instrument's ending and pasted them in to the last chord of the first song. Though not perfect, the result is a nice sustained ending. There's not a Res Guitar in the slow style but I just pasted the steel guitar ending over it and it works fine.

Here's a link if you care to listen.

http://www.hotfrets.com/countryExample.html

I know it's a lot of work but unless you happen to have a bass, guitar and other instruments handy to record the endings in live this is a good alternative.

When I started putting together songs made up of real tracks, I thought that is was peculiar that the endings in all of the real tracks styles were so abrupt. I talked at length about this another thread several months ago but when I started to exam the wav files in my real track folders I found that there were sustained endings at the end of all of the files that I looked at, but these endings never actually generated in BIAB. I was able to get sustained endings in my finished product by selecting the track of the appropriate key, copying the ending that I wanted, and pasting it for each instrument in SONAR. Its a bit of work but it was the only work around that I could come up with that let me get a decent sounding ending.

When I'm building a song in SONAR, when necessary, I'm treating slices that I've made of real tracks like they are acid loops or clips.

That's actually darn good. I think on the guitar you may have also put a rather quick fade on it and even improved it more, but overall, wow! Beats the heck out of trying to match and sustain with most midi instruments, regardless of how good a sample you have.

I'm also excited about trying Keith's solution. Thank goodness for the forum.

Sorry,
My inept comments were aimed at smapthang and KeithS.

one more try - swampthang. There I got it. Whew. Sorry

I also experiment with the endings beginning on (a) an even numbered bar and (b) an odd numbered bar. Sometimes, this makes a difference.

I've done all of these different tricks at one time or another. For drums, one of the reasons I bought Jamstix is because of the great sounding drum kits. Using midi I can get any kind of cymbal roll/sustain or other ending with the drums and it blends right in with the RD track especially their Yamaha and Slingerland kits. Those sound so perfect with a RD track that I would guess that PG used a Yamaha kit for the recordings. Another thing to try is create a bunch of tracks using different instruments/styles just to hear if there's something hiding in one of those tracks that can be cut and pasted for the end.
This is a real problem that's for sure. We all went around and around this in another thread last week.

Bob