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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I've no idea why but bass lines are still not accurately reflecting the harmony on certain chords. mMaj7 and 7susb9 are good cases in point. With the mMaj7 you get the b7 played by the bass but not the maj7. The 7b9 consistently produces natural 9ths in the bass. You can try this with just about any style you want.
Strangely enough the same fault occurs in the scale suggester function. Try outputting a non diatonic jazz scale over a 7susb5b9 for example (or any other altered suspended dominant)and you'll get only a mixolydian avoiding the altered tones altogether.
I'm guessing the problem lies with the chord 'masks' in the midi engine that control what gets played over chords.
Maybe someone at team PG can verify.
Regards
Alan
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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That's interesting, Alan. I haven't noticed either problem, so I wonder if you could post a song that clearly demonstrates it. PG Music says to freeze the tracks when sending a demo song.
I can't think offhand of any of my songs with a 7susb9 chord.
Also, I would like to see the context for how you use the mMaj7 chord. I normally use that in a progression leading from m to mMaj7 to m7 then m6 (or a IV chord), found all the time in Brazilian music. Bass stays on the root.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi Matt. I'm using it as a stand alone modal chord for the melodic minor scale, over several bars and not in a diatonic progression. It's worse when you play only with bass accompaniment in a style like WLZMODAL. But even with the piano channel turned on the program keeps throwing in dorian minor riffs which sound out of place. I could send you a track but its easy just to set up a one chord vamp yourself to see what I mean. Ditto with the 7susb9 which I think of as phrygian minor.
Admittedly there are one or two walking styles that give you the maj7th as well as the b7th in a chromatic movement but they don't stress the Maj7th.
In future I'm going to have to expand upon the mMaj7th chord in a modal context by alternating it with inversions and other chords from melodic minor.
Regards
Alan
Last edited by alan S.; 03/11/12 08:51 PM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I'll try it as you used them. This is something I would not have heard before.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Jun 2003
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Journeyman
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Thanks Matt. While you're at it try a Maj7b5 chord on its own for 32 bars or so. Use one of the jazz styles particularly one with a lot of piano riff patterns for certain chords. What you will see/hear is the occasional minor chord riff coming in, suggesting a bug in the stylemaker chord masks.
Ideally the chord masks should be completely overhauled to distinguish between m7 and mMaj7, Maj and altered Major, and also 7sus and 7sus altered chords. Right now the lumping together of these chord categories makes no sense if you want a chord played as written and corresponding to its natural scale.
Regards
Alan
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Alan, every once in a while someone posts here who's very highly educated in music and asks the typs of questions you're asking. Biab is not perfect and from what I can tell will never be perfect. Highly sophisticated music theory things come up from time to time and Biab simply won't do exactly what you want. Sometimes there's workarounds, sometimes not.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Journeyman
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Thanks but I'm not that well educated in theory really; it's just standard chord-scale stuff jazzers use these days..(I rarely use it in soloing but its good to know for composing).
I can understand though that such an issue isn't high on the priority list of of users who write/play songs which have lots of quick moving changes/cadences in a diatonic setting. It would be hard to detect these problems using BIAB in this way so for all intents and purposes the program behaves the way it should for those folks.
When you have 2 to 4 measures of a chord it becomes more noticeable. And yes workarounds always exist. For example I now know that if I want to hear a b9 played in the bass line over C7b9 I need to use Bbm9b5/C. If I want to relate CmMaj7 to C melodic minor I need to try alternating it with EbMaj7#5 and possibly Bb7#5b9 among other chords and force the bass line to do my bidding.
The thing is that BIAB has changed chord-to-scale relationships in the past. I remember one fix in a previous release that improved the soloing over slash chords by altering just that, so it's reasonable to expect that this is a do-able proposition and not a perfectionist pipe dream. I do wish however that someone from the programming team would pop up now and again to say for sure one way or another.
PS.....Well so much for the idea of using Bbm9b5/C instead of C7b9. The bass stresses B natural notes instead of C!! Strangely enough the scale generator correctly plays C... Back to the drawing board I guess!!
Regards
Alan
Last edited by alan S.; 03/13/12 09:27 PM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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It is good to report these findings, Alan, and it is my opinion that such serves to help ALL users of any stripe, in the long run.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Jun 2003
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Journeyman
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Lets hope so Mac. With any luck PG are now busy attending to a lot of the midi engine upgrades/fixes etc. suggested on the wishlist forum where I flagged up this problem a while back.
Regards
Alan
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