Yes, when my customers asked me to pick the best style, they meant out of PG and my own styles. When the people called (that was before Internet) I asked a lot of questions, including using other people's styles other than mine and the most common answer was just use mine and PGs.

Some of the callers let me know that they didn't have all the PG styles either - and they would pick one of their own that was close if they didn't have it.

There is no right way to do this that would satisfy every customer. So from all the calls I got in the early days, I chose to use whatever style works best with the song from all the PG and Norton styles to date. That's what my customers seemed to want.

In other words, the music rules, everything else is secondary.

Look at it the other way. If there is a perfect match that is a Norton style, and I chose an excellent PG style that happened to be a mediocre choice for that particular song, is that a better way to do it?

Since there are more PG styles than Norton styles, the odds are in favor of picking a PG style. But in many cases, a Norton style does a better job for that particular song.

This is perhaps because I try very hard not to duplicate any PG styles. If they end up not significantly different or IMHO an improvement over the PG style, I see no reason to fix what isn't broken.

My aim is not to compete with PG Music, but to add value to BiaB. Don't buy my stuff instead PG goods, buy them to add to PG's products.

Most of my customers who buy once, come back for more, so I guess I'm doing something right.

I'm a dedicated PG Music fan, and have been since I discovered BiaB on my Atari, when BiaB/PC (we called it IBM back then) was still a DOS program. I've watch it grow and grow since then, and believe that I'm doing something that does not compete with BiaB, but instead makes it more valuable.

Unfortunately, unless you have all the PG styles and the Norton styles, the fake disks are not 100% plug and play. But then I think most of us like to mess around with BiaB anyway, it's one of the things that make it different from the music-minus-one files.

So if you want to do "Misty" as a jazz waltz with a swing B section, in BiaB you can do that (I was in a band that did that a long time ago, and it was fun).

OK I'm rambling and waxing nostalgic now, so I'll stop.

Notes

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

100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks