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I have been using Power Tracks Pro Audio for a while to generate backing tracks for my personal playing from Midi files I have found. All is cool but the sounds are not really the best esp. sax and other horns. I have toyed with the idea of a hardware sound module but after lots of research I am thinking my best plan is to go for Band in a Box -for the better sounds -and edit in Real band.



Lauri, you're asking about playing midi files you've collected. For midi you need a midi synth. As you've found out already, the freebie ones or cheaper ones can sound merely ok for some things and decent for other things. To get good sound you need a good synth either hardware or software. The costs can go from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. Describing the different synths that are available would take a small book. Your midi files are probably GM (General Midi) so that restricts things a bit. Using a non GM synth can sound great but you have to manually set up each instrument on each track of your midi file while GM is simply "plug and play" so to speak. That's nice but the problem with GM is first there's only a few patches for each instrument while a good non GM synth may have 20 plus many of the GM sounds are not as good as a non GM synth. That's the tradeoff. Convenience vs better sound and many more choices of instrument patches.

When we talk about Biab and Real Tracks that's great, the RT's sound very good but they won't help you with midi files because RT's are not midi, they're audio recordings of real musicians playing phrases in all the various styles offered. That's good and they can sound awesome in a midi file but understand the RT is not playing a particular instrument in that midi file, it's replacing that instrument with a completely different part generated by Biab. If you're doing cover songs and a midi file has an exact guitar part that is out of the original song, creating a RT guitar part is not going to be that same part. It may or may not work for you. In that case you need a good synth that has good guitar samples to play that part and it's the same thing with your horn parts. Midi horns are difficult and tricky to get to sound good but it certainly can be done. Many times though GM won't cut it because you certainly need more trumpet choices than one or two for example, you need as many as you can get and a big name non GM synth will have horn libraries available that may have 200 different versions of trumpets, fluglels, bones, reeds all of it. That horn library by itself can cost several hundred. To take advantage of all that you have to become expert with how midi works and how the particular synth/sampler you decide to get works. Then you can come up with amazing midi horns.

I know this can get confusing and it may be more info than you need right now but playing midi files and and wanting good sounding horn tracks is not easy or cheap depending on how critical your ears are.

Finally, generating Biab songs using Real Tracks while somewhat related to midi files are actually two different things.

Bob

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