PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows How to remove RT solos?

Many of the RT styles have solos that play throughout. I would like to mute the solos to play my own. I tried muting guitar & strings at the menu at top but that doesn't do it. How is this accomplished?

Thanks,
TR

Figure out what part the solo is on. The buttons at the top for Drums, Piano, Guitar, Melody etc.

Right click the button and select mute. You can also turn them on and off by going to a bar and pressing F5, that way you can have it play the intro or something, and then mute it, and un-mute it at another bar....

One of the little things that get people is this one. For most jazz stuff, the RT solo is put on the strings or guitar track. You would think they should be able to change the name of the part to "RT Solo" if it's being generated so it's obvious what part is being used. I've also commented several times on the fact that those styles have the soloist playing on all choruses and that shouldn't be happening either. It's easy to work around this but why should we have to? Maybe that will get sorted out in the next version.
One thing to keep in mind is the RT styles are really only suggestions. You can go into any part and use a completely different RT/RD for it regardless of what the style name says. Example, you can start with a polka style but replace all the parts with jazz and rock RT's and it could sound great but that bears no resemblence to the original style. You can't do that with the midi parts in Biab but you can in Real Band which is one of the many reasons RB is so amazing. In RB, you can click on just one track and use whatever Biab midi style you want so you could have a dozen or more different styles in the same song in addition to the RT/RD's and any other audio tracks you may have recorded. Pretty cool.

Bob

Thanks for the responses. I'll experiment more when I get home after work.

TR

I do find the fact that most of the realtracks jazz styles have soloists attached to them a bit annoying. Most of the time I only want piano, bass and drums. I'm not even fussed about a guitar in the rhythm section and certainly not as the only comping instrument. I think that the real problem is there are only a few basic jazz rhythm sections - the added soloist is what makes the Styles different. Having said that, I still find the realstyles so much more satisfying to play with than the old midi styles. We just want many more basic jazz rhythm sections and tempos! Please!

Nonetheless, you can set up a whole tune with the soloist playing exactly where you want him. My tune files usually consist of an Intro followed by four Choruses of the tune. I will have the soloist play the intro, and then mute him for the first chorus while I play the melody live. On the second chorus, I might have the soloist playing fours with me just to give me ideas - especially when as a trombonist I have access to Ian McDougall. On the third chorus I will have the solo completely muted, for me to play an improvised chorus on my own. Then on the last chorus I will continue the muting of the soloist whilst I play the melody, until maybe the last four bars, when I will have Ian join me for the ending.

I set this all up using the 'Chord Sheet window'. Simply place the cursor on the bar where you want some change to the standard soloist playing and go to the 'Edit' drop down menu and select "Settings for current bar" (or you can right click and go to 'bar settings'). At the very top of the resulting window is "Settings apply to chorus #". Place the correct chorus number in this box. Then go down to the 'Strings' box, where most (I think all) of the jazz soloists are located. You can change it if you don’t like them located on that track. Choose the setting you want - mainly 'Mute' or 'Back to normal'. Then work through the chord sheet window, marking the appropriate bars and making the necessary entries in "Edit settings for bar #' window. Once you get used to it, it does not take that long to set up. I will say that it is a bit more time consuming removing the entries if you want to change things, because you have to check all the chorus numbers to find a change, if you can't remember where you put them.

I do a lot of basic arranging using BB. I use this system to set up where various instruments are playing and what harmonies are used over the different sections of the tune. Then I drop a midi version of the resulting midi file into Sibelius, or whatever. One day maybe the BB notation will be so good that I will not have to do this. Please, oh please, a function to “Create and print all parts”. Oh, and accents that change the way the note is played. Plops and doits would be nice but I would accept the ones PG has already.

Perhaps there are some better methods but I find this the best way. It certainly would be more helpful if there were more rhythm sections without soloists.

>>>I do find the fact that most of the realtracks jazz styles have soloists attached to them a bit annoying. Most of the time I only want piano, bass and drums.

Yes, I agree, and that's why we created the category called "Classic" RealStyles.

Classic Realstyles are: Realstyles (styles with only RealTracks), that also have NO soloists. So they are classic in the sense that you can use them for lots of tunes. There are categories for Classic Realstyles, both in all genres and specific genres.

I have got to admit that "Classic" RealStyles category creation had slipped by me. It does look like a good starting place to find a basic rhythm section. Thanks.