PG Music Home Forums User-to-User Add-ons and UserTracks for Band-in-a-Box Plenty of issues & shortcomings still to fix (for staff & others interested)

There are presently very evident shortcomings & limitations to the UT concept as a whole, and we can only hope it's something they will continue to address and work to improve in future updates. I have found that making even the simplest patterns work smoothly without these cut-offs, pitch and 'bleeding' issues that have noted, has been an utter pain that require a LOT of tweaking and trials.
Among the primary shortcomings of this whole feature my experiments have revealed:

1. Timing is extremely sensitive, i.e. needs to be ridiculously precise, much more so than you'll get on the official RT's, and this goes for note lengths as well (no overlaps or lingering legato - and NO REVERB!). This becomes even more important with fixed-note instruments, such as pianos, vibes (just my luck) and so on, or else you get very weird pitch distortions on chord changes, particularly when it's a progression not used in the UT's creation template. On the flip side though, if your instrument is guitar or others where bending notes is a natural occurrence, you're more likely to 'get away' with the slight timing inaccuracies.
2. Any attempts of syncopated playing needs to be planned with great care, if not avoided altogether (this is especially true of swung patterns). Especially try avoid playing on the upbeat just before the next chord/bar, or else the engine's 'anticipation' feature kicks in and tries to treat it as a part of the following chord. Once I discovered this, I had to rework a lot of my playing and omit all those lovely 4th bar entries I had done, because of this issue.
3. And of course, the 1-minute template is rubbish if you hope to get any sort of decent results in terms of actual usage. For a glaring example, they don't account for any 2 chords-per-bar instances at all. So use it as a learning/practicing tool, then go make your own chord progressions (and lots of them!), that's my advice.

The best way then to reveal these issues in a UT on testing, is to make a song with chords that were not included in whatever template was used to base that UT on.

p.s. On a personal side note, I'm almost finished making ending templates for my vibes sets. Stay tuned!

There is a learning curve and improvements to be made with any new feature introduction. I think in a case like this it's difficult to imagine the many ways a feature maybe used until it is released.

The UserTracks feature still needs much improvement before it can move from the novelty column and into the gotta' have column. In my mind major improvements include:

(A) 3/4 waltz time compatability
(B) accomodate holds, shots & rests without using a work around
(C) accommodate eighth and sixteenth note pushes.

+1

Bump

Good tips and suggestions Icelander. Thanks. We plan on updating the Usertracks features in January, for a free latch, and hopefully those suggestions can be addressed then.

That's great news, Master PG! I emailed the UT supervisor with much more detailed reports on this subject around the time we were beta testing for my platform last spring, which should be of further help.

And many thanks to Mr. Fogle for bumping this thread, which obviously resulted in catching PG's notice this time around, so a bump well "spent"

Peter Gannon promised a patch for the shortcomings in the user tracks for january.
It is now almost may, four months late.................

There has currently a lot of post January beta testing of new features and fixes - that were put on hold for the 2016 Mac version that has been released early, coming closer to the features of the Win version and eventually the same release date maybe - so now they have a bit more time up their sleeve we could very well see these user track fixes in an update for both Mac & Win - but don't hold me to it.

Maybe they could release some decent professional templates to bring user tracks more inline with real tracks.

I agree with Pipeline. Priorities change as circumstances demand and there's no doubting whatsoever that PG Music have been working really hard since before Christmas! The program has undergone huge changes for both Windows and Mac. I'm really glad to have this latest version!

+1

I just wanna say that, in my personal opinion, the UT feature is absolutely crucial for Band in a Box. It's really a wonderful, fantastic feature, but still needs MANY improvements to be really usable with a quality comparable to the official real tracks. To me, this is so important that I would be perfectly happy to have NO other improvements at all for next year, but a perfectly working UT feature.
Please PG !! :-)

Bump..Bump..Bump

So are these the fixes we are all still waiting on ? :

3/4 waltz
holds, shots, pushes & rests
Avoid Transpositions in UserTracks
Intro starts on this bar (2 or 3 bar intro/count-in/lead-in/pickup for bars -1 & 0,1)

Can anyone add to this ?

Hello, yes that's true function UT and essential dan band in a box and still missing 3/4 waltz hold, shots, shoot and rests Avoid transpositions in UserTracks Intro begins on the bar (2 or 3 bar introduction / countdown
Yet Peter Gannon had announced in December 2015 that his team would ensure that the UT is resolved.
  It would be nice if Peter Gannon or Andrew could give us an explanation.
Balbuena thank you

I'm bumping this old thread just to ask if there's any improvement in the UT engine in BIAB 2018. I'm eagerly waiting for my BIAB 2018 hard drive, but it's gonna take some time - I live overaseas - and I couldn't find any info on possible UTs improvement in 2018. Anybody has any info about it?

Jon, I haven't tried this feature, but I believe there was nothing announced during the testing of version 2018 that changed it.

According to some comments Andrew made some items were fixed. UserTracks now work with 3/4 waltz time signature and they worked on improving the endings.

But that's also just about all they've done, and I've yet to check just how well the Waltz fixactually works (they keep presenting far better RT's for anything I'd been working on, grr).
The function still absolutely fails to detect anything from the Chord Settings, meaning no Shots/Holds/Pushes will work (all they did to 'fix' that was force all UT's to go silent during shots/holds, which obviously did not FIX anything!), the playback still randomly makes the instrument jump up/down an octave for absolutely no apparent reason (sometimes even during a single chord/bar!!), the function still randomly omits endings of the UT when it can't find a 100% match (ie. faulty pitch stretch), and don't even get me started on that massively strict timing requirements followed closely by even worse cross-fading mechanism (which I just can't wrap my head around considering how amazingly fantastic that same mechanism works on the RT's).
And the sad thing is, I've now reiterated yet one more time some of the main problems with this function but right now is "New version release + sales month", so absolutely NO ONE AT PG WILL DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS!

Ok, minor rant over...I feel better now

Well Eddie,

Your "minor rant" did a pretty good job of listing some of the UserTracka shortcomings that are still outstanding. Continue listing if you think of any more.

I think it is good for all known UserTracks shortcomings to be available for viewing in one message. That way anyone that attempts to create a UserTracks can have a good idea what to avoid while the PG Music software developers, testers and support staff can easily discover what the known UserTracks issues are.

And here I was feeling all better!

But of course you have a point, and fortunately the above rant, plus other comments earlier on this thread, do address the bulk of it - or at least the most serious things.
You sometimes need to push the bigger stones away in order to discover the smaller grit anyway, you know.

I hope they will address this. I don't think the UT's we develop will ever fully compete with the ones they produce, so there is no major competition there. But I believe this feature should provide the same capabilities as RealTracks (as you have said, all supported time signatures, as well as shots, holds, and rests, as well as defined 2-bar endings).

It would seem to me that all those could be read from the template file to define those elements (i.e., if I have a hold chord in the template file, that automatically gets translated as a hold for the UT).

Great idea! Why not put it on a wishlist?

That's a good idea - even though I'm sure that at PG they are well aware of the current issues with th UT features.
Anyway, here's my wishlist:

- allow more flexibility in the timing requirement, as Icelander already stated. I think this is really the most relevant problem, because it really, really limits the quality and the kind of "usable" UTs that we can make. Icelander explained the issue very well, I'm not going to repeat it here. But this is really crucial.

- limit the amount of key transposition. This is also a big issue. Right now you can avoid wild transpositions from the BIAB playback engine, but you have to create 12 keys UTs (and set the BIAB playback to avoid any transposition), which is an enormous waste of time, hard drive space etc (imagine creating 12 keys performances for ALL variations, chords, substyles etc). Instead, if you create, say, a 6 keys UT, the BIAB playback engine should transpose at most by 1 semitone, not more (which would just fine, you dont lose much quality at all if audio is transposed by 1 semitone or two). As far as I can see, this is not what happens now. You get wild transpositions, no matter what. So, the solution could be:
A. make sure that the BIAB playback engine transposes only for the minimum necessary amount of semitones, at any given chord
B. give the user the ability to set the maximum amount of transposition (as a global setting, or as a song setting)

- implement holds, stops etc

I'm still hopeful

Look at the POP style templates posted in 2014 shortly after the UserTracks feature was introduced. You will see that you must make 50 UserTracks to enable the UserTracks to work properly over every available tempo between 50 - 300 BPM. The default is enabled so Band-in-a-Box makes it easy to overlook just how many RealTracks are needed for a guitar part played at different tempos. Take something "common" and "standard" like the Hank series of acoustic guitar rhythm tracks. Look inside the folders and you'll see there are bunches of audio tracks. You'll also notice there are bunches of folders to accomodate tempo changes. There is a lot of audio for just that one series. Same with some of the piano RealTracks. I understand why it takes a lot of audio to create a UserTracks once I look at RealTracks more closely.

RealTracks has an option so RealTracks automatically substitute when tempos change. Is that true of UserTracks? Don't know. Do we still need 50 UserTracks to cover all available tempos since élastique Pro by zplane has been upgraded to V3.1.11? Don't know.

Truthfully, the main use I've found for UserTracks is to fulfill a musical arrangement need specific to a song project. For example you want a specific guitar riff to play. Within that constraint a UserTracks works fine but outside of that song many people likely will not find the UserTracks very useful.

I think that, much like Bob Norton and his MIDI styles, were UserTracks to work mostly the same as RealTracks (and yes, it should take more than one minute and one take to create quality UserTracks) with holds and shots and ending and multiple chords and tempos, then that opens up a market for semi-pro players to create additional commercial-grade content for BIAB. But until all the issues are resolved, it's going to be perceived as a novelty and folks won't invest the time in creating that content.

The MIDI stylemaker (even with it's shortfalls) is pretty stable and mature and has a lot of capability for the average user to make really nice styles in the same quality as PGMusic provided styles. I think an overhaul to the StyleMaker user interface is in order, but it does work and it works well if you know what you're doing.

The same should be true of the UserTracks process.

My $0.02 worth.

Jim
it's true that if you want to create a good quality UT you need to record a lot of audio. That's out of the question. Also, tempo is not really the problem with UTs. The problem, as I see it, is that:

1) even if you create A LOT of audio, in many case the UT will still sound bad, when changing chords, because of the extreme timing precision requirement that Icelander was talking about. Now, for some UTs this is not too much of a problem (when you don't have legato between chords, for example - I did create some UTs that sound absolutely perfect!!). But for (many) other kinds of UTs this problem makes it almost impossible to have them sound good, no matter how much audio you record, no matter how precise you try to be. Anyway, on this issue Icelander is much more competent than me and I think he explained it already very well

2) the other problem is also not about the tempo, but about key transposition. If during playback you set the song so that key transposition is allowed, with UTs you get some weird transpositions that don't seem to make musical (or logical) sense. If I have a recorded audio with the C major chord, and BIAB needs to play a Db major chord, I would want BIAB to transpose my C chord by 1 semitone, which would be totally fine. Instead, what happens is that I hear transpositions of MANY semitones (so for example not from C to Db, but from G to Db, or so ... I'm just guessing here), which is not only sounds really bad, but it's also unnecessary, since BIAB can use my readily available C major to be transposed into Db!
So, at the moment, there's only one solution to this problem: to record a 12 keys UT, and forbid key transposition with the song setting parameter during playback. Which is ok, it does lead to good results, but it's VERY inefficient. Why not allow the user to control the maximum number of semitones that BIAB transposes during playback instead? It would be a much more efficient way to manage the issue. In this way, I could record audio not to (unnecessarily) cover all keys, but to make a better UT with more variations etc.

Jford,
I totally agree with you. I think that PG will address this, eventually. I don't see why not, really. But BIAB is a very complex program and I guess that UTs are not a top priority. I think it's understandable. Maybe many users don't care about UTs, I dont know. I guess time will tell.

The simple answer to this rhetorical question is: Because it's redundant, since what he was basically proposing falls under what the function is already supposed to be able to do!
And specifically requesting for a function to actually work is not something any of us should ever have to make around here, for any function

I have to agree and I'd even argue that as things are right now, by using the Stylemaker approach coupled with some decent sound plugins, you're far more likely to get dependable results.

I just spotted this in the midst of your li'l "essay" there and thought I'd clarify: The answer to that question is No.
See, the Tempo swapping RT's are all listed and clearly defined (e.g. at what tempo one should take over from another) in a specific file, for which there's no equivalent assigned to Usetracks (nor can we apply any of its very confusing 'UT settings' to define our own ourselves). As for the stretching engine, that one does work on Usetracks (as it does with any audio file used in the program), but you would still want to create specific UT for each given tempo range (like I've done with my EleFfred sets for example), if your goal is to be able to confidently use it over a very wide tempo spectrum.

Eddie,

Thanks for the clarification.

I propose a good starting point is for PG Music would be to add an explanation for each setting in the UserTracks Development Settings screen. The explanation should be added to both the Band-in-a-Box and RealBand user manuals. I can't find it in either 2017 version.

That's been one of my annual wishlist requests since 2014.

Mr Gannon,
thank you, that would be surely very useful.
However, I have a feeling that it wouldn't solve the problems that have been highlighted in this thread, but I could be wrong of course - for example, the "beat / bar markers" section in the settings is still "mysterious" to me so, I don't know .. maybe knowing how to use this setting would help in decreasing the artifacts that are heard when chords change in UTs with "legato-like" performances? I'm not sure. Anyway, explaining these settings would certainly be a very welcome help, and at least it would help us to have a better picture about what are the areas in which the "UT engine" needs improvements, and to clarify what users can and cannot do with UTs at the moment.
Thank you for listening!

Hello to all please excuse me, I do not speak English so I use a translator.
Could Peter Gannon tell us if the usertrack problems mentioned above are likely to be solved in 2018, thanks for the response and good music to all.

Jim: >>> I propose a good starting point is for PG Music would be to add an explanation for each setting in the UserTracks Development Settings screen

Jim,
Yes, thats a good idea. We should get to that in Jan. 2018.

Balbuena: >>> Hello to all please excuse me, I do not speak English so I use a translator.
Could Peter Gannon tell us if the usertrack problems mentioned above are likely to be solved in 2018, thanks for the response and good music to all.

Balbuena,

Hopefully we can address many of them.

Peter

Hear hear!

Oh, and if this is indeed happening, then by all means please make sure to provide some video clips to go with, especially for the obscurely named UT "Development" section - and with audible examples of what changing those many confusing parameters actually sound like when checked/unchecked (very important!). That whole section is in my view the very heart of UT (or perhaps the 'brain' is more fitting) and the essential key to creating a UT product worth the effort in the first place.

p.s. I guess my 'rant' wasn't quite as finished as I thought after all

I was Very Excited when User Tracks were first added to BIAB. But then, based on the issues with them I have just assumed they had been abandoned by PGM. Does this thread mean they are going to be finished and fully implemented? It has always been a great idea.

bumpety bumpety bump ..... this rough & rocky UT road definitely needs (and deserves) to be overhauled.

Eddie,

Unfortunately RealTracks holds and shots require special handling. In Windows holds are contained in sub folders under X:\bb\library\Holds, Holds_340, Holds_352 or Holds_375. I'm not sure where shots are stored. Because of that limitation I disagree with you that it is a reasonable assumption that UserTracks should already be able to support shots and holds. Nice if UserTracks could from the beginning? Yes!

One way PG Music could help users to manage shots and holds would be for the user to create UserTracks sub folders named shots and holds and then place songfile \ audio file pairs within their respective folders.

Another way would be for PG Music to add shot and hold checkbox identifiers on the UserTracks Development Bar Screen.

However, there is some good news to report. The 2019 Band-in-a-Box Help file now includes a description for each of the options on the UserTracks Development Bar Screen. Also, earlier releases include a feature where the Audio Edit Window allows the user to set a marker that tells Band-in-a-Box (and RealBand?) the location where an audio riff begins.

+1

The RT Holds/shots are stored here
X:\bb\RealTracks\Library\Holds\
X:\bb\RealTracks\Direct Input\Library\Holds\

they have them there as it is a common Library and and different RealTrack use the same hold/shots files, this feature was added later to RealTracks they were recorded by PG on a same/similar guitar as the artist used to record the RealTracks.
With UserTracks they are all different user instruments so you can't share a common Library.
So yeah, include them in a sub folder if that would help the code.

I haven't found anything like this in the downloadable manual, nor the online one. But maybe that's not what you're thinking of, if you could clarify or point me in the right direction?

Btw, if you're just thinking of the yellow pop up help tags text, then don't bother as those don't actually explain anything of any use to anyone

I don't know if UserTracks should be classed as Abandonware ??
I wanted to try swapping a RealTrack with a user track like here
Home Made Flamenco Realtracks

I thought I could do it with this one Guitar, Acoustic, Strumming AcRockBright Ev 120.zip as it has A B parts, holds and you could change the hold number to your usertrack holds, as you can copy the holds folder, rename the hold files and replace the audio with yours, see
Good Ear Needed

I got Holds-67 to work as a new custom hold by renaming all the wav to SH867x.wav and renaming the references in Holds_867.xm2 then I set the RealTrack to that hold in Soloist > Soloist Maker Edit > More and it all seemed to work.
The holds have something along these lines: C Cm C7 CMaj7 Cm7 Cm7b5 Csus4 C7sus Caug Cm7#5

Sounds about right to me, yup
I certainly know I'm not making them anymore (haven't for quite a while now) until the team shows some inclination of intent in doing the necessary improvements.
As for the rest of your latest post on this, it just further shows the potential is still very much there... which only makes the whole thing that much sadder to reflect on.

Personally I'm just not bothered anymore, got other things more worthy of my aggravation I'm sure

I don't know if you use Reaper but you can create them with REATRAK https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=212645

I haven't gotten into Reaper, no, but then I honestly don't find the creation process all that hard, and to me actually the most fun part is the creative aspect of this (very broken) feature.
It's the technical stuff that irks, the post production tweaking, and setting all the crucial correct rules in the correct places, and the things that flat out just Don't Work, and the... crap, now you got me all worked up, just when I've said I wasn't going to be bothered anymore!

REATRAK fits them by color association for different sections marked by color and has shots n holds, you can keep bars linked together for riffs or drum sections
each of the sections are represented by a color (like EZDrummer)
play_anywhere
count_in
intro_post_fill
intro
intro_fill
verse_post_fill
verse
verse_fill
verse_ending
bridge_post_fill
bridge_fill
bridge
pre_chorus_post_fill
pre_chorus
pre_chorus_fill
chorus_post_fill
chorus
chorus_fill
chorus_ending
drum_riff
hold
shot
rest

I'm sure all that sounded so simple in your head, Mr. Programmer Mentality

Anyway, first things first, I'll at least check out if any of this actually works on my platform, ta for the tips.

Yes Mac/Lin/Win

Eddie, sorry my update wasn't clear. 2019 BiaB for Windows Help or F1includes a description of the UserTracks Development Dialog Window, see the screenshot below. Hopefully the same information will be available in the 2019 BiaB for Mac release.

Very good. I think I'll actually save that screenshot for further study, ta

That's worth a look, then

Bottom line is still this:

Until PG team realises that the only way to properly implement the concept of Usertracks, is that everything is designed exactly the same way as with their Realtracks, with the only difference being where the audio track comes from, the result is always going to be disappointing and fall much too short of the goal.

You two (Fogle & Pipeline) were sort of getting to that conclusion in your latest posts when you started talking about the S&H part of the equation, and it's "only" taken 4 years to get there! - But at least you got there well before PG has ....

Maybe they have realised that if they do this there will be competition for PG RealTracks in the market place ?
I can create RealDrums with this in depth tutorial Making RealDrums Styles with Band-in-a-Box®
There is a short Tutorial Make your own UserTrack with Band-in-a-Box® 2014 and higher
I can't find Making RealTracks with Band-in-a-Box®

Maybe if I create up 12key soloist UserTracks and put each one in a RealDrum package,
this way it will play in the right section in the right place, play the whole bar without dividing it up, I could change the UserTrack (RealDrum) at any bar to another or substyle variation, they won't over transpose.

LOL that's my life here, always looking for workarounds.

Who's up for a challenge ? I'm just worn out from beta testing from late Nov til now !!!

Here's a Midi Flute in C and Cm, there is a 2 bar count-in with 1 bar lead-in,
there's 4 4 bar endings, you can set 2 to Aending and 2 to Bending or duplicate them and have 4 of each .
It sounded ok with Kontakt factory library Flute with no reverb,
I had the A playing with the sustain switch and the B playing with staccato.
Here is some info on substyle variations this is where drums have ^ on the end of the name.
This way you can use this for different keys Major or minor.
You just transpose the below midi to the 12keys staying in octave range of Kontakt or another VI for each substyle variation.

FluteClassicalPopEv8^
in the root of that folder you will have all the wav files for each key
and in the respective sub folders you will have the txt file that points to
the wav name for particular key, you should only have to create 1 text file
that is renamed and the source wavename=FluteClassicalPopEv8^_120_Style-C.wav inside the text file, then put 1 in each folder pointing to it's respective key wav.
In the txt you can add the sections as below,
6) duration of the pattern in bars, I think keep this 1, 2 bars that way it
should look for other different sections from the source file to fit on the next bar so it's not playing the same 4 bars in a row from the source file.
If you get enthusiastic you can put other tempos in just like drums.
; in front means the line is commented out, irrelevant
; after at the end just has a comment what the line is

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bkeb5a7mc8g7y7h/RapidComposer-Flute-Kontakt-C-Cm.zip?dl=1

Info here Drums Sub Folders

more useful info User RealDrums and Drums picker

More info here to add drum names to BB drum list and memos
http://www.realband.org/tutorial-drums2.html

more if you get stuck Making RealDrums Styles with Band-in-a-Box®

All patterns are defined in the text file using lines of text containing seven elements, with each of the seven elements separated by a comma. The seven elements are: 1) the text "pattern", 2) type of pattern, 3) section definition (A, B or all), 4) weight (how often the pattern will be played higher the number more often played), 5) Mask (restrictions on where the pattern can be played), 6) duration of the pattern in bars, 7) the location of the pattern in the style wave file.


pattern,Normal,A,2,1,2,75
pattern,Fill,A,1,0,1,58
pattern,PostFill,B,8,0,8,3
pattern,Ending,0,6,0,2,114
pattern,Count-in,0,5,0,2,-1

Here are some examples of 'A' patterns:
pattern,Fill,A,1,0,1,8
pattern,PostFill,A,8,0,8,1
pattern,PostFill,A,5,0,1,9
pattern,PreFill,A,4,0,2,7
pattern,Normal,A,2,0,1,3
pattern,Normal,A,5,3,2,11

Here are some examples of 'B' patterns:
pattern,Fill,B,6,0,1,32
pattern,Fill,B,5,0,1,58
pattern,PostFill,B,4,0,2,17
pattern,PreFill,B,7,0,1,57
pattern,Normal,B,5,1,2,75
pattern,Normal,B,2,5,2,64

Here are some examples of '0' patterns:
pattern,Count-in,0,5,0,2,-1
pattern,ending,0,1,0,1,33

Here are some examples of special-case endings:
pattern,ending,Aending,5,0,2,37
pattern,ending,Bending,5,0,2,77


You could even create some shots and hold with a single note,
but the problem is drums use the same for shot or hold ???:

Like patterns, shots are also defined in the text file using lines of text containing several elements: 1) the text "shot", 2) type of shot (0 for shot or hold, 1 for pushes), 3) the bar number of the shot in the style wave file, 4) the number of ticks (1 beat = 120 ticks) before or after the bar number the shot occurs, 5) the duration of the shot in ticks, 6) weight, 7) volume of the shot


Shot,1,41,-1,349,3,110 ;kick
Shot,0,41,-1,349,2,110 ;kick
Shot,1,41,349,250,4,100 ;snare
Shot,0,41,349,250,3,100 ;snare
Shot,1,42,120,777,1,80 ;crash and kick 1
;Shot,0,42,120,777,1,80 ;crash and kick 1
Shot,1,43,418,774,2,80 ;crash and Snare
Shot,0,43,418,774,1,80 ;crash and Snare
Shot,1,45,233,405,7,90 ;crash2 and kick
;Shot,0,45,233,405,7,90 ;crash2 and kick

Shot{ Kick (applicable for Brushes & Sticks) },1,183,0,634,1,90
;Shot{ Kick (applicable for Brushes & Sticks) },0,183,0,634,1,90
Shot{ Snare with Sticks },1,184,155,475,1,90
;Shot{ Snare with Sticks },0,184,155,475,1,90
Shot{ HiHat with Sticks },1,185,151,158,1,90
;Shot{ HiHat with Sticks },0,185,151,158,1,90
Shot{ Crash 1 with Sticks },1,185,310,158,1,90
;Shot{ Crash 1 with Sticks },0,185,310,158,1,90
;Shot{ Crash 2 with Sticks },1,185,469,316,1,90
Shot{ Crash 2 with Sticks },0,185,469,316,1,90
Shot{ Crash 2 with Sticks, choked },1,186,306,348,1,90
;Shot{ Crash 2 with Sticks, choked },0,186,306,348,1,90
;Shot{ Crash 3 with Sticks },1,187,175,761,1,90
Shot{ Crash 3 with Sticks },0,187,175,761,1,90
;Shot{ Crash 4 with Sticks },1,188,457,634,1,90
Shot{ Crash 4 with Sticks },0,188,457,634,1,90
;Shot{ Tom 1 with Sticks },1,190,132,634,1,90
Shot{ Tom 1 with Sticks },0,190,132,634,1,90
;Shot{ Tom 2 with Sticks },1,191,287,634,1,90
Shot{ Tom 2 with Sticks },0,191,287,634,1,90
Shot{ Floor Tom 1 with Sticks },1,192,442,316,1,90
Shot{ Floor Tom 1 with Sticks },0,192,442,316,1,90
Shot{ Floor Tom 2 with Sticks },1,193,279,475,1,90
;Shot{ Floor Tom 2 with Sticks },0,193,279,475,1,90
;Shot{ Cross Stick 1 },1,194,276,475,1,90
Shot{ Cross Stick 1 },0,194,276,475,1,90
Shot{ Cross Stick 2 },1,195,272,951,1,90
;Shot{ Cross Stick 2 },0,195,272,951,1,90

5) Mask

A Mask can be used to specify that a pattern should only be used a certain number of bars after a part marker. It only applies to Normal patterns, and all other patterns should be given a weight of 0 (0 means no mask).

Here is a list of the possible masks, and what effect they will have:

0 - No mask: This pattern can be used anywhere
1 - Odd bars only: 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, etc. bars after a part marker
2 - Even bars only: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, etc. bars after a part marker
3 - 3, 7, 11, 15, etc. bars after a part marker
4 - 4, 8, 12, 16, etc. bars after a part marker
5 - 5, 13, 21, etc. bars after a part marker
6 - 6, 14, 22, etc. bars after a part marker
7 - 7, 15, 23, etc. bars after a part marker
8 - 8, 16, 24, etc. bars after a part marker
etc.

Many drum beats use 2-bar rhythms that then repeat, so it's very common for the "1" and "2" masks to be used. If you have assigned a "1" mask to several Normal patterns, and a "2" mask to several others, you will always be sure that the 2-bar grouping remains consistent. Just remember that you have to make sure that there are enough patterns to cover all possibilities. If you have only patterns with "1" masks, and no patterns with "2" masks, then Band-in-a-Box® will not be able to find any patterns for even bars. The safest thing to do is to use a mask of "0," but this may not be the most musical approach. A mask of 4 is often used for more subtle fills that would highlight 4 bar phrases. Masks higher than 8 are not commonly used, as it would mean that the pattern would be played very rarely.

*Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding* - We have a winner!

No, seriously though, unless the whole thing really was as bad of a case of "half-baked idea" as you can get, this very conclusion always seems to have been the plan from the start. Just this week's interview with Toby is an example right there. No sooner had the interviewer mentioned "you can create your own", and one of the first things to come out of Toby's mouth is "You can sell it"!
So clearly they have to have envisioned some positive angles to that inevitable "competition" element, and I've been trying to tune into that mentality for a couple of hypothesis from that standpoint:

1. Making the RT's is very likely one of the most resource-demanding part of BBox's creation, and almost certainly the most time consuming one. So maybe that's one advantage of this kind of pseudo-delegating the task to the users. At any rate it potentially frees up a lot of PG's time at least, time that they (understaffed as they are) could then invest much more into the technical sides of their software.
2. Making the RT's with these highly seasoned professionals is obviously very beneficiary to set the standards of quality work, that's for sure, but on the other hand these seasoned pros are not going to come cheap. So again, pseudo-delegating via the Usertracks contributions can potentially help there, even if the audio quality is invariably going to vary considerably as a result. And who knows,. there's always that chance of a "discovery" among the user creations, which in turn could potentially be of some value to PG themselves. I mean, I have certainly heard several high-quality performances from fellow users in their work, regardless of if they think of themselves as pros or "just a hobby" musician


But as this whole bulk of a thread has been saying all along - none of any of the musings are going to make any difference until the feature itself is actually working and living up to its expectations!

Erm, quite... I presume the "challenge" part is to convincingly pretend to have understood any of what followed from there, then?

Try this, it only has a few keys, I will do the rest if you think it works ok. Select the song key over on the right under variations.
EDIT: new link
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l98a4fwn8p0jyrz/FluteClassicalPopEv8%5E-10key.rar?dl=1
put it in your Drums folder then click rebuild in the drum picker, I think they fixed the Mac so it's the same as Win with ExtraDrumFolderNames.txt
"This file has list of UserDrums not found in PG's list of RealDrums"
if not you may have to add it to Applications/Band-in-a-Box/Data/PGALLDrumFolderNames.txt



Tags to:
Applications/Band-in-a-Box/Data/DrumStylesInfo2.txt

Info to:
Applications/Band-in-a-Box/Preferences/RDUserMemos.txt

Worth a shot, sure. I'll check back in here with results once I have the chance to test this, stay tuned.

in each folder just rename 04 to 40 in each text file should be B bar 40 it was playing bar 4 that is an A, will upload another, just need a new dropbox no space left.

pattern,Normal,A,5,0,1,33
pattern,Normal,B,5,0,1,34
pattern,Normal,A,5,0,1,35
pattern,Normal,B,5,0,1,36
pattern,Normal,A,5,0,1,37
pattern,Normal,B,5,0,1,38
pattern,Normal,A,5,0,1,39
pattern,Normal,B,5,0,1,04

Oh crap, I have to do edits?! I must admit that when I signed up for this I did under the presumption of this being a a ready-made thing

I had the new one uploaded in the above post before you replied, but I guess it's good practice for you as you now should be able to make up your own drums

Reaper_RealDrums_Soloist_Flute_regions.zip these are the Reaper Regions for the above midi file, set first > File > Project Settings > Project start measure -1 , then View > Region/Marker Manager > right click > Import Regions > load the regions.csv
you can see the layout here
and in the DAW
the end number is the bar, the number before is length in bars.
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3


and the pics to see what's it looks like in the DAW:

I think I'm going to bow out of this increasingly convoluted thread, as I'm really only interested in well designed UT's and, more importantly, how well they work in BBox. I thought initially that that's what this whole "challenge" concept was what you were asking to be tested, but as you keep going on about the (apparent) importance of what's going on in some other program altogether, I'm no longer sure.

These are UTs !!! No one's forcing you or conning you to do anything, I was asking everyone, some users might come here from a google search and find it extremely helpful, besides if you don't try anything you won't learn anything "User-to-User" I'm only here for one reason to help other users and it's great when they appreciate that, it will help some users, be of no interest for other users, and go over the heads of some other users.
All the information shown is trying to make it as easy as possible for any users to create them, the reaper pics show color regions to make it easy to work out the text to create a "well designed UT's " this helps in the design process. There is no ulterior motive lol

"as I'm really only interested in well designed UT's"
sure we all are but the don't fricken work period !
I have just put more request in the get them fixed once and for all !!! but until that happens there is not much you can do is there ?, but hey at least I'm trying to find other ways of doing things.

Why? Why put it on a wishlist?
This is advertised as a done deal.

UserTracks videos are out...
Why would you short-change yourself?

...also share, sell, yada-yada...

So, what seems to be the problem?
bump, bump, bump!!!

Good morning, everyone,
First of all I would like to thank you all for the help you give on the forum it's great.
But as far as usertracks are concerned, it would really make sense for one of the pgmusic managers to tell us what they intend to do about the missing features in usertracks ( artefacts problem , does not take into account the fisheries and agreements maintained, limit the number of key transpositions, the BIAB reading engine should transpose at most half a tone, not more than we could create, say, a UT with 6 keys so we will not lose quality if the sound is transposed by half a tone)
In this thread. Peter Gannon had announced that he was updating the features of Usertracks in January 2016 so maybe all of us biab users deserve some explanation and to know if there is a future with usertrack.
I thank in advance on behalf of all users of biab to pgmusic for giving us one or more answers.
I apologize for my English, I use a translator.
Balbuena.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Balbuena,

You expressed yourself well. The translation is very good.

Three fixes have been made.

PG Music has licensed Zplane Development's Elastque Pro pitch and tune engine for some time. The pitch and tune engine is now version 3 which is a substantial improvement.

How endings are handled has changed.

3/4 time now works.

The program manages UserTracks better than it did when the feature was first introduced in 2014. But much works remains to make the feature more useful.

I posted this in the well
UserTracks 2020 Features & Fixes You Would Like See
so please post what you would like to see.
Who knows a miracle may happen.

Is there any new info on this issue (as of Dec 2020)?

I can't see anything, I didn't hear anything.
If you have Reaper you can create and generate any wav mp3 mov mid usertrack with ReaTrak then drag n drop it into Biab.
Though it would be good to be able to do it all inside BIAB.

<< If you have Reaper you can create and generate any wav mp3 mov mid usertrack with ReaTrak then drag n drop it into Biab. >>

I'm not familiar with ReaTrak and what it does in Reaper that is unable to be done inside of BIAB. Can you give a short explanation?

https://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2378054#post2378054
shots, holds, midi, video, 24bit tracks.

Thanks. That does appear to be easier and more intuitive than attempting to work with the raw audio clips in BIAB.