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Hi group. I am a real newbie with my first install and having a great time learning. I bought the program because of the quality of the RealTracks to make backing tracks for myself.
I am super impressed with how the RealTracks do sound.
That brings me to the question of why would one would want to use the MIDI tracks or MIDI combined with RealTracks styles? I realize that all the MIDI offerings are there from previous releases of the software. And clearly for some there must be benefits to using MIDI styles as I have picked up from forum comments. But I am totally naive as to why that would be so considering the superior sound quality of the RealTracks.
Can the board help me appreciate these simple but "new to me" nuances?
Thanks so much!
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Both MIDI and RealTracks have their advantages. The advantage with MIDI is that you can create your own specific runs, and effects, change just about anything, while RealTracks are generally pre-recorded music passages. With MIDI, you can change the instrument from a jazz guitar to a rock guitar with relative ease, and you can also record your own tracks through a number of different MIDI instruments (e.g. a keyboard or even a digital saxophone. ) That being said, the latest BiaB incorporates 'Playable RealTracks' which is another game changer. Nevertheless, MIDI has an important place in the BiaB product.
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.
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I think for me, I use some midi tracks because they are easy to modify. Also if I don't like the sound they produce, which is 99% of the time, I can change that tone with the many VSTs I have.
I assume there are a lot of other reasons that people who have been using midi for years have that I am unaware of.
Billy
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OK, VideoTrack and Planobilly, those comments were helpful for understanding, Since I have never worked with MIDI (That I know of ! LOL) your comments helped open the doors to new understanding. Thanks for that 
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Here's a partial explanation that occurred to me, perhaps it may be of some value.
Say you have a really nice acoustic guitar thing you just improvised (on a real guitar!) and recorded, recording in two forms: audio and MIDI.
The audio recording captured however you sounded when you recorded it, on whatever real guitar you played. You can add post-production effects, reverb and such, but the underlying audio is fixed. It's what you played on that guitar.
The MIDI recording, on the other hand, can be rendered in production however you please, as a guitar or piano or violin or saxophone orchestra or 1950s electronic sounds or maybe a flock of sampled geese.
Consider how you might use those two recordings as material to slice and dice and recombine, for use in different creative projects going forward.
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Another advantage I've learned with using Midi besides the ability to change patches (instruments) and edit riffs and melody's, is the ability midi has to capture the feel and dynamics of a song.
For instance, assume you want to write an original song 'in the style' the Bee Gee's "How Deep Is Your Love". Loading a Midi of the song in BIAB will replicate the instruments, chords, tempo, key signature and feel of the original song. It will sound 90% like the original recording.
The user can use BIAB RealTracks, a VST, input new chords and create an original song using the midi file as a template to create an original composition 'in the style' of without having to start from scratch.
BIAB can easily handle a song file that's using both RealTracks and Midi in the arrangement.
Charlie
Last edited by Charlie Fogle; 12/02/21 04:12 PM.
BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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Mark Hayes and Charlie Fogle - Fascinating. I had no idea and I see a yawning rabbit hole opening up before me! Looks like it might be very fun to go down.
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and if a song has a 'signature riff'- say the horns on dancing in the street - you can easily replicate that in midi. even with the new editable realtracks it probably won't be as easy with realtracks. haven't tried the new editable realtracks yet but until now you were restricted to what the artist had actuallly recorded.
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Here's a partial explanation that occurred to me, perhaps it may be of some value.
Say you have a really nice acoustic guitar thing you just improvised (on a real guitar!) and recorded, recording in two forms: audio and MIDI.
The audio recording captured however you sounded when you recorded it, on whatever real guitar you played. You can add post-production effects, reverb and such, but the underlying audio is fixed. It's what you played on that guitar.
The MIDI recording, on the other hand, can be rendered in production however you please, as a guitar or piano or violin or saxophone orchestra or 1950s electronic sounds or maybe a flock of sampled geese.
Consider how you might use those two recordings as material to slice and dice and recombine, for use in different creative projects going forward. An interesting aside to Mark's suggestion above is this process of combining audio and midi has been possible in BIAB for quite some time but mostly overlooked and underutilized. These new upgrades and improvements to BIAB 2022 may bring new life to long existing features. Quote from forum post by Andrew with PG Music staff on 12/04/13 (Nearly 8 years ago to the day!)
7. Artist Performance Files. These are audio files, that you put on a track, that can also have the MIDI transcription of it. People hear the audio, and see the MIDI in notation/guitar tab etc. For example, if you are a great bluegrass fiddle player, you could put your songs in this format. People can listen to your real playing, see the notes on screen, slow them down etc. - all inside Band-in-a-Box where they can do other things like solo/mute other tracks, mix them etc.
BIAB 2025:RB 2025, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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In addition to the previous mentioned reasons here are a few more:
1- With MIDI you can change the tempo without adding artifacts to the sound. One can go from 10 BPM to 300 BPM and the sound will sound the same and only the tempo will change.
2- You can change any chord into another in MIDI. If you want an Am7b5#9 you can either play it or write it. All chords are possible in MIDI
3-You can change the length and/or pitch of any chord or note in MIDI.
4- You can add or delete vibrato with MIDI
5- Using filters you can change a sound while it it playing in MIDI. This is great for programing sweeps.
6- You can have each drum on a separate track. This each track can be modified,i.e. different effects on each track, write/play your own fills, etc. (This may be possible with RTs in BiaB 2022, don't know....yet)
In other words MIDI has a lot of advantages going for it. However it takes a few bucks to get good MIDI sounds and a learning curve to achieve good emulations.
RTs have their place but so does MIDI.
Just my thoughts.
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MIDI is thousands of times more editable than audio. If you have a good MIDI synthesizer, it can sound 95% or more as good as the real instrument. If you have a cheesy synth, you will have cheesy sounds. If you have a great synth, you'll have great sounds. You can export a MIDI track to a Sequencer or DAW and make the music more expressive. The average listener listens to expression more than tone, which is why singers like Dr. John, Stevie Nicks, John Lennon, Blossom Dearie and others can sell zillions of records with voices that are not considered great sounding. And what is great tone? Take guitar is in Hendrix? Burrell? May? Hall? Slash? Beck? Clapton? Armstrong? Satriani? And on which guitar? Jimmy Page plays better on an el-cheapo Danelectro than most others do on top-of-the-line premium guitars. Here is a short list of what you can do with MIDI that you cannot do with audio: http://www.nortonmusic.com/midi_vs_loops.htmlAnd here is a link to the continuous controllers that you can use to coax more expression out of MIDI http://www.nortonmusic.com/midi_cc.htmlI make backing tracks for my duo, The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com, that would be impossible to make with RealTracks. I'll use BiaB MIDI tracks and add the song specific licks and other parts that a generic BiaB style can't do. And BiaB styles need to be generic. If you had a style with an obvious signature lick for one song, it would only be good for that song. Music is a journey, life is too short to learn it all. But that makes it interesting, as you can learn new things forever to keep it from being boring. Your first inroads into MIDI may be baby steps, but sooner or later you will be able to make better music with MIDI than you can with audio loops. But remember, there is more than one right way to make music. The RealTracks are fantastic, and although I prefer MIDI, when a RT is just right for what I need, I'll use it. It's good to have an assortment of tools in your tool chest. Insights and incites by Notes
Last edited by Notes Norton; 12/03/21 02:57 AM. Reason: Typo
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Thank you for the valuable insight into MIDI.
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I don't use midi in the traditional sense but i do like the MidiSuperTracks. The are almost identical to their RT counterpart and I can easily put one of the many sounds on the track that comes with my DAW (Logic Pro). I've been particularly pleased with Logic's Grand Steinway on MST piano tracks. For our blues rock centered productions I can typically find a MST to work with.
This is very primitive compared to the folks who as described about use midi to the max.
Bud
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Remarkable and educational comments and answers. I will follow the links and explore. There is a whole world out there/here that obviously I do not know about. This community is amazing.
I just upgraded to UltraPak and am loving the learning curve.
I especially liked Norton's quote:
"Music is a journey, life is too short to learn it all. But that makes it interesting, as you can learn new things forever to keep it from being boring."
Learning is what I like most in life.
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A couple of quotes on MIDI:
Excerpt from Electronic Musician (EM) February 2013 by Craig Anderton:
…Thirty years ago, at the 1983 Winter NAMM show, a Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 talked to a Roland JX-3P and MIDI went mainstream. Since then, MIDI has become embedded in the DNA of virtually every pop music production (yes I stole that line from Alan Parsons, but I don't think he'll mind)…
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Excerpted from Keyboard magazine, March 2014 by Craig Anderton:
…Today you can easily record 100 tracks of digital audio on a basic laptop, so MIDI may seem irrelevant in the studio. Yet MIDI remains not only viable, but valuable, because it lets you exploit today's studio in ways that digital audio still can't.
…
Deep editing. Digital audio allows for broad edits, like changing levels or moving sections around, and editing tools such as Melodyne are doing ever more fine-grained audio surgery. But MIDI is more fine grained still: You can edit every characteristic of every performance gesture: dynamics, volume, timing, the length and pitch of every note, pitch-bend, and even which sound is being played. MIDI data can tell a piano sound what to play, or if you change your mind, a Clavinet patch. With digital audio, changing the instrument that plays a given part requires re-recording the track….but MIDI can do much more…
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I feel that I can take a BiaB MIDI file, download it to a MIDI sequencer or DAW, add a few things, subtract a few things, move a few things around, change the inversion of a chord so the melody note comes out better, change a couple of voices (patches), add a real intro, add a real ending, and so on, then turn the already very good output of Band-in-a-Box into something ready for prime time.
I learn how to improve from things I try that work, and I learn what not to do from things I try that don't work.
The result is the backing tracks I make for my duo today are much better than they were in the 1990s because I've learned so much since then.
Insights and incites by Notes ♫
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows Special Offers End Tomorrow (January 15th, 2026) at 11:59 PM PST!
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Another exciting new addition is the new AI-Notes feature, which can transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI. You can view the results in notation or play them back as MIDI, and choose whether to process an entire track or focus on specific parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
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