One thing I would like to see would be the ability to add harmony to the soloist (or other channel) based on the current melody contents, but leave the melody line out of the harmony. This would be really nice for live playing. For example, I'm a sax player, and it would be nice to be able to play the melody line live with biab providing backup and harmony but no melody (i.e. biab melody channel muted). If there's already a way to do this I'd like to know.
Thanks!
There are a few harmonies that are designed with no melody. In my system, for instance, harmonies 51 and 52 are "ThreeP -NoMel" and there may be others. Using that on your melody track will create a 3 part harmony from your melody but won't delete it.
If you want, you can then convert the harmony to the soloist track. Since the harmony has no melody, you just get the harmony notes. Now set the melody harmony back to zero (no harmnony) and play on. I had some trouble assigning midi instruments but I am sure it is just something I am not doing correctly.
So you can put a melody harmony on the soloist track. If you change the melody line, don't forget to repeat the harmonization as the melody and the harmony / soloist are no longer linked
Thanks Dave,
I'll see if I have similar styles on my system.
But that's the basic idea.
Now that you mention it, I'm wondering if there's a way to edit/create harmony files similar to how styles can be created/edited and use that feature to create harmonies with the melody line omitted from pre-existing harmony files.
You might like to play around with the "Harmonies Editor" (see the below graphic). This has the option of de-selecting melody.
Suggestion: If you open a harmony file, save it with a different file name so that you don't accidentally overwrite the existing file and lose it.
Regards,
Noel
Also...
If you go to the below link,
http://www.pgmusic.com/videos.bbwin.htmthere is a video at the bottom of the "Archive" section called
"Band In A Box 7: Harmonies". I just had a look at it and it is worth watching. It covers the Harmonies Editor as well as preset harmonies. Even though it uses an older version of BIAB, the principle is still the same.
Regards,
Noel