PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows In Praise of the Melodist!

I've been meaning to post this message for several days now, but problems have kept intervening. Things are pretty quiet now, so perhaps this is the time.

You know, there's too many posts here where people are explaining problems they're having with BiaB. All that negativity. Very few posts where people are relating how pleased they are with this software. Well, this post is about being pleased. A lot.

I've been quite busy with BiaB lately. Working on several of my tunes and, a first for me, turning everything over to the Melodist, and just letting it run with things. I had my doubts, honestly, that much of anything would come of it. I've used the Melodist before when I needed help on a tune's melody and it's largely been hit or miss. Mostly miss. But I know from experience that it can come through for you. Several years ago, I was working on a chord progression I wrote on guitar back in about 1978! It's a cool little progression, but I could never come up with a melody that worked the way I wanted it to and I was struggling. So I turned things over to BiaB. Well it churned out several failed attempts, but then it generated one that was mostly pentatonic, and I suddenly realized bingo! That was the answer. So within a matter of an hour or so, I'd finally written the melody to this piece, entirely in a pentatonic scale.

So, what I've learned from all this is, if you stick with it, you'll eventually get a hit. Boy will you ever.

I now have probably close to a dozen tunes that are in the 80-90% complete range that were entirely generated by BiaB's melodist. And these are nice sounding tunes too. Not at all like most results I get when I go to generate a tune with the Melodist. The remaining 10-20% with these tunes has to do with little spots in the melody or harmony I don't care for, or a few obvious errors -- like playing a perfect fifth in the melody against a 7b5 chord. Makes me cringe every time I hear it. It's funny how Major 7ths can sound all dreamy and romantic and playing a natural 5th against a b5 makes one wince, isn't it?

I mean, let's face it, BiaB's Melodist is a computer program -- a smart one, but still just a bunch ones and zeros, albeit most artfully arranged, I'm sure So when I ask the Melodist to generate a melody for a tune I've written or ask it to just go for it and see what happens -- most of the time the results are pretty lame. But every once in a while, the stars must align themselves and the wind is coming off the mountains just right and Jupiter is ascending -- whatever -- every once in a while the Melodist just belts one out of the park.

It's kinda funny how this works, you know? Here I'll be, hitting the Melodist button, listening to the generated tune for maybe 10 or 15 seconds, then hit the button again. Repeat, repeat. I mean, if the song doesn't hook me within the first 10 or 15 seconds, it isn't going to within the next three minutes. So I'm hitting the button again, and suddenly, there's a nice melodic phrase that springs forth. Surrounded by a nice, slick-sounding chord progression. And the phrase turns nicely into another and another, and I'm thinking DAYum! The Melodist, when it gets it right, it gets it all right. Funny how that is. Fascinating, actually. When the Melodist offers up a good one, it has for me consistently delivered complete songs that had no weak spots --- well except for a few minor points, as I mentioned above -- but nothing structurally weak.

One thing I've noticed with the Melodist is it tends to reuse certain motifs, regardless of the sort of style that is selected. And yes, a couple of them have made it into a couple of my Melodist-generated tunes. It's probably inevitable. But that's where the editorial magic comes in. I can always go in and tweak these motifs so that they become mine instead of mindless regurgitations.

So since I'm still kinda new to all this, I'm curious what your experiences have been like with the Melodist. I suppose the Harmony and Soloist functions should be included as well, but I haven't used either yet, so I can't really comment on either. So, any remarkable experiences with just turning loose this program and letting it run with it?

If BiaB was more classically oriented, it would be a real treat to knock out a sonata or a concerto -- or maybe even a symphony!

I'm curious -- have the PG Forums ever hosted a competition to see who can come up with the best 100% Melodist-generated piece of music? It sure would be an easy competition, wouldn't it? I mean all a contestant would have to do would be to keep hitting the Melodist button until it coughed up a tune the contestant liked. Or maybe you could have two categories -- one where the Melodist does everything and another where the Melodist puts a melody to a contestant's music. It might not be much of a contest as far as contests go, but it sure would make for an interesting showcase of the Melodist's capabilities.

So do you like the Melodist Feature or not? Your kind of all over the place on this?

I know im going to get thrashed for this.
Isnt using Melodist cheating? Surely it takes away the human cerebral process of Creativity and simply produces computer generated Muzak based on a chord chart one developed without any further input from a human? How could anyone claim the "Result" to be theirs? And surely,IF by fluke of 0's and 1's it turned out to be a masterpiece, it must be uncopyrightable as the human didnt compose anything?
Now to run away and hide!!!
Wendy

By that logic, isn't using BIAB also cheating?

Actually, I'm being as honest as I know how to be. Most of the time IMNSHO the Melodist turns out totally forgettable stuff. But like I wrote above, every once in a while it manages to put it altogether and comes up with something remarkable. So I'm not really all over the place. Just covering all the bases. Look, if you've never tried it, do as I recommend. Let the Melodist generate the chords, the intro, the melody, everything. What you'll probably experience is a lot of duds and then one piece will pop up that will really surprise you. That's all I'm getting at.



Well, ownership is 9/10s of the copyright. Maybe more. PG sez everything about BiaB is free with no copyright claims. Now, regarding intellectual honesty and the creative experience, that is something I've pondered at some length. But here I am admitting to the entire PG community that my 'puter is coming up with cool pieces of music without my input. So obviously I'm not trying to claim it as my own. But if I decide to publish any of it, you better believe I'll own the copyright. Because it appeared on my computer first, if for no other reason. Or did it? Hrm, that's something I've been wondering about. What are the chances that a piece that my copy of BiaB writes is the same or very very similar to a piece that another PG user's copy of BiaB came up with? Now, that's something I wonder about. I reckon the only way I'll find out about that being a possibility is if we start sharing some Melodist generated stuff. Be all that as it may, the process of developing a piece of music will progress well beyond just assembling a chord chart with a melody. Using my own non-Biab experiences as a guide, with all the pieces of music I've written in the past, every one has gone through a number of revisions before I was entirely happy with it. I don't see any tune "created" by BiaB as being any different. I'll still give it a close going over and there will in all likelihood be a considerable amount of revision.

Now for the creative bit. I don't have a problem with writing music. These past few weeks I've composed probably a half-dozen or more tunes (haven't been keeping track -- that's the way it is with me when the creative juices are flowing) -- chord progressions that I've plugged into BiaB and edited until I liked what I was hearing. Some of them I've written melodies for, others I've had the Melodist come up with passable melodies. But you know, after over 50 years of being a musician, I still consider myself to be a student of all this, so I like to study and analyze what BiaB is doing when it generates melodies and harmonies. Looking at many of the chord progressions that the Melodist comes up with ends up being a great study in chord theory and harmony in general. Melody is a lot more arbitrary and, as I wrote, most of the stuff the Melodist comes up with is discardable. For example, what is a hook? Can you analyze what it is about a piece of music's hook that makes it one? Not so easy, I'll wager. It's like as soon as you try to dissect it, it just crumbles away. Cuz all it is is an assortment of artfully placed intervals, isn't it? So when I analyze melodies, it is a good deal more difficult. Nonetheless, I'd like to think I'm absorbing some of this stuff and maybe even getting better as a result.

I'm gonna post a few of these tunes up at Soundcloud soon. I'll let y'all know when I've done so and I'll be looking forward to your feedback as well.

Please elaborate, John?

For years, I just used BiaB as a very large set of backing tracks. So it depends on what you're using it for, seems to me.

Not copyrightable? I’ve never used that feature but with BiaB when you hit the button you own it - whether it’s the melodist or a RT track.

Cheating? Cheating who? If you generated a song with the feature, sent it to a placement library and it ended up in a film who got cheated?

Heck, we can write a song including the lyric, chord structure and melody but because we use BiaB to create a great band some folks wii think it’s cheating. Not suggesting you would just mentioning it as I’ve run into that. And with the melodist generated song if the final product is gonna sound like anything worth listening to somebody is have to mix and master it. And that ain’t quick

Cheers

Bud

I have never had the melodist give me a complete good song, the key work there is good. However I have taken a few measures from the melodist and made a complete song with them. That is how I use the melodist. YMMV.

Precisely my points, Bud. Writing's the fun part. Slogging it out through all the editing and re-editing (mixing and mastering, as you call it -- same difference), listening to the same tune over and over and over and over again is enough to make me want to beat my head against a wall at times. But it is a necessary part of the creative process.

What you wrote reminded me of something that I experienced. I took a couple of semesters of composition lessons from a local music professor, and I took them from him because he was one of the best, but he wasn't hung up on a particular style of music. So I knew he could be open minded about anything I managed to come up with. Well, as a semester project, I had to come up with a couple of complete pieces of music -- songs, but without words, if you will -- and I used BiaB for a couple of rhythm tracks and the drum track for these tunes. The rhythm tracks were keyboards and I'm a guitarist, and I'm sure not a drummer. So why not have BiaB put them together.

So after presenting the music to him, I described what I'd done -- with the exception of those few tracks, all of the music had been written or performed by me, and I told him about this. I'll never forget, when I told him I had BiaB pick up those few parts, he had a look on his face as if I'd just farted. Obviously, he had expected me to write and/or perform every single bit of music in those two pieces. Fortunately, because he was my professor, he wasn't on the jury, and I wasn't gonna tell the jury about BiaB unless I was specifically asked. Lesson learned. I got "A"s for the compositions. Of course.

But here's the irony. He was very familiar with BiaB --- I'm sure he used it, even. Plus he was one of the band directors at the school. So I got to wondering, when he started working up music with his band, did he write out a complete arrangement for the keyboardist and tell the drummer exactly which drums to hit and how many times? Somehow I doubt it. And what's the difference between any composer of big band music and somebody who writes a tune and uses BiaB to fill in the details? Did Glenn Miller tell his piano player exactly which notes to hit and his drummer exactly which drums and cymbals to hit? Somehow I don't think so. Also, I've played in a lot of bands in my life, some in which we worked on our original music. It would have never occurred to me to tell the bass player or the drummer exactly how to play their parts.

If these pieces would have been formal pieces of classical music, then sure, I could understand that sort of mindset, but not with what I wrote, which was very much in a popular genre.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is, getting an odd reaction from people who should even know better should not be such a big surprise.

Hey Mario, by "key work," do you mean the harmonic progressions, or . . . ? I've found that even when the Melodist generates a forgettable melody, it almost always cranks out a nice progression.

Taking a few measures is a great idea. Sometimes that's all it takes for me also to write a complete song is just a few good measures -- preferably complete with melody

Next time you have a spare 10 or 15 minutes, just for the heck of it, I want you to sit down with BiaB, set up the Melodist where it does everything, and then just keep hitting that Melodist key and see if it doesn't come up with something that might just surprise you. I have lost count, but I probably have close to twenty "keeper" tunes that I've generated by just continuing to hit the melodist key.

I'm not saying it is cheating. But if using Melodist is cheating why not BIAB?

Well, hopefully Wendy will respond. Personally I don't think using BiaB is cheating. It's no different from having three or more of your bandmates on call, which is impractical, but not impossible, and which creates no infractions that I'm aware of.

I have used it mostly for a few measures of melody that I place in my already determined chord progression. But I took your advice last night and had it generate a complete song. You are right as it does produce some excellent chord progressions! Thanx for that little gem of a tip!

This is what I love about this forum. People either suggesting or showing things they do that I would have never tried. I have learned so much on these forums!

You know what, I was messing around with the Melodist last night, and it produced a very unusual chord progression. If you've generated a lot of them, then you know the Melodist has an inordinate fondness for I VI II V and this one started out that way, but just for the intro, and then it just took off into all sorts of strange places. Key of C and the first eight bars are FMaj7 Bb9sus G9sus Cm7 Bbm7 Eb7 AbMaj7 G7#9 C Bb9sus C Bb9sus.

WTF!

After six bars, it finally lands on a C chord, and immediately sets up this exchange between C and Bb9sus, which is kinda cool sounding really.

So I became fascinated with this progression, and next I began searching for a suitable style because I didn't care for the style that went with the melody "style" or whatever it's called. Found an interesting one that fits the mood better.

And then I switched the Melodist over to generating melodies only because I didn't care for the original melody that came with the chord progression. After about five tries, I wound up with one that has some possibilities. I'm rewriting it to fit better into the mood of this progression. I see some interesting possibilities with this tune so far.

So, is that cheating? Are you kidding? There's still a lot of work to be done before I've got anything resembling a song.

"But you didn't come up with the progression," some might say. My response will be how many musicians have "borrowed" I VI II V for their songs? It's got to be in the tens of thousands. So the progression I "borrowed" is different. So what. Besides, I've already changed some of the chords in the progression and I'll probably change more.

"But you didn't come up with the melody," others might say. My response will be, that's right I didn't and I'm changing it to fit the progression better. When I'm finished with it, it will be mine legally and technically.

"But what about the style -- you didn't come up with it," a few others might dare. And my response will be, Yeah and I usually don't tell a drummer and bass player what to play when I give them a time signature, a key signature and tempo. So get over it.

Heh.

No argument from me on this question. Of course it is not cheating. Music is the grand illusion so make it any way you can.

That being said, I am always looking to put more of me in my music. But that can take many forms. It can be composition, production, arrangement or accompaniment. Music is more than writing melodies.

I've found the Melodist and the Reharmonist are excellent resources for opening the doors to creativity. The Demo Songs that come with Stylepicker have also been extremely useful over the years.

For me, anything that helps me get out of the rut of my own thinking and prompts me to look at things a little differently is a very valuable tool.


The below video clips are from PG Music's Youtube website...

This first clip is a quick one (3:51 mins) about creating melodies and chord progressions in BIAB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Los82-EFnww


This second clip is an in-depth tutorial (15:52 mins) on the Soloist and the Melodist. Even though it's using an older version of BIAB, the information is still applicable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV2z3CJm28g

Regards,
Noel

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

Oh gosh guys I never meant to start a fire! It just seemed to me that just pushing the button and claiming any result that was any good as one's own work was cheating. Cheating s probably too string a word but couldn't think of anything lighter at time. My personal mindset says if it doesnt come out of my brain, its not mine and i can hardly ge proud of it. BTW my bro tried that chord progession this afto and was blown away. Loves it even though it was hard to feel comfy with it. I'm guessing its a never ending topic with every one s concept as valid as the next.
Wendy

<My personal mindset says if it doesn't come out of my brain, its not mine and i can hardly be proud of it.>

You are right Wendy. But be comforted by the thought that something has to get into your brain before it can come out modified in such a way to be your own inspiration.

So, if you over hear a catchy phrase spoken by someone else in a conversation in an elevator and you manage to 'cheat' and make the phrase into a song, so be it. That's inspiration, not cheating.

Take Heart? "For the benefit of Mr. Kite" and "A Day in the Life" songs written by the Beatles, were both developed in such a way. "For the benefit of Mr. Kite" lyrics are nearly verbatim to the circus poster John Lennon used to capture the song idea and "A Day in the Life" was inspired by a newspaper article. Lennon and McCartney musical analysts bandy the terms inspired and genius about their lyrics and never the word cheating.

I wrote song lyrics for an original "Trucks" that were inspired by the insane and stereotype comments on a Facebook post of a 4 wheel pickup truck...

Another original song's lyrics came from a list of song titles on a forum members web site.

Good points, Charlie, and right in line with what I was about to mention. That being that it's been many a year since anyone has come up with anything truly new in music. It's pretty much all recycled from the same seven notes, ya know? The fact that so much has been and can be done with so little is one of the truly extraordinary things about music.

Wendy, you have me curious now -- which chord progression are you referring to that your brother was "blown away" over? Not that little snippet I wrote above, was it? Because that's only the first eight bars.

You wrote, "My personal mindset says if it doesnt come out of my brain, its not mine and i can hardly ge proud of it." Here's the thing about music -- even if it's something that did come exclusively from your brain, chances are, somebody at some time or another wrote the same thing, or very close to it. You may be able to put a spin on it to make it quintessentially yours even though it may have been done before, which is plenty good enough in my book. And this conversation is hardly a fire. Heck it's barely even warm yet.



Thanks for the info, Noel. I've never tried the Reharmonist until just now. I selected the "Auto Generate Chord Reharmonization" option after discovering that the Chord Reharmonist Dialog will apparently do the substitutions only two measures at a time. So it ended up redoing the entire piece -- with a progression that I feel is inferior to the original. So I tried using the Undo command. Well, I clicked on Undo, but it didn't undo anything. Oops. Glad I'd saved that song first. So a word to the wise. Save your song before you try this "feature." Still, it's good to know what it and the other menu selections can do -- especially in situations where I'm truly unhappy with the way a chord progression is working out.

Yes cooltouch it was that Fmaj7,Bb9sus thingy. He played it as you show it in a jazz guitar waywhich wasnt easy he said but we couldnt figure a tune to go with it. Maybe I need Melodist. Lmao! Sorry.
Ill shut up now.
Wendy