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Post your own Tips and Tricks here
Joined: Jan 2002
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Jazzman Offline OP
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A cool tip for both rehearsing or for making backing tracks for you to play/sing the melody with a BIAB harmony is as follows -

1. Go to the melody harmony window and select a harmony (say Trumpet/Sax 3rds )

2. Click on Edit in the window and UNTICK the Melody box.

3. Hit Update and Save this to say #255 and name it to say 3harmony.

4. Experiment with the velocities to get the balance you need and Save again

You can also choose any harmony instrument or virtually any harmony configuration - lead a trumpet or sax section etc as well.

You can use this special harmony as you like with others or none by using the settings in Bar Settings

This adds color and fun to the arrangement
Brian

Last edited by Jazzman; 09/24/07 10:47 AM.
Post your own Tips and Tricks here
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Hey, this could be a great way of adding Brass riffs to a song. Thanks for the tip.

Trax

Post your own Tips and Tricks here
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I trick I use a lot is to generate a song, or songs until I find one I like.. in Biab..

Then I create several versions using different styles.. I carefully label these saving as song and MID..

I import the midis into Logic, again labeling them.. Labeling is critical.. I might copy in five versions of song

I always create a utility organ style, so I have the block chords of song..

I line up all the five different basses,, I cut them into one bar lengths, and then manually mute and select the one bar section.. so I have a bass part with up to five different styles.. I do this with some of the other tracks..

I use the super midi parts when possible, because they are so much more impressive..

I also might create several versions of the song with different melodies, and solos. again careful labeling is essential.. I might use different melodies in different parts of songs even spitting them into one or two bar sections... Sometimes I find so much great stuff, I lengthen song.. double length verses, or extra verses .. This is where the careful labelling goes in.. I now make a composite of the chord track, and perhaps bass, and another instrument of two.. I import this midi into BIAB and do process again. .

It can easily get overwhelming. can but can yield some amazing results.. I also use a Tyros 5 arranger kbd, which is no slouch at creating parts..

I sometimes take what I've assembled. learn to play it and replace that with my hand played performance..
I use Macs, desktop picture taker, and write text notes and save all in a folder, so I can come back and continue in working..

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I also sometimes create a different chord track, submitting 5th or 3rd for roots, and generate a style from that and only use one instrument from that to create an instrument, that complements the original styles, sometimes hand editing is needed to improve continuity.

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Be aware you can't use upper bank patches for harmony.
For example, with the Ketron SD2 module, you can make your harmonies only with the basic GM bank. But, many interesting patches are set in the upper banks. So, you won't access them !
I know, it is a pity.
A request has been done some years ago in the wishlist to access the upper banks in the Melody/Thru harmonies. Still no implementation. That would be a very musical and useful feature. We have many patches (384 on Ketron SD2, 512 patches on Ketron SD1000) and we can only use the 128 first ones.


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