Quote:

Why I'd like to upgrade is twofold:

1. The Black Box has no 3/4 time beats at all, a bit frustrating.

2. I'd like to add a bass line if feasible, and perhaps a rhythm guitar or piano line.

3. I usually play about 30 songs each show, from a repertoire of about 300 altogether.

4. I have plenty of time between bookings to sort out a program of 30 songs from my total listings, but
I do requests also, so need fast access to any preprogrammed song.

5. I'd love for the software to have the capability of me accessing a lyric/chord sheet,
while a track plays, as I sometimes need to quickly refer to a lyric for about 150 of my songs.

6. What I envision may not be feasible...a laptop I can punch up a menu of songs, click on the one I want to do, have the lyric sheet pop up, and start playing my accompaniment...direct from laptop to amplifier.

7. Disclaimer/ pre-apology: The more acronyms or hi-tech expressions used in response,
the more I will be lost as to the meaning.



Hi Deacon and welcome. I modified your post to add the numbers.

1-4: Biab has a whole collection of 3/4, 6/8 and 12/8 styles, great bass lines, it has the Jukebox feature that allows you to create sets and organize them any way you want.

5. I think you're referring to seeing the lyrics for a song while it's playing? If so that's no problem either.

6. Absolutely possible, several people on this forum are doing it.

7. This is the biggie. You're saying right here you're not computer and/or software literate. Obviously this is a forum and I don't know you at all so please forgive me if I'm leaping to the wrong conclusion. If you have some experience with DAW's and midi great. If not I'm tempted to say forget it. DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. And midi is well, midi. If you don't know what midi is and have no experience with it, then it's really going to be a long slog for you.

If you are just a hobbyist playing around a bit then sure, get the basic Pro package and have some fun and when you learn it and decide you like it buy the full enchilada. However, you're a gigging old pro musician and you're talking about setting up a pretty complex laptop and software combo to go out and actually make money with and it has to be right with no nasty surprises. That takes a lot of expertise on your part. First, you have to be almost an expert computer nerd to understand what's happening in certain situations with your laptop, then you have to really understand Biab and how it works. You can't have some weird thing happen in the middle of your set and you have no clue about it. What you'll wind up doing is using two complete setups. Your old original set up in case something goes wrong and your new setup with Biab.

There is an answer to this however and Silvertones can tell you all about it. That is to use Biab at home to create Wav's/MP3's of your songs and all you do is play them from a song list on your laptop with the lyrics displayed at the same time. You know what Wav's and Mp3's are? You're not running Biab live. If you don't need all the hassle of creating these songs yourself with Biab, you can simply go on line and buy all the fully professional studio backing tracks for any song you want in any key you want just no vocals. Cue one up and start singing. They cost $6 or $7 each, less when you bundle up 15 or 20. But for 300 songs that's still a lot more than buying the Ultrapak. That's turning yourself into a live karaoke performer. Using Biab live allows you to be a bit more interactive than that but it could be difficult for you to learn what's necessary to accomplish that.

Just giving you some ideas.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.