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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Mar 2018
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OP
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PGM's engine is doing a good job with it's own "in house" MIDI following chords, but there is no way (at least that I know of) that you can use your 3rd party MIDI loops or phrases in similar manner > Load a 2,4,8 etc. bar MIDI loop and make it follow your chords.
While Super MIDI tracks are next best thing, if you want tighter control, flexibility and be able to swap sound (synth), there are just not enough of them.
For example I want particular sections for intros, breaks, endings. Basically force BIAB to act as a more traditional hardware arranger instead of trying to cobble sections from existing material, which at times can be a very lengthy and challenging task. With proper MIDI loops that can be achieved quite easily, but they have to follow chords and re-interpret chords if changes are made.
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PGM made an attempt to re-purpose existing MIDI phrases as what is now a MIDI Trk tab in MPT Library. Some of these are usable, but sorting, filtering and overall implementation is very raw at this point in time.
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 64
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I believe this can be done using the Style Wizard feature of the Stylemaker. I did this back in the 90's. There was a company called Twiddly Bits that use to provide midi phrases that were meant to be used in sequencers. One of the offerings was a variety of arpeggiated chords. Since BIAB at that time had no midi arpeggiator, I created an arpeggiator style using the stylemaker wizard. The wizard analyzed a standard midi file (SMF) and presented identified phrases to be included in the style. Once the style was created the Twiddly Bits phrases followed BIAB chords.
The MIDI stylemaker had been ignored for years as BIAB focused on RealTracks. But I believe it has been revised somewhat to treat MIDI loops similar to RealTracks. I think the original MIDI Stylemaker, while ugly looking by today's standards, was really very sophisticated. You could add as many different phrases for each legacy instrument as you wanted for A and B parts. In addition, you could assign a probability to each phrase to make it more or less selectable. I remember using masks to allow phrases to be used only in certain bars. I think Notes Norton had mastered these techniques in creating his sophisticated MIDI styles. I think the Stylemaker Wizard may accomplish what you are after.
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Mar 2018
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cxp,
Thanks but... The request is to get away from 90s workflow or/and other tedious and bizarre workarounds.
What I am asking was done by quite a few titles in recent 10 years. Some are even free or very low priced. The problem is integration with BIAB.
Particularly what I am asking for is to: put my own MIDI loops in a folder, lets call it "User MIDI" and so they show up in MIDI trk tab in MTP Library and act same way as PGM MIDI snippets > reinterpret phrases according to chord sheet same way as it is done with MIDI trks. Simple as that. No need to reinvent the wheel.
That was actually my first major disappointment when I started using BIAB - Styles that don't have proper parts for Intros / Breaks & Fills. Since it would be extremely challenging to make the parts out of RTs of existing library, MIDI loops/phrases that are accessible the easy way and a combination of "playable RT's" or decent VSTi would make a viable alternative.
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Joined: Apr 2016
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I agree Rustyspoon,
It's not a technically challenging thing to incorporate & would make classic reggae, for example, so much easier to do.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Mac Videos
With the release of Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac, we’re rolling out a collection of brand-new videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll keep this forum post updated so you can easily find all the latest videos in one convenient spot.
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— Team PG
Update to Build 10 of RealBand® 2026 for Windows®!
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