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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14
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OP
Newbie
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14 |
I imported an audio file into BIAB (2011) and spent hours syncing it up with some
Real Drums, changing a bunch of Chord and Bar settings, Part Markers, etc, until I had
exactly what I wanted. Sounded great so I froze the drums and saved the file.
But when I reopened the file it had changed dramatically from the settings I saved:
some bars of Real Drums missing or playing on wrong beat, audio file missing, settings
for Real Tracks changed (i.e. had muted all except drums - now all back on; had tried
deleting all RT's - now back.)
Figured it was me, so I have tried:
- Save, Save As, Save +
- rebooting
- uninstalling and reinstalling (have run with everything on the USB HD, RTs & RD's left on the
USB HD but the program loaded on my computer, and finally with everything including
the RTs & RD's loaded onto my computer)
- making sure my Soundcard driver is up to date
- turning off Anti-Virus, Wireless, and User Account Control
- creating a new folder and starting from scratch with all the files going in there.
But the problem remains - I can redo my settings until the file plays fine in BIAB,
but when I save and then reopen it, it has changed.
PG Music Tech support has tried to help figure it out, but so far no solutions, so hoping
some of the experts out there have got some ideas. Very, very frustrating and running out
of time and energy trying to solve this.
PS Another very bizarre problem:
- I have the drums muted in the first bar and this works ... sometimes. But other times
(randomly as far as I can tell) BIAB plays a snare shot on the first beat! (I've tried all the
different fixes above with this, too.) And when I render to a Wav file, even if it's NOT
playing the shot in BIAB, it's there on the Wav.
Help!
------------------------
BIAB 2011 Ultra-Pak.
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
2.1GHz Dual-Core Processor
3GB RAM
320GB HD (7200RPM)
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Oct 2008
Posts: 19,839
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Joined: Oct 2008
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Hi vcp,
The song's construction process that you outline sounds like it would be much much better suited to Realband than BIAB.
Is there a reason that you need to use BIAB for this particular song? From my experience, the kind of editing you describe would be a whole heap easier to accomplish in RB. It the kind of this that RB was designed for.
Regards,
Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2025
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2007
Posts: 1,616
Expert
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Expert
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 1,616 |
Noel is correct that this is more suited for RealBand. Syncing an audio file can be difficult, especially if the tempo is slightly different anywhere in the song. If you work your way through all the changes again, try Rendering the song. If you want the audio included, be sure to check that option in the Render dialog. I have lost frozen tracks when changing the style.
A couple of suggestions:
- If you are using a style with RealTracks, try a similar Midi style and add RealTracks manually.
- There is a .bt1 file that is created which syncs the audio to the song. Try deleting that and re-playing song. A new .bt1 will be created.
- Your drums may be starting on the upbeat. Some RTs do this. I don't recall RDs doing it but possible. Play around with the Count-in settings.
- It is possible that the song file is corrupt. If it is easy, copy your chords/melody etc to a new song.
Hope some of this helps
R
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14
Newbie
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OP
Newbie
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14 |
Thanks Noel and Rachael,
I actually did try moving over to RB instead of BIAB, but it presented
a new set of problems that sent me back to BIAB:
1. The same RTs played in RB have a distinctively different sound than when
they are played in BIAB. (I assume this is because of the FX and mix that are on
them in BIAB. It is definitely not just an issue of track volumes.) I tried to solve
this by finding the FX on the RTs in BIAB and copying them to the RB files,
but was surprised to find that the FX interfaces between the 2 programs are so
different that this task would be very tedious and time consuming. (Anyone found
a way to load the RTs into RB with the FX/mix from BIAB??)
2. The files I compose in BIAB with RTs and RDs do not play the same in RB -
e.g. I have a BIAB file with RT instruments on the Soloist track changing over
16 bars. When I open this BIAB file with RB, it does not play the instrument
changes -just one instrument. (Tech support wasn't sure if RB will play these
changes from a BIAB file. Anyone else know?)
So I've definitely hit the wall. Hoping there's a solution 'cause I really like the
potential with the RTs and RDs. But in my experience, it's always a bad omen
when I run into repeated file corruption and inconsistent results from the same
set of commands.
I'll give it a few more hours tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks for your help, folks!
vcp
PS I redid the song from scratch a couple times, Rachael - new file, new folder, etc -
and it would seem to work, but again, when I reopen the saved files, they're corrupt.
And that snare shot plays randomly on the same file - a real puzzler.
PPS A clue?? - got the song playing perfectly in BIAB so I froze the RD track and
saved the file. Hit play again, and it played completely different! Is Freeze causing problems??
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 8,333
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 8,333 |
I suspect some of the tracks were not frozen and regenerated themselves on pressing play.
What if you import the stuff, make sure play on load is not active, and then freeze each track?
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 8,021
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BIAB RTs & RB RTs are exactly the same. All settings like vol, pan are saved when you import to RB.The only difference is that there is reverb available by default on the BIAB RTs but it's NOT actually part of the RT. It can be turned off if you want. It's the same PG Reverb available in RB.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 12
Newbie
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Newbie
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 12 |
Quote:
I suspect some of the tracks were not frozen and regenerated themselves on pressing play.
What if you import the stuff, make sure play on load is not active, and then freeze each track?
I've discovered one possible suspect for this RealTracks corruption problem, unrelated to freezing or regeneration.
It's in this post
http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/showflat.p...SID=#Post305625
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14
Newbie
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OP
Newbie
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14 |
Quote:
I've discovered one possible suspect for this RealTracks corruption problem, unrelated to freezing or regeneration.
It's in this post
http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/showflat.p...SID=#Post305625
Thanks, McSam! Very interesting. At least I know it's not just me going crazy battling some bugs ;-))
And I did try Save+ at one point, so maybe that did something to the file.
And John and Silvertones, thanks for pitching in as well! Much appreciated.
(Silvertones, have you found an easy way to recreate the BIAB reverb settings on the RTs in RB?)
Only spent half the day wrestling software today - decided I needed to recharge by actually
playing some music! ("Ahhh, that's better!" ;-))
PS Opened the BIAB problem song file in RB and checked the RD Wav file - the snare shot was
at the very end of the 2 bar intro in the Wav file. Why? No clue. Deleted it, rendered the
whole song to Wav from RB and it played without the snare shot. Now I have to figure out how
it (the snare shot) got into the BIAB song file in the first place. And more puzzling, why it
only plays randomly. (Still doing it in BIAB.)
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 8,333
Veteran
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Don't go deaf. I have a new thing where 2 drum sticks get hit together when I'm sitting by myself. I spent days going nuts before calling my audiologist and finding out that the stick (shots) and running water sounds are normal. Oh boy. I think the random running water sounds are meant to go with the random running water sensation on my feet, which goes to figure. Why have one without the other.
The only problem I used to have was a random drum sound at the end of a generated band in a box file. It was way at the end so I used Audacity to peel it out. Mind you I only really use those files to take 'upstairs' and play through a soundsystem to use on the acoustic piano. I have not used a file like that at Wembly Stadium yet.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 7,419
PG Music Staff
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PG Music Staff
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 7,419 |
Hello vcp, Quote:
I imported an audio file into BIAB (2011) and spent hours syncing it up with some
Real Drums, changing a bunch of Chord and Bar settings, Part Markers, etc, until I had
exactly what I wanted. Sounded great so I froze the drums and saved the file.
But when I reopened the file it had changed dramatically from the settings I saved:
some bars of Real Drums missing or playing on wrong beat, audio file missing, settings
for Real Tracks changed (i.e. had muted all except drums - now all back on; had tried
deleting all RT's - now back.)
If your song has an audio track, this is simply a wave file that has the same name as the Band-in-a-Box file. So after importing your audio track and saving, you'll have "MySong.MGU" and "MySong.WAV" in the same folder. One way to lose your audio track, is to rename the MGU file in Windows Explorer, and then open it in Band-in-a-Box. In this case, to get the audio track back you could rename the wave file also and re-open the song.
Another way to lose the audio track is to use the feature "Play | Render song to audio track". This is one method of "freezing" the current arrangement (different than the actual freeze feature) by rendering it permanently to the audio track. Doing this will overwrite your audio track, although there is a warning message if an audio track exists.
Quote:
had muted all except drums - now all back on
Depends how you muted the tracks. The way you *should* do it, is type C.d in the first bar (that is, mute all instruments except drums). Then, highlight your entire song and go to Edit | Copy Rests. If you muted instruments by simply right-clicking on the tracks in the instrument panel at the top of the screen, that will not stick - it is not a setting that is saved with songs.
Quote:
had tried deleting all RT's - now back.
There can be RealTracks assigned to the song ("Song RealTracks", or built into the style ("Style RealTracks"). In the RealTracks Picker, select the track that has RealTracks you want to remove, and press [none]. If the track has "Style RealTracks", a message will ask if you want to disable RealTracks in the style - answer Yes. Now the track will either be blank, or there will be a MIDI track in its place. So if you want to get rid of that track completely, both MIDI and RealTracks, you would want to use 'rests'.
It sounds like you are essentially:
1. Importing an audio file that doesn't have drums.
2. Selecting a RealDrums track to play along with it.
If this is correct, why not start out with a blank style (select either the 4/4 or 3/4 Blank.sty from the StylePicker. Then you can audition and add "Song RealDrums" without having to worry about getting rid of existing tracks.
A second point - as others have mentioned, RealBand would probably be easier to use in this case, unless your audio file was recorded to a click track at a specific tempo, like 120 bpm.
One last thing that I thought of - There are two main types of Band-in-a-Box song file extensions - .MGU for songs with a melody track, and .SGU for songs without. Perhaps you saved your song as an .SGU file (after removing the melody), but then you opened the .MGU file...
Andrew
PG Music Inc.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14
Newbie
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OP
Newbie
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 14 |
Thanks, Andrew! Very clear instructions - I will try them all.
vcp
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In this PAK you’ll discover: Minimalist Modern Funk, New Wave Synth Pop, Hard Bop Latin Groove, Gospel Country Shuffle, Cinematic Synthwave, '60s Motown, Funky Lo-Fi Bossa, Heavy 1980s Metal, Soft Muted 12-8 Folk, J-Pop Jazz Fusion, and many more!
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If you're itching to get a sneak peek at what's included in XPro Styles PAK 9, here is a small helping of what you can look forward to: Funky R&B Horns, Upbeat Celtic Rock, Jazz Fusion Salsa, Gentle Indie Folk, Cool '60s Soul, Funky '70s R&B, Smooth Jazz Hip Hop, Acoustic Rockabilly Swing, Funky Reggae Dub, Dreamy Retro Latin Jazz, Retro Soul-Rock Fusion, and much more!
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