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#110726 04/05/11 09:38 AM
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Dan45 Offline OP
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BiaB when I was Dan35 or even Dan40....what a difference that would have made!

My only recollection is from many, many moons ago ('96? '97?) when I was playing guitar in a Southern Rock group and the second guitarist was already into computers. He said BB was junk and played me a little up-tempo polka with some not-that-great sounding instruments. That kept me away for yearrrrsss.

For some reason this spring I just thought it would be cool to have something that could do what this program does. It was first recommended to me again on a Jazz Guitar forum, and then I got an awesome deal from Guitar Center Online and wound up getting the OmniPack for a fantastic price (<$400).

I have barely even scratched the surface of what all's in there yet and so far I am very pleased. It's amazing what this program can do!

It reminds me of Pandora radio, where you can create your own station based on a particular artist and it will find other artists that match similar criteria. Only this is way more detailed.

Anybody else out there have a similar story where they were led astray by a well-meaning friend??

Curious,
Dan


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I guess I was fortunate.....didn't have a friend like that.

I've been using BIAB since its introduction in the 90's and have always found it to be a useful product.

Glad to hear you took the chance and I hope you get full enjoyment. You will find this forum a wealth of information, and a great group of people with answers to your questions. Welcome!!

Now, I wish I had discovered gold, oil, NASA, East Indian spices, etc. Then I could probably afford the latest update.

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Hello, Dan. I think you are now the closest BIAB forum member to me. I live an hour south of Albany, and also an hour north of Albany in the summer. I've played a lot of jazz in the Albany area over the last 50 years. Got a concert tonight in Poughkeepsie.

It took me two years to realize what BIAB was. In the early 1990s, a salesman in Sam Ash told me about BIAB but did not demo it. I wish he had. At the time, I was composing with a little Yamaha QY10 hand-held sequencer and didn't think there was anything worthwhile on a computer. I kept reading about it, though, and once I did buy BIAB, version 4 (I think), I realized how it completely blew away the hardware solutions, and I haven't looked back since.

Pandora is wonderful on its own, too. I'm an artist on Pandora. The 'problem' is, when I listen to "my" channel, or one of the channels I've made of other musicians I work with, I wind up spending more money to buy music I hear and like!

Matt


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Matt,
An hour south puts you fairly close to me in Wallkill - across the river(west)of Poughkeepsie.

Good luck (and licks) at your gig tonite!!

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Thanks Dennis. I'm on the other side of the river, near the Connecticut line in Pine Plains.


BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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Hi Matt,
Is "The Chance" still there in Poughkeepsie? I played ther once in the 80s.
It was a great place to rehearse. Awesome sound system at the time.
Wayne,

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Wayne, yes it is. I played there in the 80s too.


BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors
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Wow, that's great that there are people close by that are doing this!

Dennis, I had a decent tax refund this year and bought the wife a new laptop and guess what- there was still some left over! I'm glad I decided to jump in all the way. I'm not a Jazz player yet by any means but just playing along with some of the exercises has been a lot of fun.

Matt, I almost died laughing when you mentioned the QY-10....that same friend that turned me off to BB also sold me his used QY-10.I never would have remembered what that little thing was called. Luckily for me I had six years of piano lessons during grade school so I eventually got back into real keyboards again.

Matt there are a couple jazz clubs around here that I know of....The Van Dyck, of course, and Justin's. Let me know next time you're up this way. What instrument do you mainly play?

Okay, I got one more story....about five years ago I worked indirectly for NYS Dept of Corrections and got to see the inside of just about every facility from death row down to the shock camps. I think Walkill is a medium security? Anyway my group was walking through there with the Gen Pop all around us and I heard music coming down the hall as we passed the cafeteria. I looked in and there was an auditorium and a band made up of inmates was jamming to "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. It was quite the group, very diverse and obviously not all metal heads but you could see an attitude of sharing so everybody got a turn. Some guards were watching them and they seemed to dig it too.

Well thanks for the warm welcome and I look forward to more posts!

Dan


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Matt- I just checked out your link. I really like your music, so I downloaded the album. You know, my brother and I used to follow Nick Brignola and Endangered Species around back when we were both single. That was some band. I'm a huge fan of Chuck D'Aloia on guitar, too, I even took a couple lessons from him. Did I hear right that Nick B. had passed? What a loss.

You're the first Flugelhorn player I've heard about since Chuck Mangione, and that's going back a long ways for me. I saw him perform with his band out at Chautauqua Institute in western NY when I was in Jr High. My elementary school music teacher knew Chuck from college, I want to say Eastman in Rochester? You would probably know.

Have a good evening.


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Dan, thanks for getting my CD download. Appreciate it.

Yes, Chuck Mangione was at Eastman and I first heard of him when he did his Friends and Love concert. I've played with a few of those same folks. Do you remember Gerry Niewood, Chuck Mangione's sax player, who died last year? I just played his tune, Joy, tonight in concert.

I was playing flugelhorn in Albany around the same time, with Nick Brignola, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnnette among others. I was Nick's trumpet player in the 70s. Many gigs at the Van Dyck. Yes, he died a few years ago.

I've played a few times at Justin's to back up friends. My instruments are flugelhorn, doubling on trumpet, soprano sax and flute. Piccolo trumpet in church.


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Dan45... welcome aboard.

The best time to purchase BIAB is in late Decembers... directly from PG Music... many here upgrade every year at ridiculously low unbeatable prices (~$130)... even the first-time buyer's price for the EverythingPAK is at a huge discount... so maybe next time... LOL


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I first purchased BiaB as a simple DOS program back when it first came out. It was good, compared to what was out there then, especially combined with a nice external synth box, like the good old Sound Canvas.

However, there were a few people I talked to that couldn't stand it. Too computerish they said - and compared to a live performance, the simple styles it had back then, were indeed a bit stilted. Things have changed so much, and as I have bought upgrades along the way (not every year, but often enough), each new bunch of features has spurred me on to further use. I've spent more money with PG Music than any other single software company, and I don't regret it !

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Hi Dan,this the best software in the world for songwriters and musicians..Im glad youve come on board you will not be disappointed Frankie


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Quote:

Dan45... welcome aboard.

The best time to purchase BIAB is in late Decembers... directly from PG Music... many here upgrade every year at ridiculously low unbeatable prices (~$130)... even the first-time buyer's price for the EverythingPAK is at a huge discount... so maybe next time... LOL




Thanks for the heads up!


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I've heard of the Roland VSC...was this just a software version of a hardware synth module?

With the Real Tracks and Real Drums its basically more like a sampler now anyway so you don't get those computer-ish sounds. I still like the midi though, it's quick and easy and I can drag stuff into Sonar and use EZ Drummer, TTS-1 and many other soft synths I feel like.

I still think Coyote sounds pretty good though.


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Frankie, thanks!


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I bought my first at Fry's in Dallas 2004 and couldn't believe I could have a band playing chords my friends couldn't. After a week I snail-mailed a money order for the mega-pack CD and started looking for virtual instruments to make the midi sound better. It really was the best software I ever used ,also used Power Tracks that came with it for editing midi notes. Still learning from forums here !

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Quote:

I bought my first at Fry's in Dallas 2004 and couldn't believe I could have a band playing chords my friends couldn't. After a week I snail-mailed a money order for the mega-pack CD and started looking for virtual instruments to make the midi sound better. It really was the best software I ever used ,also used Power Tracks that came with it for editing midi notes. Still learning from forums here !




Yeah it makes chords I can't play, too!

I used to get sooo bogged down tracking all the instruments one by one. I love playing bass, but I'd end up spending wayyy too much time noodling around with that, then really struggling with "Session Drummer" in Sonar (that has midi editing probably similar to Power Tracks). Then I bought EZ Drummer, which is great, but you still have to listen to thousands of little fills and try to string them all together? Really? That's when I started to lose it!

This is one product that really fills a serious need, I wish more people knew about it.


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The first time I heard BIAB I was stationed in Germany and I went to hear a friends band and he was using it. He got me started by giving me a copy. (Back in my youthful days I used a lot of pirated software) He also gave me my first midi card for pc which still have somewhere. Midiman 401. I'm happy to say that I've been "Legally" purchasing BIAB since they went to Windows 3.x. My friend had the DOS version which he used with a laptop, he had a phenomenal singer which made everything sound great! I was hooked. I didn't start using BIAB for gigs until 2000 when I retired, now 11 years later I'm proud to say if it wasn't for BIAB I wouldn't have a gig. I've said this before but I still have musicians come up to me and ask me who does my sequences or where do I get my mp3's.


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Quote:

The first time I heard BIAB I was stationed in Germany and I went to hear a friends band and he was using it. He got me started by giving me a copy. (Back in my youthful days I used a lot of pirated software) He also gave me my first midi card for pc which still have somewhere. Midiman 401. I'm happy to say that I've been "Legally" purchasing BIAB since they went to Windows 3.x. My friend had the DOS version which he used with a laptop, he had a phenomenal singer which made everything sound great! I was hooked. I didn't start using BIAB for gigs until 2000 when I retired, now 11 years later I'm proud to say if it wasn't for BIAB I wouldn't have a gig. I've said this before but I still have musicians come up to me and ask me who does my sequences or where do I get my mp3's.




That's great news, that you can gig with it. I just don't have time to seriously gig right now but I'd love to do a little solo thing with some accompaniment, on a part-time basis and without having to make everybody's schedule all work and what not.

BTW you also reminded me of another issue which I brought up on another forum but so far no response there so here goes...

I have one of those E-Mu 1616 breakout boxes that runs off the laptop card and it's been gathering dust for a couple years since I got busy doing other things besides mobile recording. In the meantime that laptop died and the next couple I bought didn't have that big card slot any more. So does anybody even still use those? I thought I could sell it or something. I'm pretty happy with the M-Audio Delta that's in my desktop, it meets my needs and is very stable. In fact, the E-MU had so much in there it was like too much of a good thing. I even still have my old Aardvark LX-6 from my first DAW built in 2001. Still faithfully producing music on the kid's computer for their games and stuff.


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