If you have 2016 BB, then you can filter by artist or song name, and at least set the filters to get a list of styles that possibly fit the song.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Biab also uses the "feel" of songs/styles, whether they are even (Ev) or Swing (Sw) type of beats. You can also set the BPM parameter as well to help narrow down your search for a particular song/style.
I don't have 2016 version, but older versions also have a "prototype" button in the old style list. The prototype button will also narrow down styles by eliminating the styles that do NOT match the prototype style.
You have to select/hi-lite a style that fits your song, make sure ALL is selected in the left of the style list to list all of the styles. Once you have selected a style, then click the prototype button in order for Biab to eliminate the styles that do NOT match the style you have selected as your prototype. This is a quick way to assist in finding a style related to the beat, feel and tempo of your prototype.
Biab should list every style and genre that match what you are searching for.
Great advice on this wonderful new feature in 2016 but, don't be afraid to experiment with different styles. For instance this style WHISPER.STY Whisper - Slow Latin Choro helped me work a wonderful arrangement on Holding Back The Years.
This was a killer group. Ten seconds of this vid it becomes obvious this was a very big show. I had never heard of them and I've been in the biz for years. I did some more looking and discovered this group was a huge worldwide phenom from the UK with a ton of gold records and major concerts yet never did anything in the US.
Just goes to show you not everybody needs the American market to succeed.
Rally, I have a chance to mess around with this a bit. First, Stars is listed in the Stylepicker as Stars (Simply Red). The style is the Soul60's RT style. This will work but it's not really Stars it's too much pure 60's Motown.
So, I went looking for some better RT's to go with the basic style. First I switched the drums to the Hip Hop drums. That original YT vid has a sort of funky hip hop/house feel going on. Then the Soul60's style has the wrong guitar part by itself but I can hear that it would blend with a second rhythm guitar so I went searching for a rhythm part to go with the style one. There is a ton of different guitars in the RT's. For now I replaced the Horn Section with RT 694 Electric Rhythm ElecRockArp. I'm not saying this is the best one but it's good enough as an example.
Here's a short clip of it. The first 8 bars is substyle A and the second 8 bars is B:
PG Real Track styles are really just suggestions, they're not set in stone. You can load a midi style, an all RT style or a combo style. All that is is a start. You're free to start changing parts any way you want. Right click on the instrument button in the top menu bar and you can open up the RT picker and select anything. The original style might be a celtic waltz and you decide to hear what a heavy metal guitar solo sounds like with it. No problem just replace the regular guitar part with that.
There are now thousands of RT's. I'm sure that PG's staff simply doesn't have the time to obsess over the exact best combination of RT's to go with all of these thousands of song possibilities in the Stylepicker. Somebody decided that the Soul60's style is good for Stars and moved on to the next one. And that style isn't bad, it can work but to me what I picked sounds better. Of course YMMV.
This is by no means finished, it's just a short example. I would like to hear a sustained chord on the D7sus to D7. There are plenty of piano and guitar RT's that have more sustain than the ones used here. And if you really want to dig into this to make it perfect open this in Real Band. There you have 48 tracks to work with. That way if you like the basic rhythm part you can simply generate those sustain chords on separate tracks and then using either cut and paste or volume nodes work those chords into your final mix.
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