PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Styles and RealTracks Wishlist Multi-Pass Style Sets

Hey, Pilgrim:

Personally, I think my idea for multi-pass style sets seems fairly clever and pregnant with potential. Although I haven’t read any similar Wishlist requests, if I am repeating an idea someone has offered previously, I apologize for the repetition now. However, if my idea is original but its application would not be practical for technical reasons and/or of no use to the typical Band-In-A-Box user, well, I anticipate that some of you who read this will cordially explain why realization of my particular “wish” is unfeasible or undesirable.

In the wee hours of a recent workday morning, I awoke a few hours before the alarm-clock was set to buzz. Instead of immediately drifting back into cozy slumber, I experienced a “waking dream” in which I was using special multi-part style sets in BiaB to easily make audio tracks for really full, lush, and articulate mixes. Cool, huh?

If I wanted a 12-piece band with a horn section, for example, on the first pass of generating instrument tracks to accompany my melody and chord structure, I might load a hypothetical HornDawgs1A style — the first part of a 2-part style set — and then generate the bass, keyboard, drums, guitar, strings, melody, and soloist tracks. For my way of working (Your mileage may vary.), I would then output each of those instrument tracks as its own separate audio (.wav) file for subsequent mixing in RealBand. Before any mixing, however, I would next load hypothetical style HornDawgs1B — the second part of a 2-part style set — to generate the horn section for my song. Where typical BiaB single-pass styles would usually have to limit the horns to a single brass ensemble track in order to also accommodate all the other aforementioned (minus one or two) instruments, this second pass could generate separately, say, trumpet 1, trumpet 2, trombone, sax, and flute. After I output the individual audio tracks for each horn, then I can begin mixing all 12 tracks in RealBand.

And how about orchestral multi-pass style sets? For example, an entire 48-piece chamber orchestra could be recreated by a single 8-part style set, in which individual passes of 6-instruments-at-a-time might include OrchStrings1, OrchStrings2, OrchStrings3, OrchBrass1, OrchBrass2, OrchWoodwinds1, OrchWoodwinds2, and OrchPercussion1 (including keyboard). Oy! Yeah, that would be a lot of stuff to work with — 48 individual instrument tracks, all generated according to one master style! But, hey, this is just an example to suggest to what level a “multi-pass style set” approach could be expanded. (If, of course, passes must be limited to 5-instruments-at-a-time, then a 10-part style set could still handle the project outlined above.)

And that's just two examples. You, no doubt, can easily imagine how this concept could apply to various other kinds of music, some of which may be much closer to your heart and more suited to your own personal tastes and needs.

And blah, de-blah, blah, blah... Well, I finally faded from semi-consciousness that morning and drifted back into slumber, to dream some regular old-fashioned REM-state non-waking dreams.

So, hey, what do ya think of my concept of multi-pass style sets? No changes need to be made to either Band-In-A-Box or RealBand to accommodate this method of significantly increasing the number of instruments available in a style. It's just a matter of some new style sets being written by PG Music and/or after-market vendors, for something more than single-pass output.

Hey, I'm just sayin'....

Be well, be happy. And, oh yeah, pleasant dreams.

Sincerely, Bro. Dave Lister
"There once was a hermit named Dave...."
http://www.brodavelister.com/

That's sort of like my initial approach to cooking: if a couple spices are good, then throwing in a whole bunch of spices must make something that tastes terrific! It didn't take many experiments to prove that approach wrong.

Similarly, my first attempts at orchestral writing consisted of trying to get every instrument to do something different. The result was as predictably bad as my attempts at randomly combining foodstuff: a huge mess.

For the most part, BiaB arrangements work because the various instruments (drums, bass, guitar) play supporting roles. As long as they follow the same beat and feel, they'll mesh together well.

Put a lead instrument on top of that, and it'll generally sit pretty well. But add another instrument, and you won't end up with a duet. Sure, it might mesh nicely at points, but that's purely chance. Adding more instruments to the mix will only ensure that things get worse, not better.

Listen to some orchestral music, and - despite the initial complexity - you'll find that most music can be broken down into the following general functions: melody, counter-melody, harmony, and bass.

More than one instrument will often be assigned to a particular part - for example, you might have the strings taking the melody in octaves, or the brass playing the counter-melody in block chords, and so on. But that's homophony - a thickened line, with all the instruments are playing the same rhythm, moving in similar directions. (BiaB's harmony function is an excellent example of this).

So there may be 52 instruments playing, but they aren't all playing something different - even if they aren't all playing the same note.

And often, many of these instruments aren't doing anything at all. Good orchestration is based on variety. So the woodwinds will have the melody for a few bars, and then it'll be handed off to the strings, and so on.

And that's ignoring the problem of coordinating all these parts. Consider, for example, what it takes to create a counter-melody. You'll want the counter-melody to:

• Use chordal notes, but not notes already selected by the melody;
  
• Generally move in the opposite direction of the melody;
  
• Avoid dissonant intervals;
  
• Avoid parallel fifths and octaves;
  
• Be sparse when the melody is busy, and busy when the melody is sparse

If you don't follow those rules, your counter-melody is going to sound pretty stupid. This sort of capability is beyond RealTracks at the moment, and it ignores another huge constraint:

• Make the choice from the pre-recorded options

Anyway, the short(er) answer is that although it may seem that an orchestra is a lot of instruments playing different things, when you break it down, it's a lot of instruments playing similar things, following lots of complex rules that if you don't follow, you'll end up with a mess.