I wanted to look at "style picker" tonight based on some tips given in the forum posts. I clicked on "filter". It would seem to the uninitiated that "style picker" was some sort of "sorting" mechanism. And I suppose it is, after several years of using BIAB. However, after using it for just a few months.....

NOWHERE on that page did I find a place where I could type in the simple keyword "bossa".

I got 8 pulldowns for stuff like 1/8th or 1/16th notes, for all kinds of other options, but nowhere did I find a simple search box that said "Type what you want me to look for sir, and allow me to find it for you". That's what a search function does. There were about 8 things I could change, but nowhere could I simply type in "bossa". I did find a pulldown that had jazz, rock and country. That again did not give me what I expected to find, a keyword search entry box where I enter a keyword and hit search. It gave me EVERY jazz style. I only wanted bossa. If some simple form of boolean search is in there somewhere then I guess I am just REALLY stupid and can't find it.

I guess computers have spoiled me, as someone suggested earlier. I expect a search in any piece of software to work like any other search, where if need to find a picture of a horse named "horse", I can tap f3 in Windows Explorer, put in "horse*.*" in a search box, and have my computer find everything that has "horse" in it. Just so I don't aggravate myself again tomorrow, does BIAB do that in that simple manner or not? Someone please answer just "yes" or "no" so I don't spend an hour again trying to make that happen.

I am starting to think it's best I just go back to Sonar and struggle with programming drum machines measure by measure, playing parts in over and over to remove the clams.... where demos of songs take 2 weeks rather than 2 hours, but at least I know what I am doing and can spend my time in a productive way rather than reading convoluted help files all day with images that don't match the screens. And I suppose BIAB can do what I am asking for, but once again I say, I do not have years to learn how to efficiently perform a task as rudimentary as quickly locating a style, and no time to audition styles that are badly misnamed. I am trying to get a CD ready by fall. This is late July. I need this thing to do what I need it to do, and easily, so I can get song demos to the band so they can learn them and we can record in 3 weeks to make my October deadline. I don't have time to or want to go through BIAB college to earn a BIAB degree. Twice through college was enough for me.

All I want this thing to do is say "here are all the swing styles", or "here are all the shuffle styles", or "here are all the waltz styles" and put them in a nice, tidy list where every style contains my search string. One hour later, I could not find any place in "style picker" to type in a keyword and do a search by keyword, and I looked at every option in that "Style Picker" panel MANY times with the help subsystem open on the other monitor. It seems like the way to do this, like you do in any web browser (and most software) should be to type ctl+f for "find" and type in your keyword to search for.

What am I missing or not doing?

I also tried to play with a downloaded MIDI file, but I already have a headache without going into how every time I tried to make a tweak to the downloaded midi file to get rid of the god awful tin trumpet playing the lead the whole thing got muted. I just totally gave up on that because that is going to be a 6 week course on soft synths, what is loaded, how do I check what is loaded, how do I load and unload, I have to download new sound card drivers..... in Sonar I loaded the soft synth, told my track to play through it on a specified MIDI channel, and assigned an instrument. 30 seconds.