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I am finally trying to learn to edit styles to get rid of all the unwanted notes that BB throws in, even with 'simple arrangement' etc, which doesn't work as well as I had hoped as I still get chord extensions where I don't want them.

However editing styles seems very time consuming: I had a look at the manual and as far as I understand, I can't just stop BB on the bar I want to 'clean up', fire up the Stylemaker, and delete the unwanted notes by using the notation. It seems that the song always starts from the top and I have to audition all the patterns by ear before I find the pattern I want to clean up. That will take 30 years

There are Video Tutorials that may help you with the Stylemaker, one I recall is, "Secrets of the Stylemaker" - but I don't recall if it is available on this site for free download or whether it was once included in a package deal. Do a site search for "secrets of the stylemaker".

The one thing that can make the experience exasperating is the making of assumptions here, such aa stopping the song and thinking that is where the Stylemaker itself also "stops" in an effort to find a pattern. It don't work that way.

BTW *MANY* "extraneous* notes are actually there to create realism. Cleaning them all out of the thing may make for a rather dull sounding performance. For example, MIDI Bass parts are often full of "ghost" notes that I wouldn't want to eleiminate.

--Mac

The style editor can be overwhelming so I suggest this first...

Make sure that other styles won't work for you. BIAB has thousands of styles some simple and others complex. The jazz that I play requires a very simple bass line. Luckly I found a style that does just that called JAZSIMP. Some of the more complex styles have many patterns while the simpler ones have only a few.

Other options are also available including:

- assign a midi part from a particular style to an individual track
- edit a part to your desire and Freeze the part
- create a hybrid style consisting of parts from different styles

Personally I have had to edit only one style. The only change made was to the ending bars. I'm almost certain you should be able to find a style to do what you want.

Hope it helps
R

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The one thing that can make the experience exasperating is the making of assumptions here, such aa stopping the song and thinking that is where the Stylemaker itself also "stops" in an effort to find a pattern. It don't work that way.

BTW *MANY* "extraneous* notes are actually there to create realism. Cleaning them all out of the thing may make for a rather dull sounding performance. For example, MIDI Bass parts are often full of "ghost" notes that I wouldn't want to eleiminate.

--Mac

re: assumptions.

So, according to your logic, I should instead assume that if I want to fix a bar from bum notes that the program throws in, I should examine all the patterns sequentially, i.e. from no. 1 to no. 198
Just like opening a book and having to read from the beginning when all I want to read is a single chapter.

re: 'realism'

What you call 'realism', I call 'bum notes that I don't want/ need/ find fitting for my song' . Especially considering that I know my harmony and theory very well, and I know exactly what's fitting for my song. Unless, of course, you have the presumption to believe that I should just accept the above mentioned bum notes in my music as 'realistic'.

I wouldn't edit the Styles. You may want those notes someday. If you do edit it save as a different style so that you still have the original. What you can do is generate the song then go into the notation and pull the notes you don't want. Then DO NOT REGENERATE. Freeze the part. This way it'll stay that way when you do hit play.

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I wouldn't edit the Styles. You may want those notes someday.

Like, when ?

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What you can do is generate the song then go into the notation and pull the notes you don't want.

that's the whole point. I need to listen to every pattern and find the bum notes through a process of elimination, which takes too much time and effort. I can't just stop at a bar and edit the bum notes at that bar.

Hi Avatars,

You said ...

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I can't just stop at a bar and edit the bum notes at that bar.

This is possible with "Freeze Tracks" (that people have been mentioning). Once a track has been generated, with version 2012, it's possible to make changes in the generated notation and then "Freeze" the track so that when you regenerate the song, the track remains unchanged and the edits stick. I like this level of control that the "Freeze Track" option gives. My experience suggests that while this is not modifying the style, it's a good, easy-to-work with alternative for getting the end product one seeks. I regularly modify odd notes here and there to get what I want.

Does your version of BIAB have this feature?

Regards,
Noel

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Avatars, you said ...
Quote:

I can't just stop at a bar and edit the bum notes at that bar.

This is possible with "Freeze Tracks" (that people have been mentioning). Once a track has been generated, with version 2012, it's possible to make changes in the generated notation and then "Freeze" the track so that when you regenerate the song, the track remains unchanged and the edits stick.

Does your version of BIAB have this feature?

Regards,
Noel

the problem is not retaining the changes, the problem is getting directly to the patterns that are playing in that bar and editing one particular pattern. BB only shows you a complete list of all the patterns, which means I have to listen to all the patterns one by one in order to find the one I want to fix.

Life is too short for that.

I don't care about the pattern. What I am trying to do, is deleting the bum notes that BB play in that particular pattern, for example a guitar arpeggio that plays unwanted extensions and non-diatonic sharps and flats, or unwanted passing notes, either diatonic or chromatic. It does that even when using 'simple arrangement' and if I use 'jazz down chords' it will 'jazz down' even the chords with the extension and alterations that I wrote, i.e. it does not 'jazz down chords' within a range of bars or a range of notes, which actually should.

I am not trying to 'make a style'. There's zillions of them in the program itself already. I am only trying to make the program play exactly the chords I write in, which rarely does. This is an issue that I have been mentioning for years. It's an old story. I try to make BB work for me, then I get frustrated, then I forget about it, and after a couple months I think 'mmmh....maybe there's a way to make it work, let's have a look again'. And so on. It became a vicious circle. I really think it's one step from being the greatest program I can get, but that one step away from it, makes it impossible for me to work with.

This is definitely going to be my last try, then I'll just use it to generate the realdrums and use it as a luxury drum machine and mute all the other parts, except maybe the bass. I am not mocking the work that the developers have put in. It's a great program but it does not work for me. I write pop, rock, semi-classical and soundtrack music. Don't really write much jazz.

I have BB 2012

I write styles, from scratch, and often I find BiaB putting notes in that I didn't want. Simplest example, put in a C5 chord, which is supposed to play only root an fifth, and you will see the major third playing along. Write a style without the third and it gives problems on all but 5 chords.

There are more complex examples but I thought the simplest one is easiest to explain.

I also find BiaB often ignoring the masks in the StyleMaker, and that's fodder for another post.

I've spent a lot of times on my styles tweaking and re-tweaking to find a balance between the occurrence of unwanted things I did not write into the style and keeping enough in to still keeping the style interesting. It's one of the challenges of the StyleMaker. So a style that should take a day to write, might take me a week. I might end up with a dozen different variations of a style before finalizing it and picking the one to put on my next disk. But in the long run, it's worth it.

My solution is to export what I create to a MIDI file and clean up the song there. I can use notation editor and/or piano roll editor to spot the clams and then erase them. Also time consuming.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm very happy with BiaB and believe it is the absolute best auto-accompaniment program out there. Band-in-a-Box does what it does well, but in my opinion it's output is very good, but not ready for prime time. This is where the DAW comes in handy. Real Band will do just fine in that department.

I find the two programs together allow you to take the very good output of Band-in-a-Box and turn it into something truly exceptional.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Brand new 2012.5 updates from Norton Music:
2 new style disks for Band-in-a-Box
2 new free (with a purchase) fancy intro/ending disks for Real Band and other DAW's
The Ultimate Gospel Fake Disk
The Real Rock Fake Disk (plenty of classic rock in this one)
The Beatles Fake Disk
And an updated Christmas Fake Disk

Hundreds of Free .sgu and .mp3 demos for the above at: http://www.nortonmusic.com

Since the 'assumption' word has been thrown out already, can we assume that you have checked the appropriate boxes in song settings to not embellish chords, have adjusted the setting in the Arrange dialog dealing with allowing late notes X% of the time (X being between 0 and 100) and set your overrides to Force to simple arrangements? These options may or may not help with your specific problem, but they can impact the final output of BIAB considerably.

Good luck and I hope you find an answer to your dilemma.

There are no "bum notes." Just notes that we may or may not like to hear at a given moment. Ever listen to Monk? Check out Epistrophy!

(-:

I think it was Miles Davis who said, "There are no wrong notes, only poor choices."

And yes, Monk was the master of dissonance in Jazz as Prokofiev was in symphonic music.

Love them both.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Brand new 2012.5 updates from Norton Music:
2 new style disks for Band-in-a-Box
2 new free (with a purchase) fancy intro/ending disks for Real Band and other DAW's
The Ultimate Gospel Fake Disk
The Real Rock Fake Disk (plenty of classic rock in this one)
The Beatles Fake Disk
And an updated Christmas Fake Disk

Hundreds of Free .sgu and .mp3 demos for the above at: http://www.nortonmusic.com

In jazz, you're never more than a half-step off. And I play loads of bum notes. I think if I don't, I'm not trying hard enough.

In Blues and Jazz, there just aren't any bum notes. It's what I was planning to do to begin with, LIVE...

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In jazz, you're never more than a half-step off. And I play loads of bum notes. I think if I don't, I'm not trying hard enough.

That's why the phrase "playing outside" was coined!!!

(-:

Jim

If you play a bum note, resolve it. As Matt pointed out, you are always a half step away from one that works.

Then do it again. That way the audience thinks you did it on purpose and the bad note wasn't an accident, instead a dissonant leading tone.

Brand new 2012.5 updates from Norton Music:
2 new style disks for Band-in-a-Box
2 new free (with a purchase) fancy intro/ending disks for Real Band and other DAW's
The Ultimate Gospel Fake Disk
The Real Rock Fake Disk (plenty of classic rock in this one)
The Beatles Fake Disk
And an updated Christmas Fake Disk

Hundreds of Free .sgu and .mp3 demos for the above at: http://www.nortonmusic.com

I play a lot of dissonant leading tones. :-)

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the problem is not retaining the changes, the problem is getting directly to the patterns that are playing in that bar and editing one particular pattern. BB only shows you a complete list of all the patterns, which means I have to listen to all the patterns one by one in order to find the one I want to fix.

Life is too short for that.

I totally understand what you're trying to do, I sometimes get frustrated by that myself. The thing is this is specifically what Biab is not designed to do. The name Band In A Box is taken literally by PG. I get the impression the Gannon family are classical jazz players. Biab is designed to emulate a real band playing live and there's all kinds of flaws (or designed flaws) in a live performance as everybody has mentioned already. That's it's reason for existance, to give some variation in the playback everytime. All I can suggest is if you want your parts to be exact you have to do them the old fashioned way, use a DAW and record them yourself either with a midi controller or as audio with an instrument.

I have a lot of fun with my Korg Pa1xPro arranger keyboard. Similar styles to Biab but better in a lot of cases. The only thing is after two years with it is the styles play exactly the same everytime. My ears started picking up on that after a while. The keyboard styles are nothing but a collection of short midi files put together as a style. I can write my own styles simply by recording or importing a one or two bar midi clip. That's what you're after I think but Biab just doesn't work that way.

Bob

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<...> I can write my own styles simply by recording or importing a one or two bar midi clip. That's what you're after I think but Biab just doesn't work that way.

Bob

No BiaB doesn't work that way.

Personally I like the fact that the output of BiaB is different every time. It keeps the predictability down. Plus most arranger keyboards have from 2 to 8 bars (depending on the make/model) that repeat over and over and over and over and over and over again, BiaB can have a few hundred different patterns, with masks to make them appear in musical appropriate situations (depending on the way the style is written). And you can assign different patterns for the same musical situation and assign probability numbers to them so a style with a huge "personality" only appears once in a great while and the more generic patterns appear more frequently.

I've done some "contract" style writing for another auto-accompaniment program and a couple of auto-arranger keyboards, as well as styles for BiaB, and BiaB definitely has the most intelligent style writing tools and is able to produce the most musical output. In other words, it's by far the best auto-accompaniment tool I've seen. It does have it's limitations, but it's heads and shoulders above the rest.

Brand new 2012.5 updates from Norton Music:
2 new style disks for Band-in-a-Box
2 new free (with a purchase) fancy intro/ending disks for Real Band and other DAW's
The Ultimate Gospel Fake Disk
The Real Rock Fake Disk (plenty of classic rock in this one)
The Beatles Fake Disk
And an updated Christmas Fake Disk

Hundreds of Free .sgu and .mp3 demos for the above at: http://www.nortonmusic.com

Your points are very true Notes but I have to say I am a big fan of auto arranger keyboards. They're not for mediocre players though. They all have that basic "one finger" option for raw beginners but if you're not a pretty good pianist you're not going to get close to the great demo's you see all over the web. My Pa1XPro is the first of the PA Pro series and the Pa3x is out now and it is in a word fantastic. I want one in the worst way. Only $3,699. Even though we're both right in that the style elements are fixed those elements are really, really good. They were performed and recorded by some very good players. And then there's the sound engine. Killer. If money was no object I'd snap one up right now but I have to stay true to my mantra that when gigs are only worth $100 or so around here any purchase has to pay for itself so I never buy stuff like this new and it's still too new to find any good used deals. And besides nobody but me or you could tell the difference between my Pa1x and the new Pa3x. Mine is still pretty darn good. I use it for duo and trio gigs without a drummer and then for band work I have my Kurzweil PC3. Another great keyboard.

Bob

I found myself harkening back to a time when editing midi files with sequencer software, note for note, with multiple tracks, was a basic modus operandi for building song files, or backing tracks. God forbid that anyone would have to resort to copy editing note for note, by hand, accomplishing the same notation for readers. I digress on the distracting topic of what seems too much detail to have to manage... For the original poster - find a BIAB midi style that's close to the end style you need, with particular attention to a few critical key instrumental tracks, that sound great as is; assemble your preferred ensemble of instruments; input chords; generate a midi song file; save it; open it up in Real band or BIAB, or your preferred sequencer software product, and edit the tracks that need attention, and viola! Midi song file, or backing tracks. Isn't this how many of you used to customize song files for use? Now with Real Tracks and other audio editing software that enable editing of both wave based tracks, as well as midi tracks, all can be combined, though you need to know your way around audio file editing or loop editing software products, that have the editing features for midi tracks you want to combine... And, dare I suggest, I think you can do it all in BIAB... Amazing product...!