PLEASE HELP ...TALKING TO BIAB PEOPLE HAS BEEN USELESS ...

MY QUESTION IS ... CAN ANYONE POINT ME TO A FEW SIMPLE JAZZ BALLAD STYLES WITH SIMPLE 1/4 NOTE BASS LINES, AND SPARSE PIANO COMPING ... I HAVE GIVEN UP SEARCHING AFTER DOZENS AND DOZENS OF WASTED HOURS ... AND YES I HAVE TRIED ALL THE FILTERS, SIMPLE ARRANGEMENT, NO EMBELLISHMENT, AND, AND, AND OTHER TECHNIQUES.

I have been using BIAB on and off for over 25 years, and i am back at it, but EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED. They add thousands of similar styles for every upgrade which add nothing but more difficulty finding anything.

When I try to find a slow jazz ballad style (Midi, SuperMidi, or Real Tracks), the piano is always way too busy (plays like a chord based solo), and the bass is way too busy for any ballad (plays like a soloist with all kinds of frills). All of this drowns me out.

I feel like I have to play accompaniment and let them do all the soloing.

I'm especially sick and tired of editing bass accompaniments. If I am playing a slow, sad ballad, the bass is all over the place (despite the 1/4 note setting) ... playing approach notes, scalar, arpeggiated fills, 1/8ths, 1/8 triplets, and anything but a simple chord outline on 1/4 notes. I might as well write my own bass lines in Finale (easier than editing in BIAB)

If I sound frustrated, and a little hostile, my sincere apologies ... but wasting so much time is maddening.

Thanks for any assistance offered

JDW

This is an interesting post and view, and I am glad that I am not the only person who shares it.

As I mentioned, my use of BIAB is fairly limited, mainly jazz/blues/rock backing tracks to play along to, to learn songs, licks, arpeggios etc. Despite having 1000s of styles available, finding something "basic" to play along to is always a struggle, and I tend to use the same 2 Blues, 2 Jazz and 3 Rock Styles... Occasionally I choose different drums.

They are indeed busy (in my opinion). From time to time I venture out to look at the guitar lead sheet with the hope to perhaps play along to it, or learn from it, but pretty much all the ones I have looked at are impossible to play (well, at my level anyway). I have often thought if anybody would actually play this.... but then I am sure that they do, the RT did get recorded.

About the bass - I am often turning it down because I find it distracting, too much going on :-)

I am happy with what I have, but I often now use iRealPro on my iPad to play along to, basic but serves its purpose....

This is all just my personal view, I love BIAB and wouldn't want to make music without it. Best software I've ever bought :-)

Nirvana is a place of perfect peace and happiness, the highest state that someone can attain, a state of enlightenment, whereby a person's individual desires and suffering go away. Achieving nirvana is to make earthly feelings like suffering and desire disappear.

Unfortunately, the more you search for it, the less likely you will find it. Which brings me to this threads topic.

I have also spent years looking for that perfect musical sound from an accompaniment/backing track - BIAB (RTs, midi, SMTs, RDs), ToonTrack (EZkeys, EZDrummer), Scaler, as well as countless VSTi instruments and loop libraries. I can tell you from experience what we are searching for is not in any of those sources. There is only one place where that elusive sound can be found. When you discover that place, the weaknesses and limitation of all these products will no longer matter. Time for my meditation and yoga exercises.

On a more serious note, do you fellows have the UltraPak?

looks like that place might be "Within Thyself" after 10k hours practice on your chosen instrument.

I know that place, it’s tiny.:)

Chances are that most of the styles in the same category share the exact same bass and drum patterns. Or at least a limited number of different patterns for a whole bunch of so-called different styles.

My first solution was to drop the velocity of bass and drums in the midi styles (piano too, if you like) by 30. All patterns were in the 85+ range (velocity from 1-127) and that sounds awful, even with the best VST. Don’t forget to save them under a new name, cause with every new version, your tweaks will be deleted and replaced.

But after being fed up with too much repetition, I decided to make my own styles. That’s a difficult, but ultimately rewarding path to take.

Some people would make a midi file for each song they play. This is were Biab shines: you can use this midi you made to make a new style and apply it to other songs as well.

I almost made it sound easy, though I know making styles is a really hard and long process. (Even after this much practice, making one style with just drums and bass, takes me more than 20 hours on average. Even a simple bunch of patterns takes hours and hours to get it just right) but, as I said, it is much more to your own liking.

With Realtracks it’s not always possible.