I think BiaB is the best at what it does. Sometimes I swear it's magic.

However, I think BiaB needs a re-write. It needs one to work well with Win7 and beyond anyway.

I know PG Music is concerned about backwards compatibility with their songs and styles, and I applaud them for that, but if a style modification is necessary, a file conversion app would work. PG has done this once before and Microsoft has done this as well. They are MIDI enhancements as I love MIDI and it is the core of the program itself.

I've entered most of these in the wishlist:

In addition to allowing at least 2 chords per beat (8 chords per 4/4 measure) I suggest:

1) Resolution of at least 240ppq preferably user selected to 960ppq and this includes the StyleMaker

2) Support for multiple synths, at least 16

3) More than 5 instruments, 7 would be nice, more would be better

4) Variable length endings up to 8 or 12 bars selectable in the StyleMaker

5) Chord entry dialog box that would include check boxes (not radio buttons) for all the scale tones from root through 13 with another trio of radio buttons to the right of each scale tone to natural, flat or sharp that tone (natural being the default). That way you could do diminished triads, major 9 omit 3, minor 3 add 4, and any chord the user wants. We often run into chords in fake books than cannot be entered in BiaB.

6) Long and short rolls in the StyleMaker and a way to assign either to the playback grid

7) An option to switch sub-styles without adding a roll

8) A way to assign patterns in the style maker so that if one is chosen, complementary patterns would also be chosen. For example, if a drum roll with quarter note triplets was selected, a bass line with quarter note triplets could automatically also be chosen. Another example, if a drum roll with a rest on the 4th beat was chosen, patterns written to complement this drum roll with either a rest or held note on that same beat would be chosen.

9) Have the details that go into the Style Picker Window built into the style itself instead of an ls3 file and include a dialog box to enter the information

10) Long file names for the styles

11) Have the default volumes on all parts return after each song - so if a style changes the volume, it will return to the default when the song is done

12) Have the pitch bend, and continuous controllers return to a user set default after each song so if the previous style left them altered, the next song would return to the default

13) Add riff based patterns to the bass style

14) Fix the 2 and 1 beat styles so that a relative weight of 9 works on them. Right now if I do 4 different beats on the 1 beat row with a "fill" bar mask and a different note pattern for each beat, BiaB will mix them up when playing back (pattern for beat 1 might end up on beat 2, 3 or 4, etc.)

15) Increase the number of columns in the StyleMaker from 30 to 32, after all it is a multiple of 4 and 8 measures of single beat patterns would fit in there perfectly

16) Support for accelerando and ritardando with a resolution of at least one beat per tempo change (preferably more)

17) Native support for uncommon time signatures like 6/8, 5/4, 7/8, etc. without having to kludge a work-around in BiaB's grid.

18) A button that directs the user to Norton Music's Style Demo Page (hey! a guy can dream, can't he? <wink/grin>)

Many of these suggestions have been in place in my old pre Win95 copy of Master Tracks Pro (sequencer). If these things were standard in the 8.3 filename days, IMHO it's about time PG Music updated the core MIDI section of BiaB to include them.

MIDI can be just as expressive as the Real Track right out of the box (without further editing), but as long as the MIDI section of BiaB is stuck in the Windows 3.1 days it will stay the way it is. Right now, I have to export everything to a sequencer and take the very good output of BiaB and edit to turn it into something excellent.

Now I admit, I'm on the outside looking in so what seems possible to me may be terribly impractical in reality.

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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