Am I missing it or is there nowhere to download backing tracks for jazz standards into BIAB? Seems like this should be an obvious and high demand function and I can't find it.

I just bought the iReal Pro app for my Android and in one click I downloaded 1,350 jazz standards. Boom, ready to go! Surely this same functionality is available for BIAB? What's the deal?

Welcome.

BiaB is designed to create your own backing tracks. It doesn't come with an internal library of jazz (or other) standards. However, there are also many MIDI and native BiaB files of backing tracks available on the web that would open directly into BiaB.

Just use your favorite search engine and search for 'BiaB MIDI Jazz standards'

Thanks, I found a decent collection here: http://www.justchords.de/docs/biab/index.html

But this is a random way to about things! Why doesn't BIAB do what iReal Pro has done, to curate collection of jazz standards? $14 bucks at iReal Pro and its done.

I'd prefer to use BIAB b/c I have monitors hooked up to my PC, and the Real Tracs are great. But for ease of use, seems like my next move is to somehow get the iReal pro feed into my PC.

BIAB is for creating your own backing tracks although as VideoTrack says you can download midis from the internet. There are even BIAB song sites where you can downlaod other people's versionsd of standard songs in the BIAB format. In fact, BIAB is not the best midi file player if that is all you want. RealBand would be better so you can more easily edit individual tracks.

But why should BIAB stop at jazz standards? why not country? why not pop? why not blues?

the list is endless and it's not really what BIAB is for. for $14 another company seems to have what you want sewn up - so why should BIAB get into markets it's not designed for?

What the replies seem to have missed is that iRealPro is essentially the same idea as BIAB. Nothing like as powerful, but you give it a list of chords and a style and it plays you a backing track. As mentioned by the OP, iRealPro makes it easy to download a file of c1400 "standards" to get you started. This saves an awful lot of typing and something similar for BIAB could be really useful for beginners.

There are archives around. I have downloaded several over the years, but don't remember where from. There used to be "fake book" files shipped with BIAB, I'm not sure if they still are. Some of the forums here also have songs. But none of this is easy.

As requested by the OP, a simple way of getting a large number of "standards" would be quite useful for beginners.

Sorry if I missed the point. The O/P started the post by asking "Am I missing it or is there nowhere to download backing tracks for jazz standards into BIAB?"

I answered as best I could. No doubt other programs can also deliver solutions, but I was just trying to answer how to find songs to download for use in BiaB.

There definitely is a simple way of getting a large number of "standards" that can be used. The www is the answer.

There still are Fake Books but they are not by PG Music, instead they are by Norton Music. I call them Fake Disks because the used to come on floppy disks. They are now instant download, but I still call them disks because I don't know what else to call them.

Chord progressions of popular and unpopular songs, appropriate style suggested for each song, and with no melody or lyrics.

I do them with 'off the shelf' music books so you can open the book, load the BiaB file and play along if you don't know the melody.

On each of the following linked pages there is a complete song list and one or more "free samples". For the free samples, looked for the linked titles in the song lists.

Complete listing of my fake 'disks' are here:

http://www.nortonmusic.com/contents.html#fake

Jazz standards (and the name of the books associated with them):

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake37.html (The Real Book)

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake41.html (European Jazz Book)

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake35.html The (Sher) Standards Book

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake24.html The "New Real Book" (Sher) Vol.1

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake25.html Vol.2

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake26.html Vol.3

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake21.html Real Standards Fake Book

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake17.html The Real Jazz Book

http://www.nortonmusic.com/fake5.html The Ultimate Jazz Fake Book

Plus two chord substitution disks for standards by Dick Hyman and five by Frank Mantooth.

Insights and incites by Notes

if there is a gap in the market, Norton Music probably have it filled but not for $14. I still stick with my point that you can't draw the line at jazz so why not other genres? but for $14 i can't see it being worth PG Music getting involved when the world wide web has midis of just about everything for free

This is funny. You are the very first one I've seen on this forum in 12 years who would be happy with just the chords to jazz standards. This question has come up many, many times before but everybody wants the melody and/or lyrics. Melody and lyrics are copywritten and cannot be included which is why iRealPro only has chords but even they do not produce those chord charts as a company, they're all provided by users on their forum. They're worried about copyright too because they're linking song titles to the chords so they use users to get around that. That sounds sketchy to me if push came to shove and they got busted for copyright violations.

And that is one of the problems with iRealPro, many of their chords are incorrect but it's because they're done by amateur users. I use that app too and find it helpful but still, lots of errors there. You'll find lots of errors in Biab songfiles as well for the same reason. They're done by users, not pros. If you want correct and professional songs with everything correct you have to buy midi files from the well known websites that sell those. Notes Norton is a long time professional gigging musician so I'm pretty sure his Fake Book songfiles are correct as well.

Free or very cheap means you get what you pay for, if you want them correct then that costs money.

When it comes to using actual song titles PG Music won't go that far either because they're also worried about copyright. I'm not a copyright expert but using a classic song title for the name of a different song is a grey area. Imagine if someone came up with a completely original song and called it Hotel California or Thriller. Think their might be a problem with that? Who knows but what small company wants to take that chance? All those classic jazz songs still have valid copyrights and owned by somebody, if not the original artist then their estates or someone else like Sony Music bought them up. If they get sued look at the time and legal costs involved. Maybe they win just on the song title issue, who knows but they don't want to mess with that.

Therefore, in the Biab demo songs there are a ton of standard jazz chord changes but not with the actual song title. They use another title for the demo song. So no, PGM is not about to rename those demo songs with the real titles those chords go with.

What we've all done is what was already said, Google is your friend and you can find them all but it's a bit of work.

Bob

Bob

This is not an ad for iRealPro, I don’t own it, I don’t use it. That aside, even the actual Real Books have a “few” errors and they were supposedly put together by (top?) music school grad students (not sure how true those stories are either – )

Funny this (topic) has just came up because lately when I go to a lot of my subscribed to YouBoob channels (firearms, electronics, math/ astronomy/ physics, even political sties) the first ad that seems to come up is the following about jazz books (I’m not sure what site(s) I have visited that caused the Google/youtube ad AI to think it should replace my other non-music ads with by this one - LOL)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=48&v=j7Xnuvj9gG0&feature=emb_logo

I’m half tempted to buy a volume just to see how faithful they are to Real Books, if THEY correct some errors in the Real Books – or they just “analyze” the same progressions error(s) and all.


And another recent topic just happened this past weekend. I was looking for the ORIGINAL, very old, and very familiar and well known “All of Me” in MP3, or Youtube, or sheetmusic/score anything that included the ENTIRE tune introduction and all. I finally found the original 1931 recording (sung by Ruth Etting)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz_zeJM-5-A

but when looking for “All of Me” it kept popping up John Legend’s “All of Me” a completely different tune but with SAME TITLE so I guess new tunes with non-original titles are allowed(?).

IMHO Legend should have called his “All of Me (Modern So-So)”

Larry

Song titles can not be copyrighted:

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-you-copyright-a-song-title-and-the-lyrics-with-459057.html

{edit} Larry, you have a PM.

And this causes no end of problems when the publishing rights organizations like BMI, ASCAP, SoundExchange etc. try to sort royalties out.

Yea I thought we had had that discussion (re: titles) once before

but I'm old now so I forget - what exactly goes out first -

Larry

Hey, Larry. Did I say the Real Books are correct? I must have zoned that out...

And it's irrelevant that it appears you can't copyright song titles. We're not talking just the titles alone, where talking the titles AND the chords. Many songs use one chord for each melody note or maybe half of them or whatever. What then? The chords are part of the melody. Hmmmm. Who wants to get sued and have to go to court to prove it especially someone who's running a well known commercial company?

When it comes to fakebooks the beauty and problem with jazz is it's well, jazz. Every good player will use different chord subs, different voicings, different bass lines. There is no one correct way to play any of those tunes. Just watch YT vids about how to play Misty or Green Dolphin Street on piano or guitar. You'll find 10 good players doing it 10 different ways. Similar but different, it's jazz.

You can't blame the music majors who transcribed those chords because it's for fakebook format. They're not transcribing a recording perfectly, that's not it's purpose. The book says the first chord of Misty is Ebmaj7 for four beats. Is that what Errol Garner played? No. What he really played won't even fit on a single page fakebook chart. A master pianist is chording and reharmonizing every note of the melody plus adding little embellishment but all that is basically over Ebmaj7, and diminished, and an 11th and a tritone, and... But, boil it down everybody agrees the tonality is Ebmaj7.

The purpose of a fakebook chart is to give you the basic outline of the song and the basic chord structure. That's it. Everything else is up to the player. If you want it correct you have to buy the correctly transcribed 3 or 4 page sheet music of Misty. That's not fitting into a fakebook and you can't enter all that into Biab either. But what Biab will do is take that Ebmaj7 chord and do some of it's own embellishments.

Sometimes the books do get it wrong. Footprints is an example. The basic chords are simple. Cm11, Fm9. Then comes the turnaround. The books all say Ebm to Dm. Not correct. It's actually F#, F, E, A but those four chords are half diminished and altereds. Those chords are following the melody. They can be played all kinds of similar but different ways. Listen to the various versions of that tune and nobody is just doing Eb to D. How or why the books all say that is beyond me.

Bob

The fake disks I sell are nothing but a time saver for you.

It takes hundreds of hours to get the fake disks to sound as good as they do, and really, that is what you are paying for.

You can buy the fake books I used, enter the published chord changes, find the best style, check it, fix your typo errors, check it again, make minor changes to make it work better with BiaB, check it again, and put your own fake disk together.

The books I use are from major publishers. That doesn't mean the chord changes are exactly right, but they are much better than most people who used his/her ears and published the chords somewhere on the 'net for free.

Case in point. A good customer asked for "Another Day In Paradise" by Bertie Higgins. An old soft rock song that meant something to him. I couldn't find the chords on the 'net, and couldn't download the sheet music either. I listened, put my guess at the chords and then asked on a musician forum if anyone knew the song. About a dozen different guesses came up. We were all close but disagreeing. I found a used copy on the sheet music on an auction site (ebay I think) and bought it. None of us were right, and it isn't a very difficult song. With Jazz it gets even harder to get the correct chords with your ear.

I prefer to go with published chords as they are usually either spot on or close to the correct chords. Often especially with jazz standards, the original chords were notated for ukuleles thus limited to 4 notes. Many of the fake books have expanded that for piano/guitar and many of them use more contemporary chords.

If I want a chord substitution, I want to make the choice, know why I'm making the sub, and compare both to be sure the sub is better to my ears than the original.

The Real Book (6th edition) fixed most of the errors of the pirate Real Books that were riddled with errors. A couple of the Hal Leonard books slightly simplify them, the chord sub books put the contemporary chords and the author's substitutions, and especially the Sher books strive to stick to the contemporary agreed on correct chords.

If you want free, in most instances you get what you pay for. If you buy the books and do it yourself, it takes a lot of time. If you buy from me you save that time.

Insights and incites by Notes

iReal pro doesn’t compare well with Norton’s disks. The iRealpro’s are simplified, contain some common mistakes, but are not bad for practicing. Same goes for all the free biab-files around the Net. Not accurate, wrong, missing bars, funny turnarounds and a lack of correct chord spelling.

It may look like Bob Norton is tooting his own horn, here (no pun was intended, whatsoever...), but I care to comment.

Norton’s fake disks are totally different: professionally done, correct, give you all the chord extensions and reharmonizations you can find in the real books. They also provide you with all the correct repeats, al coda’s...

The New Real Book files are the sweetest, in my opinion. Very complete, as correct as possible, totally well done and with all the Bill Evans Changes as written.

I hesitated before buying any at first, but when I saw how nicely they were made, I bought most of the jazz disks, over a longer period, of course. Couldn’t buy them all in one go, I’m not in that financial category. But they are worth every penny.

And they work on every Biab version (from 2012 version as far as I know, but maybe earlier...)

Free or cheap on the net is mostly the same as in real life...

Absolutely well said. Generally speaking, you only get what you pay for.

I've been away for quite a while, I'm glad Bob is still here. His 'disks' are great. As a working, performing musician, he knows what is needed and his disks, and his older MIDI-based styles are worth the time, effort and money.

Since BIAB moved to Real Drums and RealTracks, I'm not so sure that his older MIDI-based Styles are as popular as they once where, but he has some stuff that just isn't out there in RealTracks land. With the high quality of sampled sounds today, they can be just as relevant today as they were ten years ago.

Glad to see you're still around. I hope that Leilani and you are still together still out doing the musical scene.

Gary

Hey, Gary, it has been a long time. Hope all is well with you.

Hi Gary! Welcome back.

And, Norton styles? +1

Thanks Gary and for the kind words. Thanks also to Matt.

It's good to see you on the forum again Gary. You were missed around here.

Leilani and I are still gigging and grinning and it's the middle of our tourist season so we are delightfully busy.

I really prefer MIDI styles. I can export them to a MIDI sequencer or DAW and edit them to my heart's content. I can change instruments (change that Rhodes to a Grand, and so on), change chord inversions so the melody note is on top, exaggerate the groove, re-mix the drum set to emphasize or suppress one or more of the instruments, and thousands of things more. Plus I can put a proper intro or ending on it.

A good MIDI synth will sound 90-95% as good as a real track instrument. MIDI sequences are thousands of times more editable than audio tracks. It's a trade off, but for me to make the very good output of BiaB into something that is as excellent and ready for stage, I choose MIDI.

I wouldn't go on stage with an unedited Real Track song. They are good, but I can edit to make MIDI tracks much better.

Of course, there is more than one right way to make music. That is my way.

Right now Leilani and I are working on two new style disks and three new fake disks. Mostly jazz and rock content. Hopefully a release in a month or two, depending on how many problems need fixing. Stay tuned.

Notes

Thanks for the welcome back, everyone. No, things are not well with me, look at my signature line.

Bob, with the newest generation of sound generators, I agree that you can do a lot more with MIDI now than you could with it, even seven or eight years ago. The technology has gotten a lot better, and the price has come down significantly.

When I bought my PA800, it was like $3,800. Today, the PA1000, which surpasses it in every regard, is only $2,200! So, yeah, tech is getting better and cheaper.

Still, RealTracks provides for the ability to lay down some very amazing tracks quickly and easily with a very Pro sound without all the work necessary of tweaking a MIDI track.

Gary,

My first and ONLY question: What can we do to help you?.

You've certainly paid your dues around here.

I noticed that FB has a money collection service but I have no clue how it works.

The Bobs nailed it!

Gary! Wow, seriously homeless? Very sorry to hear that since you can post again, are you back on your feet?

Bob

Don,
Really, there's nothing you can do. Prayer is always good, of course, just to let God know there are others thinking about me.
I'm in a Transitional Housing program for Vets, so I have a place to sleep, eat, I have clothes on my back, and I make a couple of dollars working around here. Not much, but something.

What I need is to get the court to see that I'm not the monster I was made out to be, and get them to lift the order of protection against me. That has been the thing that destroyed me, since no one will hire me with it in place. It's not even a criminal charge, nor is it sexual based, but there's nothing in the background checks that indicate that, so people just assume the worst.

However, my list of 'Oh boy, that would be great for when I get back to working and get my own place' is pretty long. But, I'll keep that one to myself. LOL

Really, even knowing you'd be willing to do something like that is pretty awesome. Thanks!

No, far from it Bob, but working on getting there. I'm alive, that's the important part.

Gary

I can only relate my own personal experience with popular song layouts that I have used that don't have melodies or lyrics and only chords and a style.

Personally I have found that it is so easy to get totally lost when using just the chords only without any melody or lyric included, and I totally understand the copyright reasons why it can't be included.

The song may have an intro but it can be a pain to determine exactly where the actual intro ends and song or even chorus starts in the chord layout, and unless one is 100% totally familiar with the song it can be a real pain to follow it through from start to finish correctly.

Even if I am 100% familiar with the song I still get lost.

I know everyone's ear is different and it may seem a doddle to do so from the actual writers point of view, but I have found it to be more trouble than its worth.

Martin57
.

Most of my fake disks are made with a published fake book.

You can open the book, play the fake disk song and read the melody while the backing track plays.

I originally wanted to put the melodies in my fake disks. I called the Harry Fox agency, who represents the majority of the publishers, and found some publishers flat turned me down and others wanted up to $2.50 per song with an up-front payment for thousands of copies.

I said, "I can buy a fake book with hundreds of songs in it for about $0.08 per song", and the rep said, "Then buy the fake book."

That's when I got the idea to do my fake disks based on fake books published by Hal Leonard, Warner Brothers, and other major publishers. Some of the books sadly are out of print, but new ones come out, and compiling the new ones take a lot of time, but it's rewarding.

We enter the chords into BiaB, exactly as they appear in the book (sometimes if BiaB can't play a particular chord, we leave an extension off). Then choose a temporary style and check our work. We fix typo errors, and then send the disk on to subcontractors.

I choose working musicians to assign a final style from all the available styles from PG Music and Norton Music. I tell them not to favor my styles, but to pick whatever works with the song best.

The reason I pay subcontractors to pick styles is because I'd probably favor my own because I know them so well they would jump into my mind first.

Of course if you don't have my style or the PG style that was assigned, you can pick your own style. Also, especially with jazz, the standard have been done so many different ways that you might want to choose a different style. You could do a jazz waltz as a 4/4 swing, a swing as a Latin, and so on.

Then when I get the files back from the subcontractor, Leilani and I go through it page by page, auditioning each song, playing every song in real-time while triple checking for typos and a half dozen other things to make the song as good as the current version of BiaB can make it sound. In rare cases we might simplify a chord simply because it doesn't work with BiaB in that instance. In rarer cases we might override a style choice made by a subcontractor.

Then we release it to the BiaB public. Judging from my repeat sales, I think they are a good value.

Like I said, you can do this yourself, but in some cases it might take a day or two to finish a song, in other cases 10 minutes, then the style, check, fix, double check and so on it also very time consuming. But as I said, it's a labor of love.

Insights and incites by Notes

Notes said "I think they are a good value." Actually they are an excellent value IMHO. Anytime I want to practice site reading, doing a song for someone else, or just want to have fun I grab my fake book(s) and the accompanying Notes fake disk. His disks save me a lot of time and they follow the fake book notation perfectly.

Do not hesitate to look at and buy one of his fake disks.

Note that I do not work for Notes, I just like his products.

Yes. As many times as is needed, I am pleased to post a +1 for the quality of Notes’ work.

Gary

I just noticed what you said and your situation. You have my prayers and as a retired USAF Vietnam Vet let me know if the is anything I can do, calls I can make, etc. PM if there is


God Bless

Larry

Larry,

That's the empathy that I've grown to love about this wonderful PG Family.

Kudos, sir.

Thanks Mario and Matt for the kind words.

Bob

One of the other things that I want to bring up in this thread, and it was alluded to earlier in blank melody and a set of chords, in contrafacts.

How many great jazz songs have been done from contrafacts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_contrafacts

I thought "Back Home In Indiana" was the leader, but Jerome Kern seems to have more contrafacts of 'All The Things You Are.'

Ray Noble has even more with "Cherokee!"

The absolute winner though is George and Ira Gershwin, well, George anyway, with 'I've Got Rhythm."

So, having nothing but the chords from Notes and being able to change keys easily gives you a wonderful opportunity to take a chord progression from someone else and write an entire new song. At least you'll know that somewhere in there, it's already a hit.

Larry, send us a little of that Arizona desert warmth?

No, one Air Force Vet to another, I thank you very much, but I am fine, and will be fine.

My experience with making jazz fake disks puts variations on the good old 12 bar blues as the most popular chord progression and variations on "I Got Rhythm" in second place.

There have been some very interesting and creative chord substitutions to both of them.

Notes