Thanks for your quick response and suggestions Andrew
<...snip...> You can do this:
1. Make sure "include similar" is unchecked and press the Clear button if you have any filters on.
2. Select the category that you want to browse from the Category menu.
3. Browse the styles.
E.G. Selecting "Everything Jazz" is equivalent to choosing "Jazz[all]" in the old StylePicker. Does that help at all?
This went from too many to too few styles. Some of which are 3 variations of the same style. I actually only hear 2 styles with enough variations (change piano to guitar or organ, add drums, etc.) to make 10 variations of only 2 different styles. Neither one is appropriate for the song.
Are they the only Sw8, no solo, Real Jazz styles you have? I think you have more than that.
If I check "Include Similar" the list is full of country, lite pop, folk, Ev8, and so on.
There are several thousand songs in the Song title database. We have not added all of those songs to specific style memos. In fact I wouldn't think Mr P.C. should go there as an example for that style. The song title helps you find a style that works for a given song. For many songs it IS a perfect match, in some cases it will just be the style that has similar characteristics.
But both my styles and PG music styles are also guilty of putting the wrong style in the memo. It comes from the early days when there were few styles to choose from. The best style for the song seemed to be ????????.sty at the time, it was closer than the others, but with all the better styles out there, it no longer works.
We all were willing to settle for less in the early days of BiaB, because it was the best we had. It still is the best we have, but it's gotten much better, we've been spoiled, and what we would settle for in the 1990s is no longer appropriate.
Unless every song ever written is in the database, the search for song title is worthless.
I disagree... maybe we are missing some popular songs, but we can easily continue to expand the database to fill in those gaps. The feature is more useful to some people than others. For myself, I find it quick and easy to think of a popular song that has the feel I'm after. Say, Superstition - I can just type that in, rather than having to know that I am looking for a style that is Even 16, 4/4, Funk, at a tempo of about 100bpm.
1) This doesn't work for a song I want to write myself. And isn't that a prime reason to use BiaB? Say I lay down a chord progression to a song in my head, and I want to try some funk styles for it, but I don't want it to sound like Superstition, or don't know exactly what I want it to sound like. I could browse the funk styles, and then perhaps figure maybe it would be better as an 8-beat and browse some more.
2) "The Real Book" is the most popular jazz book ever written. These songs don't show up;
African Flower, Afro Blue, Afternoon In Paris, Agua De Beber, All By Myself, Alright Okay You Win, Always (Irving Berlin), Ana Maria, April Joy, Arise Her Eyes, Armageddon and that is just in the A's -- one shy of half the A's in the table of contents do not show up.
I have a reference book that lists the Top40 songs on the Billboard Rock charts from 1955 to 2000. Songs that made the Hot 100 but not top 40 are not there. Country chart songs aren't in there. AOR songs aren't there. R&B chart songs aren't there. Hit songs from the 21st century aren't there. Easy Listening chart songs aren't there. And yet there are over 10,000 titles in there (along with chart positions and other data).
You would need hundreds of thousands of songs in the database, and every year when new hit songs come out, the database should get revised.
There is more than one right way to do most anything. For others this may work. For me trying to (1) enter songs not in the database (2) browse different styles for chord progressions of other popular songs to write new melodies to and (3) trying to browse styles for a song I might write myself the new style picker window doesn't work nearly as good as the old one.
Any more hints to make it work for me would be appreciated though. Like I said, I'm really trying to bond with it and perhaps there is a secret I just don't know yet.
Notes
Norton Music
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