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Notion has an NTempo feature that allows something like this... But you need to have someone as "conductor" tapping the tempo into the computer. So not useful for a solo performer.

Putting this into BIAB raises some interesting questions.

You've got a particular tempo, and a predicted arrival time of new notes. If the notes arrive early, you've got to jump ahead to after their arrival point. If they arrive late, you've to hold the notes until the note finally arrives... Which may never happen.

Sustaining a note forever isn't a problem for a MIDI-only application. But for RealTracks, it raises big issues. It's certainly possible to do - for example, it could loop back to the last 1/nth second of music with crossfading to avoid nasty clicks. Not elegant, but it might work.

What about "near misses"? Do you have to hit the note, or can something "close enough" work? Does the program have a look-ahead, so if you miss a note and keep going, it notices? That's a more thorny problem, because you probably don't want the accompaniment to simply stop when you miss a note.

It would be interesting to play along with the software, and see what the experience is like. That's really the best way to find out. But it seems to me that it's not a very realistic experience. That is, in "real life", accompaniment doesn't stop when you miss a note. Tempo changes aren't instantaneous, either.

I think a better experience would come from the program adjusting the tempo using weights based on the note duration and a running average. It wouldn't "wait" for you as Home Concert Xtreme does, but I think the experience would be more organic, and more forgiving to performance goofs. After all, the software would "follow" you (literally), and adjust to your playing tempo.

Plus, it would work with BIAB.

The biggest question is, what do you do if a note doesn't come? There's a point where you've simply got to move on. So any given "expected" note is only active for a limited window. Every note after the first arrives after it's predecessor. So the expected arrival time of a note depend on the actual arrival time of the prior note. And you can't know that until the prior note arrives. If there's a missed note, how do you resolve this?

It's solvable in lots of different ways, and I better stop before I try to work out the full algorithm.



Interesting points!

But - to clarify - Home Concert Xtreme only completely stops if the correct note isn't played when it's in "Learn" mode. When in "Performance" mode, it doesn't stop abruptly if a note it expects isn't played. (At least not with the demo.) The best way to describe it is that it continues (at perhaps a slightly slower tempo briefly) until it again picks up where you are in your playing. In other words, it doesn't immediately notice your error, like it does in "Learn" mode. Of course, if you slow down the tempo, it slows down after a few bars. If you speed up, it speeds up after a few bars. IIRC, if you stop playing completely, I think that HCX just continues playing. (I'd have to double-check that.) If you jump to another section of the piece, HCX does it's best to recognize where you are and continue from there. Again - This is in "Performance" mode. In "Jam" mode, it just plays along with no regard to what you're doing - It's your job to keep up.

The second point I wanted to make is that I would think this type of application would be geared more towards the home hobbyist (someone like me) who "plays for him/herself", doesn't hit every note perfectly, but wants an enhanced experience. I don't think it would be useful for a live performer in a performance setting.

As the OP, I wasn't necessarily pushing for this type of capability to be incorporated into BIAB (although that would be neat!). I was just hoping to hear whether there are other similar software applications to HCX and whether any of them are fully compatible with any particular notation application.

Any thoughts on that aspect?

Thanks!

Kawai VPC1 MIDI Controller; Asus A53E Laptop running Windows 7 - 64 bit; BIAB 2017 UltraPlusPak (upgraded from 2014 EverythingPak), running from Laptop's Hard Drive.