PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Bass track question

Hello BIAB Family

i have a question about some bass track issues i'm Running into in some of my Midi's
they were built playing really low on the bass scale of the keyboard...so on some when i have to change the key's on them to be able to sing them...they are so low in tonality that they sound garballed ...messed up

so what i'm needing to do is move the whole bass track up in tonality to get it to sound good..
now what i'm wondering is this....Noel taught me how to get into the piano Roll portion of BIAB and fix
drum track's adding some snare to a track...

would i approach this bass problem the same way?....moving that whole bass run up to a different octave in piano Roll? or is there another short cut to move that bass line tonality higher on the scale that i haven't discovered yet?

thanks for your time reading this...and thanks for any and all advice

cajun

Along jazzmanDan's lines, if these are bass tracks in BIAB, you could try Opt., Preferences, Channels. Change the -1 for the bass to a zero in the second column (Octave). If these are from somewhere else, please give more detail.

If you select a midi bass track and freeze it, you can press CTL ALT 1 or CTL ALT 2 which does the octave in transposing.

Otherwise you need to find the entry for lowest bass note.

On another note:

Are you singing here, like the melody?? Or are you trying to sing the bass part. You can copy the bass to the melody, the program leaves it alone then. You can edit the thing. Or just change the key, so going from C to say Eb will boost the whole thing 3 semi tones. Lots of ways to skin this cat. Give us facts.

What is the song.

What is the key.

What is the style.

What version of Band in a Box.

What o/s just for fun.

And maybe tell us what you had for breakfast at the same time.

Enquiring minds and all.

BTW, you have to transpose it BEFORE you Freeze it. You can only freeze it in newer versions.

OH, and for the guys in LA which is not LA on the left coast but the territory the French gave up in the south. Anyways for the bass is not the part where Billy the Bass sings. Not the singing fish, but a deep voice. Just for clarification because we get into stuff like we say about in the right way and lots of Americans laugh at us because they say it wrong and never heard it right, but American must be right because. Just because.

We'd beg to differ but we heard they have lots of guns. .) etc.

Just got in from Road trip...made a copy of everyone's advice so i can have it in hand while working on the Bass part....and this is the Bass guitar part i'm working on...not singing this part...its part of the melody of the whole song..

to answer a couple of john's question's

What is the song....lucille by little Richard

What is the key....old key was Cmaj....i need it in Emaj to sing it decent

What is the style. window is showing XZZ JAZZ .STY JAZZ SWING STYLE...whether thats what's playing with the mid...i'm not sure

What version of Band in a Box....2012 version...everything pack

What o/s just for fun....Windows 7 home premium

And maybe tell us what you had for breakfast at the same time.....2 links of Boudin with Zapps cajun potatoe chips...and a Barq's Rootbeer

Enquiring minds and all....i Aim to please...lol

And yes Bass can be taken many way's...sorry i didn't clarify....a person can sing in Bass tone...or even play a Bass guitar...or Bass on the keyboard side of things...we also Fish large Mouth Bass here in Louisiana.....and we do have lots of guns here until the military and police take them away during a hurricane well not during...but they try after its over the Katrina thing....but me thinks this won't happen again here...it will be nasty next time i wouldn't want to be a cop next time they try it....lol

talk to ya soon guy's...thanks for the help to all...will report back
cajun























will let everyone know how the song comes along....talk wit ya soon Sha...lol

cajun

If you type Lucille into the search field in biab you get one style 34C_OTR.

I'm not sure if this fits, but it has a bass track and the lowest note is a G (bottom line on the staff). That's a midi bass.

x in front of a style means it's de-selected, or not used.

In that case you might have loaded a midi onto the track and really are just playing back someone's midi, which you could do with a midi player.

That song, if it's about Lucille to do her sister's will, (other wise he passes away intestate, and that's nah good eh, so she does the lawyer thing and draws up the will).

Anyway that's a dead easy song to enter chords for, there are only 3 really, c7, f7, g7 and maybe g7#9.

So you want a boogie sort of tempo. You might want to try Fats or Jerry Lee Lewis.

wow...didn't know i could type lucille into the search field and get something from BIAB

and yes john..thats what i've been doing playing midi's that's already created...and changing sounds in the midi sequencer section of BIAB...and also deleting un-wanted midi tracks to make the song sound as real as possible...i play guitar, so a lot of midi guitar tracks i'm getting rid of and i'm playing the part's...

also i'm changing Bass guitar sounds if needed...and sometimes adding brass sections to certain tracks..

now one thing that still boggles my mind is....i can extract chords from songs with chord wizard whether it be midi..karaoke file...mp3....i'm able to get the chord structure
and thats great, but when i try to build my own song from the chords i've gotten from say a mp3 song....i can't seem to match up a good style to go with the song..

this is something i need to figure out....it would save me so much time when building a song when i have the chords ready to go....but every style i pick sucks...and i need all midi styles....because i'm going to play them as a midi sequence on my yamaha mm6 keyboard

I don't do midi. If it can be helped.

Despite the aforementioned, there is a midi track there. I use it for other stuff, controllers etc.

For my ears, I prefer realtracks. It's rare I don't take the midi module, but it does not get much use.

They way you are working does not make sense. When "I" import a midi track I have band in a box figure out the chords and the melody. I then dump the rest of the midi out, garbage style. I find a style.

IF you have the X in front of your style there is NO STYLE, you are playing the midi style.

You can make a style from an existing midi (if you think it's really good).

I don't know what you have behind you, but just midi tracks out a Yamaha? Yikes. (Why?)

I think Windows 8 and the next gen of gear is going to really blow us away.

Cajun, not getting on you personally, it's just that this comes up over and over and over...I think I've written basically the same reply 3 or 4 times just in the last month.

Biab is NOT A MIDI FILE PLAYER. It's not designed for that. The midi tracks are there to help with song creation but not as the primary function. If you want to work with midi files, use Real Band, that's what it does, it's a audio/midi sequencer and recorder. Also, you're implying you want to create cover songs. Biab is not designed for that either, playing exact covers using midi is again, exactly what Real Band is designed for. You're using the wrong tool for the job.

If you still really want to use Biab for this then check out Norton Music's Biab midi styles. He's got thousands of styles that are done in the exact style of certain classic original recordings. Many times any one style is only good for the one song it was designed for but they work very well. Your other option is to simply buy good pro level midi files from any one of several websites. You can buy a whole library of songs for a few hundred bucks, load them into your keyboard and you're done.

Bob

ok lets see if i can explain why i'm doing so much midi...but also let me say this...i do know what BIAB is capable of and can do as far as creating a song and making it sound outstanding...

but here is my problem's...one i'm still in a 5pc band situation that takes a lot of my time...and learning BIAB also takes a lot of time for me...because i'm not very quick when it comes to messing with things on a computer...so its going to take me a while....but i'm also grateful for the headway i've made so far with the help of this forum...and the stuff i was able to grab from the owners manuel and figure out..

a lot of the music i'm messsing with is Midi's made by people here in louisiana
its a certain style called..swamp pop..so BIAB doesn't have any styles i've found yet whether it be real tracks or midi tracks...so i'm spending lots of time on those..

even though Midi's don't sound as good as Realtracks...its not to bad if you delete the guitar tracks and trash stuff...and play live guitar and maybe live keyboard or steel guitar along with the midi's...going through my yamaha keyboard using its sound's from it
you can play small venues here...and as long as there are real musicians up on stage playing with the backing tracks the crowd and club owners are happy....and we give them a good price on say a 2 man show....with this depression everyone is trying to do the midi thing and have a one man or 2 man show..

in the future i do want to have my own songs i've built from scratch and be proud of..
and say play in a mp3 format live and play along, and believe me i've tried to build them...is just i'm not able to find the styles to match up with my chord structures for some reason right now maybe i don't have the right styles ,but hell thats why i bought the everything pak to have a lot...i know how to match the bar lines from chords and send it to BIAB...but every style i try...sounds like crap..or its just not close enough to what the orginal song sounds like...but i'm just a simple cajun man who will keep chipping at it and eventually all this BIAB stuff will sink in to my hard head..


so with saying all that, the time i spend trying to search a style and come up with one
and make the song work....i could have done 40 midi's and have them sounding good enough
to add to my play list and make some money in a club someplace..

but my plan is this..after i get a nice fat library of worked midi tunes and some gigs on the books...i will spend more time on building my own using real tracks...and also i'm limited on equipment i have to work on this stuff....i just have BIAB on computer...a yamaha keyboard...and my guitar rig. to make my dreams come true at this point..

i'm just a simple simmy educated cajun fella making his way through all the musical madness...lol....i hope this helps the veterans understand a little more where i am on the musical food chain....not very high at all

cajun

Very Well put cajun,I think we are in the boat .I don't have a band anymore but i like to use BIAB even though the more i use it i want Full package. what some people said in earlier post words meaning different things made chuckle , Because this is a song I'm working on " I love to play Bass ,I don't fish for Bass Ohh some people say their the same but i beg to differ." lol