PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Beginners Forum Saying hello and a couple of questions

I finally bought BIAB Pro last weekend and produced my first song with the cakewalk plugin, it took about 12 hours.
What held me back for several years was concerns that it would not come with enough rock styles and that it might not have a human feel. I have not used it enough yet to determine that. Also, I am trying to find out if it is possible to add or replace instruments with other real instruments in the chosen style. I have much to learn.

BIAB is my Vger moment as in Star Trek the motion picture. Let me explain why. Back in 1986 before even the first pc I wrote my own step time multi track midi sequencer. It took about a year to develop, initially for my own use, with the editor written in basic and the fast real time midi commands written in Z80 assembler and I sold about 150 copies worldwide. I wonder how many BIAB users there are now? In the pattern editor I could build 16, or 12 step patterns for triplets, with 8 instrument tracks, each could select a different instrument, and 4 percussion tracks as well as adding the tempo for that pattern. Notes were entered as numbers. Each track also had a volume setting. I could then build a song in the song editor by adding the pattern numbers and how many times they should be played. There is still a page about it:
https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Foundation_Multi-Track_Step_Time_Sequencer
I gave up development sometime around 1988, mainly because midi always sounded so clockwork. However, I was pleasantly surprised and glad to discover that BIAB Realtracks works so well, with a more human touch, hence my Vger moment. The next thing I wish to learn is how to make it have an even more human feel, perhaps with instrument volume and tempo dynamics in each bar. Also, if there is a way to increase the volume of cymbals, for example, in a realtracks drum set for an especially big crash or similar.

One other thing, when I was using the cakewalk plugin to produce my first song, I was only able to turn off bass and drums for the first 4 bars, and not later in the song. It worked fine in the BIAB application, but for some reason not in the cakewalk plugin. I was able to turn them off in the cakewalk audio files. This is the song:
https://jademann4.wixsite.com/thebluegalaxy/media

Finally, on the right there is an advert for XPro style packs. Would anyone know if any of these offer additional realband rock styles for my version of BIAB. thanks.

Welcome!

I’ll start with some low hanging ones.

Press F5 at any measure. You can change the tempo at that measure, or change the volume of each instrument. You can do fades, and you can mute instruments. You can also change styles.

Separately, there are normalize functions for MIDI melody and harmony tracks, and the ability to do what’s called slide tracks (making them lag or play on top of the beat more). These are examples of how to humanize the playback in BIAB.

The RealDrums are mostly stereo drum kits where the balance is pre-mixed. However, there are some newer RealDrums that have what are called Stems. These can have many drum tracks where you can adjust the volume of each piece of the kit, plus overhead mics etc. Be aware there aren’t many drums with stems yet but we expect more. Also be aware the parts of the kit are not isolated and you sometimes get quite s bit of bleed. Again, we hope to see improvements as these drums become more mature.

XPro styles for your Pro version offering more Rock styles? Yes.

Thanks Matt, great information.
If I like a particular style can I add to or replace individual instruments in that style with other real instruments?

Is there a resource to tell me what is included in the paks? What is the difference between XPRO style and Xtra Styles? Are they both realband and do they both work with my version of BIAB? Are they different to the paks in the Megapak and Ultrapak BIAB versions?

I think I answered my own question here:
https://www.pgmusic.com/xpro.php?pak=all&os=mac#pak5

Replace = yes.
Both = no. You can use XPro styles but not XTra Styles. You would need to upgrade from the Pro version to have the RealTracks needed for the Xtra styles to work.

RealBand is a separate program bundled free with BIAB. It is a DAW and can read BIAB files. It uses the same RealTracks and RealDrums.

Matt, thanks for clarifying Realband is a DAW. I was mixing up the terms Realband and Realtracks.
I think that unless it offers some advantage, I will stay with Cakewalk for now, because I have used it for 10+ years. I will focus on learning BIAB and making it as human touch as possible. I suspect that this will be key to how often I will use it for recording songs.
Bass and drums will be my main BIAB Realtrack instruments, because I play rock guitar. When I switch to lead it would also be good to have a BIAB rock guitar as backing, occasionally some keyboards also.

I go back 30 years with Cakewalk Pro Audio/SONAR, although I’ve moved on.

Also take a look at the BIAB Plugin that is bundled with BIAB. You can open the plug-in within Cakewalk / BandLab.

The best way to get that "human" feel in the music is to play some of the parts yourself if you can. But that's really not necessary. Several folk here besides myself use BB & RB to render the tracks into WAV files and then export them to our DAW of choice. There, it's easy to use volume automation envelopes to bring things in and out as real players do. You can also add your own live tracks that will further enhance that "live human" feel. Most music on the radio today is rock solid and the variations are in the instruments and the overall groove. Tempo is normally dead on. So adding the instrument volume automation and then breaking it down to just acoustic and then back to the band..... makes it feel human and not so robotic.

regarding the drums..... some of the real drum tracks are now multitrack that allow the user to control the drums individually. Want more snare, more low toms, more or less cymbal? Easy, just volume automate the kit.

I have been using Sonar and the plug in that works within Sonar is pretty cool and saves me some steps and time. I used to use Real Band to generate the tracks and the extra tracks not found in a given style. I can do that from the plug in and drag those WAV files directly to the Sonar track.