Hi,
Contains values like Country 35, Jazz 25, Jazz 30, Pop 90.
Is this genre/year? The year seems a bit specific for a generic style. And there is a curious * symbol next to the Group label, but what does this mean?

Also the sort order seems strange. When sorting on this column you get Country 20, then Jazz 25, then Country 25? Makes no sense!

On related subject, can I hide the columns that don't interest me, to remove clutter and free up space for other columns?

The * is not curious. It is an indicator of the column that is selected, and the sort order Low to High. Try selecting another column and you'll see the * moves. Click that column name again and it toggles between * and ** (High to Low).

I prefer to sort on the Genre rather than the Group column.

We have requested a multiple-column sorting capability. This area of BIAB could be improved. The only way to do that now is use the filter string entry area.

konaboy.

just an idea.

once a year i go thru the thousands of styles//rt's//rd's
and using my own custom cataloguing system i create a favorite saved library of pg songs in various genres.

so , i sorta pare the herd to my own mini fav herd.
includeing 'oddballs'. for example I might never do a greek or latin song ..but i dont let that stop me from testing rt's from those genres in case i find that they might 'fit' the current song i'm working on.

in summary i'm always looking for interesting sound pictures i can use. and i often cross pollinate various genres. in summary i dont limit myself to the stylepicker or even what biab might suggest as suitable rt's etc.

just an idea.

happiness

om

You can resize the columns by click-hold-sliding left/right

nice, yes i could squeeze the columns shut. thanks.
still waiting for a explanation of the Group column though! seems to be one of life's many mysteries.

"Genre Intensity Score"??
A very peculiar and poorly documented feature to display so prominently in the style picker!

Did you check this out? The Online Help states this:

- Group: The styles are grouped into three groups: Pop, Jazz, and Country.

(Separately, this could be explained in better detail, perhaps)

Here’s what ChatGPT has to say on the subject, and it certainly seems confident in its response to my…

Band-in-a-Box Stylepicker question

What style of music do you want Band-in-a-Box to play in?

My question is about the user interface. What does the group column mean?

The "group" column in Band-in-a-Box refers to the musical category or genre that a particular style belongs to.

What does the number in the group column indicate, for example, “Pop 35”?

The number in the "group" column (e.g. "Pop 35") in Band-in-a-Box is a style number that uniquely identifies the musical style within the given group (in this case, "Pop").

What’s the point if the style already has its own name?

The style number provides a quick and efficient way for users to search and identify specific styles within a large database, as well as to organize and categorize styles into groups. Having both the name and number helps to ensure that styles can be easily located and differentiated from one another.

thanks for checking, but it does not seem correct.

have a look at the gif earlier in the thread. there are multiple "Country 50" groups, so it cannot be a unique id.


the mystery deepens...

It isn't (presently, anyway) that unusual for ChatGPT to give a wrong answer.
I do think it did a pretty good try at an explanation.

How right or wrong it was is probably moot. The "Pop 35" certainly can't and doesn't uniquely identify the style and more than the set number does.

You know, I didn’t even look, I was just so willing to offer my credulity to the AI, which didn’t even clear its throat before emitting that very confident but clearly incorrect answer. (Wonder how it came by that bit of misinformation?)

The correct answer, as you found, is that the number refers to “genre intensity score” — looking at _AIRTRIO.STY, classified as “Country 16”, the memo text states that Genre ”Intensity" Score=16/100 and likewise for other styles.

Interestingly, even a site-specific Google search of www.pgmusic.com for "style group" doesn't give any useful answer.

I was thinking a smaller value represents sparsely arrangements and higher values for busier arrangements?

Of course I asked the bot about the number, it replied as below. If what it says is true, it's not as simple as a scale from 0=Mellow to 100=Frenzied, it's an index of how representative each style is of the genre it falls under — which would be an odd way to want to see things sorted, no? My confidence in ChatGPT as a BIAB "expert" is not high at the moment. Be that as it may...

CHATGPT SPEAKS:

"Genre Intensity Score" in Band-in-a-Box refers to a feature in the software that assigns a numerical value to the level of genre influence in a musical composition. This score indicates the style and genre of the music being played and helps users to categorize and organize their music library. The score ranges from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating a stronger presence of a particular genre in the music.

I have asked about this in the past. You might find this post helpful.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=695032&Searchpage=1&Main=94381&Words=%22genre+intensity+score%22&Search=true#Post695032

Thanks Matt. While ChatGPT's answers are certainly fascinating, I think Simon's answer in that post you found is the most accurate. It is quite subjective. We'll make sure to add that to the StylePicker help topic etc.

Sadly, for me, the first of Matt's links gives "access denied".

I think that’s ok Gordon. The second link has Simon’s answer.

Yeah, sorry about muddying the waters with the ChatGPT stuff, it's just so specific and convincing.

The "level of genre influence" reading does seem unlikely on the face of it, and you really do have to wonder where it got that.

Simon's take on intensity is certainly more plausible. I would be 100% inclined to assume "genre intensity score" represents some kind of energy level and 0% inclined to think welllll maybe it indicates degree of compliance with genre standards.

So is "intensity" the same thing as "group"?

I think not. Intensity of an individual style is compared to the intensity of the collective average of all styles (all three groups, as the term is used here).

that's actually a pretty cool and useful feature when browsing for suitable styles.

the "Group" column heading is quite misleading though. should perhaps be called "Intensity".

And I'm still not understanding the sort order of this column. Is it sorted just based on the intensity score, or genre/score? The latter would make more sense but I don't think this is the case. Will check when I am back at the PC.

I think the column sort order does an overall sort, but there are subtle nuances in the ordered items that don't always make immediate sense. I also presume that this is a deliberate part of the way the program sorting works in the way the presented items are ordered.

Indeed, that Genre Intensity Score is the primary value being sorted on, 0 to 100, not Group (Pop/Jazz/Country) which is why the order looks off. Within a given number, the secondary sort order for grouping appears to be Jazz, Country, Pop.

They should rename the column and flip the terms so you have “75 Pop” etc.

indeed mark, that would remove most of the confusion.

but all said and done, quite a nice "secret" feature, now we all know!

Here is a somewhat more complete description of the feature.

Q. I'm sometimes looking for a style, but unsure if you've called it country, folk or something else, because those can be similar. Is there another way to find them?

A. We've introduced a new variable for this – called "Genre Score". That describes a style by a simple number from 1 to 100. This "genre score" works as follows: "quiet, classical, acoustic, jazz, folk" would have low genre scores (1 to 30) "loud, aggressive, heavy rock" have high genre scores (80-100), and light-medium pop would have mid-range genre scores. So, if you're looking for a quiet "living room" type style, use the StylePicker filter to only show styles with a genre score less than 40 – that might show jazz, classical, folk or other quiet-acoustic styles.

I can see the thinking, but still struggle with the execution.

Having just search for a 6/8 timed bossa/bolero style I see the following, which appears to me rather confused about genre or group. I imagine there's some history behind it.

I can't help thinking that 'intensity' should be separated from 'group' in the column, even if the genre is relevant to the decision on what is actually meant by intensity.

Ideally we could decide what column to sort on, then within that sorted order, sort on another column, then within that, sort on a third etc. Intensity would not need to be accompanied by any Group info; it could just be a number. In this way I could rank only the styles I want to choose from by intensity. I’m also assuming ‘intensity’ could be defined then determined objectively.

> I imagine there's some history behind it.

I won’t be quoting it, but I’ve been chatting with ChatSonic, and it has ideas about this similar to those of ChatGPT. Both AIs, I assume, encountered an earlier incarnation of this “genre score” / “intensity score” while training on an old release note or something, where it is indeed some kind of index of genre influence as opposed to simple musical intensity.

Which still doesn’t explain where the idea of a “group” — not the same as “genre” — comes in, and why it’s glued to these scores in this way and sitting up there in the heading. Was “intensity” at one point supposed to be an index of influence of one of the “big three” supercategories, Jazz, Pop, and Country?

Perhaps there is a menu hack that will rename the column “intensity” and simply delete everything but the number in those scores.

My guess is that Group concept arose from the early BIAB days of providing extra paks in those three overarching categories.

I guess before the mysterious genre/intensity score was invented, the “group” column simply grouped styles into those three buckets, back in the day when it made more sense to do this, when they weren’t so many.

How someone got the idea to hijack that column the way it’s been hijacked is an interesting question in technical anthropology.

indeed, i quickly discovered this was not working as one might expect. for example, primary sort on Genre, and then secondary sort on Set within each genre.