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New to BIAB, anyway... LONG time musician....
I got this thing yesterday, not knowing what to expect. If BIAB was the perfect woman for me, teh words would be "Where have you been all my life?"
I am in the process of writing for a CD. Typically I use Sonar, MIDI interface, sequence all the parts, program drums either on a controller, or with drum loop software, or a standalone drum machine. Then I make demos of each track and send them off to the players who will do the CD with me and they take the demo and do what they want to do with it anyway.
Since firing up BIAB last night at 8pm, I have 2 songs done and out to the players.
Given that the guys don't play what I play on the demo anyway, it is a huge waste of time to sit at a MIDI controller and do take after take until I get through one with no clams. And playing with Sonar, THE most tempermental software I have ever seen, gets frustrating sometimes. With BIAB, this is what I have done.
I typed in the chord charting, at this point leaving everything in first option (since it is just a reference track). That was saved to a WAV file. I then feed that out to my mixer. I play those tracks back through the mixer which has 2 digital reverbs patched through it, feed that mix into my TASCAM 8 track direct to disc recorder. Once I have a reference copy on the TASCAM, I then start with dubs, adding vocals with or without the vocoder for harmonies depending on the song, guitar or sax solos (this CD is country so it's mostly guitar), any specific drum fills I want to hear.... From there, after saving to the hard drive after every dub, I feed that through RCA jacks into a computer so I can save that raw audio data into digital files. Then they are ready to go off via email to my bass guy, my keyboard guy, my guitar guy, my drummer and the pedal steel player I am using for this project.
And guys, this is day TWO of using this product. I have 99% of the product to learn yet.
So here come the newbie questions. Other than to just leave the first 3-4 measures empty to accommodate a piano or guitar pick up as the intro, is there a way to set BIAB to say "start playing on beat 2 of measure 4"? I think I read somewhere about inserting rests using periods, but when I want a whole measure rest, how do I do that?
I know there are going to be times that I HAVE to use the sequencer, but the time I spent with BIAB over this 2 days tells me that with carefully prodding it will turn out music I would use on stage or on CD. Solos over the generated tracks to be sure, but this is great stuff.
In one of the songs, I wanted to see how it would work if I entered a series of 2 beat chords with a note "walking" through them. C9 to C to Cmaj7 to C7, where through that base C chord I should hear a D to C to B to B flat walking through it, and I heard exactly what I asked it for. I love this thing.
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What's your song?
You can do almost anything you want.
There are some videos, a good deal there.
What genre?
Give us an example of what music you are playing, a sort of set list.
Welcome...nice to hear, let's get making music.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Thanks for the reply John. THIS project is a CD of country music. I have never played country before so writing 10 songs in this genre has been fun. There isn't a "set list" that would be of any value because it is all original. I will get samples up soon. In my career i have played jazz, rock, motown..... whatever there is to play. This project started after someone tore my heart out, threw it to the ground, stomped on it, scooped it up with a shovel and mailed it back to me. As I started writing about it, somehow they lyrics all pointed me to country music, so rather than fight it, I flowed with it. One of my past bands was called Easy Street. We play a reunion show every November to a sellout crowd of 450, and I play sax in the horn section for that show. You can visit the band web page at www.easystreetband.comand click on the jukebox to hear our album. Looking forward to a lot more creativity with BIAB. This is an amazing tool. It plays better than I can, doesn't want to fight with me about arrangements and solo space, and I only had to pay it once. Love it.
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Hi eddie 1261 and Welvome to the Fun!
With your stated background and experience, yes indeed, BiaB should work out just fine in your music creation endeavors.
And, of course, if you ever get stuck on a particular, use this forum as well as the Help files, online tutorials and the BiaB FAQ page. Bookmark that FAQ page now, it can answer a lot of questions in the immediate, I will open up my browser and head there in the middle of working up a songfile, sometimes looking for some trick new to me or sometimes just trying to remember something I thought I'd done successfully before.
If you're like me, you will likely start finding out some other uses for BiaB besides your present one, for example, using the program for practicing, or practicing on a new (to you) instrument, using the Ear Trainer to improve Interval and Chord Recognition, all of it.
BiaB has not only improved my feeble output here, over the years it has also served to improve me as a musician.
Have Fun,
--Mac
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Check out the Brent Mason styles in the country genre. Fairly new those...
John Conley
Musica est vita
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I was SO happy to see him there. I know his work well and admire his skills. Such a versatile player... enjoy Brad Paisley and Keith Urban as well..... Though at my age I will go to the grave believing and try to convince the devil I am right when I say that Chet Atkins was probably the best ever. :-)
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Welcome Eddie,
I highly recommend watching the online video tutorials to get the basics down. The power of Biab lies in your song layout: chords and settings, part markers, and style selected. There are numerous ways to define those 3 things within Biab. Knowing what each does and how Biab generates its parts from those settings will bring a song to life.
You can add shots, rests, pushes and pedal bass notes to any chord(s) in your song. You can have more then one style in a song. You can have a style that plays more then the A (Blue) or B (Green) part markers, those are called "Multi-Style."
Too many settings to list here. The tutorial videos are well worth watching. They help with the learning curve of Biab.
Welcome to the forum !!
Trax
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I plan to watch them when I have time to watch them carefully. I was able to figure out how to do syncopation today, but in a shuffle style it's still now exactly how I want it. I will get it though. This is day 3 for me with the product. Part of it is terminology. "Push", "nudge".... I know "syncopate". I am still not sure how to tell it to "give me 3 measures of nothing at the start of a song because in this song I play a piano pickup and you need to come in at the start of the 4th measure" but I think I found it in "bar settings" where I "mute all" and then at bar 4 I "return to normal". All in all it is going quite well. Great writing tool.
And unlike a lot of places, the people in the forums here are NICE, not condescending or arrogant. Given that we all have different levels of experience, and we don't know each other to know who is at what level, it would be an easy thing to talk up to or down to someone, but I have read a lot of posts and have not seen any of that, so I am looking forward to gleaning a lot of knowledge from the more experienced BIAB users.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Okay, newbiest newbie has one question he has not been able to find an answer for. And it is hard to type words to describe the "feel" I am looking for but I will try.
Using a country shuffle style, kind of a bouncy feels thing, and playing 12 bar blues, the tag at the end of the song has the classic walkup ending, resolving (in this key) with C#/D, but I am looking for this:
1 +2 +3 +4 +1 +2 +3 +4
best describes what I mean about the groove. And I need the last 2 chords here:
1 +2 +3 +4 +
D C# D.....
where that last D is anticipated to the AND just before the 3.
I entered it as
[D, ^C#] (in the first frame if the measure) [D...] (in the second frame of the measure)
It just doesn't sound right. That held D chord needs to come on the AND just before the 3, and I can't get it there. Can I use the "pull" with a ^ to pull that last D into the first half of the measure?
Now, all that being said, this is just a demo for the guys to learn the song, but once I start playing with this kind of stuff it becomes a manhood thing and I have to get it right. Does that look close to how it should be?
And the only other thing I want to do is get rid of the 3x that is at the end of the song by default. I don't want any repeats. Other than that the learning curve is going well.
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Hi Eddie. To prevent the 3X, look for the number of repeats that defaults to 3 and just change it to 1. This is called "Number of Choruses" if you hover over it, and is located to the right of the key and tempo boxes; it's the third (last) number.
You might also wish to uncheck the Loop checkbox above those three numbers.
For the chords you want, there are ways to do it but first, could you please describe exactly what you want in terms of beats? For example, I want a Dm on the And of 3, and a G7 on beat 4. That kind of description. When we know what you want, we can tell you how to do it, or describe the workaround needed.
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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Quote:
For the chords you want, there are ways to do it but first, could you please describe exactly what you want in terms of beats? For example, I want a Dm on the And of 3, and a G7 on beat 4. That kind of description. When we know what you want, we can tell you how to do it, or describe the workaround needed.
Okay let me try to define it better.....
D on 1, rest on 1+
C# on 2, D on 2+ and that D decays out (with the ...)
This is like trying to describe "red".....
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If I understand this correctly, you want:
D,C# | ^D...
where the | separates the two halves of the cell.
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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Quote:
If I understand this correctly, you want:
D,C# | ^D...
where the | separates the two halves of the cell.
Would that pull that last D into the first half of the cell? I didn't know if you could do that. I will actually go upstairs and try that right now. Thank you.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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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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You da man!!! That did it.
I have had this product since Thursday late afternoon and I just finished the 3rd demo (of 10) and sent it to the guys. How did I live without this?
Thank you for your help. Would not have stumbled upon that coding without your direction.
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Glad to help. You'll be able to return the favor for others in no time.
FYI, in addition to coding, you can always do a Right-click in a measure and select Chord Settings. You can enter complex things there without any coding at all.
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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Eddie,
What Matt showed you is what we call a "pushed" chord with the carrat ( ^ ). One ^ pushes an 1/8 th and two ^^ are a 1/16 th. Some styles have the "pushes" in them already, not all, but some have them built in.
Silence = "rests"
You can use F5 to open the bar settings and set each instrument part there for each measure or beat of your song. You can also type them in, which is a much quicker entry method.
One dot (.) means rest. C.B,D will rest all instruments but the bass and drums.
Two dots (..) means shot. F..,C.. will give you a two beat shot of all instruments.
Three dots (...) means hold chord/sustain C... will hold that chord for all instruments.
If you see a letter after a chord and dot(s), C...B,D that tells the style to play a C chord, hold that chord (...) except for the (B)ass and (D)rums. The B,D will play normally while the other instruments sustain.
They can be typed in or use Alt-F5 for "chord settings" to set them up.
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