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One of the harder parts for me is finding a style for some songs. I have some 1728 styles and it's a bit overwhelming.




How to find Styles that fit your particular song.

*Start the song playing back after checking the "Loop" checkbox in the mainscreen. Doesn't matter at this point what style it is, but it is a good idea to start with all MIDI styles because they load instantly (RealTracks styles take too much time to load. RealTracks styles will be preceded by a '=' sign or an underscore "_" in their filename and will always appear at the top of the alphanumerical listing in the Stylepicker's center window. Just scroll past those for now.).

*Open the Stylepicker.

*First thing to do is find any style that has proper *timing* FEEL and METER for the target song that is playing back. You can usually narrow down the possible choices quite a lot by taking advantage of the subgroup listings over on the lefthand side of the Stylepicker window.

*At this point I usually like to set the dropdown selection under the "Show Styles by 'Feel' and 'Tempo' to "Show all style rhythms" -- unless the original style that is already playing is close to what I want. These are powerful filters here. So powerful that unless and until you have identified this important part of the equation, they can actually hide styles that you would want to try. More on this in a minute.

*Make sure that the "Preview on doubleclick" near the bottom center is checked. This is the power here, doubleclicking on any MIDI only style, you can almost instantly hear it playing your chords and decide right away if it is a good fit or not.

*Once you find a Style that is "near" what you want to hear, take advantage of the "Feel and Tempo" dropdown to limit the possiblities in the upper center window some more. Go with the "If feel matches prototype" first, unless you are certain of the song's BPM tempo (good idea to note that before the Stylepicker is opened). If you are certain that the song will be locked into a certain tempo, then by all means narrow down the choices further by selecting "If feel and tempo matches prototype".

*Whenever I find a style that fits at all, I make a note of that using Notepad, but I don't stop there. Maybe there's a better fit in another style somewhere further down the list. So I keep trying selections, filtering both automatically using those tips above and also by using the "filter" between my ears as I read the style name and description by single clicking down the list while the song is playing. Of course, I doubleclick on every seemingly viable candidate.

*Don't neglect use of the "Search" feature in the Stylepicker, either. You can type in a single word there and find all instances of it by clicking on the G next to it while the song plays. And if you've already selected a subfolder on the LH side, it will only search through there first instead of "All Styles". Sometimes you can type in a group's name, too, like "beatle" or the like because of the memo notes associated with each style. Or you might type in "shuffle" if you know that your song has a shuffle feel to it. Things like that work well to narrow the candidates down quite a bit. "Ballad" may be another example, or "Folk" or "Pop" or whatever you can think of that may describe the song in question. Every once in a while, even the NAME of the song may do the trick, just type in one word of the name, though, picking the most useful word for such searching.


Using the above method it does not take as long as one might think to isolate if there are any styles that can be made to work with your song.

And, of course, once the Feel, Tempo and type of style has been found, go back over the list in Notepad using the same Play on Doubleclick "auditioning" to narrow that down to one style you like.

After you find the style is the time to start trying RealInstruments or RealStyles that may work also. Using the "Fits Feel and Tempo" filter can even narrow down those RealStyle candidates in a hurry.

AND -- The above is exactly what I would have to do for you to tell you which style might work with your particular target song today, but only after I could HEAR a recorded example of that song first. And BIAB is designed so that you can do all that for yourself. So get started. The more you do this and practice it, the faster you will be able to narrow down style selections in the future.


--Mac

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