PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows MIDI stylistic control - I Don't Mean Styles..

Hey, without mentioning any (mostly european and eurasian) software, there are some guys putting out stuff that helps MIDI sound more fantastic or just acceptabl, in certain timbres or intrument types and such. Would BIAB be planning anything like this?

Reason I ask is I was going to put a Trillian patch on for bass guitar, but Trillian likes overlaps. On a real bass guitar the notes tend to ring out after a new note if on a diff string. So, maybe this is a cool enhancement example. There are others. Plug some MIDI into one of these unmentioned programs that change durations, dynamics, and add or modify controllers. Its cool. U can try out 100 or more style changes. I haven't had one of these programs in a while but they are fun, now that VSTs are on tap! I think BIAB would be awesome at that kind of thing since so much has gone into soloists melodists and styles already.

But, sigh, its a lot of work to program and if users are only using real tracks then no point i reckon.

CuriousCat, are you asking PGMusic to get into producing VSTis or asking for improved MIDI parts?

If it’s VSTis then I think that would be a waste of time and talent as there are so many really good VSTls out there already.

If you are asking for better MIDI parts then maybe. SuperMidiTracks was a big step in that direction. But your bass example would be hard to write for the simple reason that on what strings and frets were the parts written for and on what strings and frets do you want to play? As an example if you play an open D than an open G then yes the D string might ring as the G is played but if you play an open D then a G on the same string the D would not ring.

However you can do what you want in any piano roll view, BiaB or your DAW. However you would have to know about the instrument that you are emulating, whether it be a bass, guitar, violin, mandolin etc to get a realistic emulation.

I hope I explained my position well enough!

In the bass guitar example I was mainly referring to the optionally increasing legato up to past the next note, along, I suppose with reducing it. That is to say, the option to "ask" the BIAB program to furnish up legato that was heightened or made reduced. You can look at it like this: Leave the point of onset alone, but extend the note in proportion to the existing duration. (An optional limit might be this: determine if there is a repeat of the same note within the window of increase, and if so then the added legato would end shortly prior to that note. Some samplers, Like the old Sample Cell, could specifically handle overlapping repeat notes (using what they called a retrigger setting), but not sure how many do now). So in a piece of music lets say there are only 3 notes. One note is held for 75% of a quarter note. A user has the option to increase this proportion, which is taken as a value of 1 times the original, up to maybe 2x the original and down to maybe .2 of the original. With the other 2 notes, again, there original length is taken as a value of 1, and multiplied by the desired proportion.

You can get more intricate without needing to satisfy the desire to emulate a real bass player. The real reason for my bass legato has to do with the pleasing effect, given Trillian, of overlapping notes themselves. I really didn't care to match exactly what would happen on a real bass guitar. That wasn't the goal. I was just looking to get a long bass part to sound less unnaturally staccato and manually editing it will take a half hour of time, and it seems computers do this sort of thing well. Once the benefit is clear, a programmer could do other things. Allow for the increase in duration filtered to only a chosen resolution of downbeats (only on the whole, the whole and half, whole half quarter, etc.).

Other simple examples of MIDI style enhancement operations of a MIDI file might include 1) simulating compression, and 2) increasing or decreasing dynamics, etc.

Again, you could apply MIDI compression or adjust the dynamics of only the selected downbeat resolution.

I could do the latter 2 by import into Fxpansion BFD2 for example, running the process, and return the MIDI data into BIAB.

I guess you can also do a change to MIDI volume CC's to create MIDI tremolo.

I'm sure there are other more creative things that the guys that do this are doing. For example, add MIDI vibrato using pitch bend. Add trills using pitch bend. (This example gets more to the heart of MIDI style enhancement. You take a pre-existing MIDI supertrack performance and isolate out the stylistic elements that might be algorithmically re-applied to regular MIDI files, and allow a user to apply them, such as a section of controller data with respect to a target note. Good example, the bends associated with the minor and major third in blues.

All this is referred to as MIDI style enhancement. "Style enhancer processes MIDI files to add human performance characteristics"

I found it to be nice, although the company is overseas and their online store was not up and running the last time I was there, which I only found out by actually entering in my credit card data! BIAB might not be the place for this stuff, but it seems reasonably simple for a programmer to do given the sophistication of BIAB as it stands.
What this means basically is that you are able to audition different adjustments or variations that would enliven the MIDI.

Like a guitar, saxophone, human voice or any other instrument, MIDI has the capability to be either very bland, very expressive or somewhere in between.

If you just plunk the notes in without regard to the expressive elements, you will get an bland MIDI file at best.

In writing and editing MIDI you have control of the choice of notes, velocity (note volume), timing, duration and aftertouch control. How your synth reacts to all these parameters depends on your synth and how each patch is set up.

But in addition to the above, there are the continuous controllers (cc). The cc's change things about the note while the note is being played, volume, vibrato, sustain, reverb, chorus, and a host of others. There are 128 continuous controllers, and although there are a few that aren't implemented yet (reserved for future growth) and a few that are reserved for different synth manufacturers, most of them can turn that bland MIDI file into something that rivals or even exceeds what the best musicians can do.

It's worth your time to take each cc and learn what it can do, and what it cannot do.

A complete list of the 128 continuous controllers can be found on my site here:
http://www.nortonmusic.com/midi_cc.html

Tutorials on how to use them are all over the Internet and in reference books.

MIDI has been embedded in the DNA of virtually every pop tune for the past 30 years (paraphrasing an Alan Parsons statement) and you hear a lot of expressive music coming out of LA, Nashville, New Orleans and elsewhere. It's worth it to learn how to use the available expressive controls MIDI offers, the 'handles' that can turn 'empty notes' into truly expressive music.

Insights and incites by Notes

.
>>>...to get a long bass part to sound less unnaturally staccato and manually editing it will take a half hour of time, and it seems computers do this sort of thing well...>>>

I frequently edit staccato and legato manually. Very often on MIDI parts, and sometimes as edits on parts I have played in. If I play in a melody using a Rhodes voice the legato might be fine, but if I change to a horn patch it wont be right, for instance.

BiaB has a unique tool for getting this job done quickly: Staff Roll notation. In the notation window there are 3 modes. Staff Roll is the one with stems going vertically AND horizontally to the right. Staff Roll combines the functions of the more familiar notation window mouse gestures with the visual functions for velocity and duration that are usually found in Piano Roll mode. It is fun and easy to use, but there is a learning curve:

# Only use the RIGHT mouse button ( the other one) for the Velocity and Duration gestures.

# start on the center of the notehead - not on the visual stripes - for velocity and duration.

# 1/4 notes and 1/8 notes lie right ON the vertical lines that look like barlines, not in the horizontal spaces between the lines.

I think this tool will give you the control you are looking for.

Curiouscat, if I'm understanding you correctly what you're asking about is known as midi control. The problem is there is no one standard for that except for General Midi (GM). GM is very basic midi control, it does not allow for the type of things you're talking about. Biab is a GM based program therefore does not have any way to interface with a third party vendors totally different method of midi control.

What I mean by that is different mfr's will come up with their own proprietary ways of accomplishing these things but that means you have to buy into the complete package. It's not only the VST's themselves it's the physical controllers that are required as well. Garritan has their own way of allowing a user to put expression into the different horn patches but their method is completely different from Kontakt's Session Horns. Session Horns also has their way of controlling the horns that's completely different from others methods.

This is part of their sales and marketing. Listen to the results of how our genius programmers did it compared to the crappy ways our competitors idiots decided to do it.

Bottom line here is many folks who are new to midi make the incorrect assumption that midi is midi therefore everybody's implementation works the same. Outside of the very limited GM standard, that's not true at all.

All of this is implemented from within the plugin itself, not the host program and you have to also buy a physical controller that's best suited for that particular plugin. Then what you've done is create what is essentially a whole new instrument that you have to learn before you can make it sound the way you think it should.

Here's an example, you like Trillian for bass. You can put T on the bass track as a plugin easily. But, Biab will only send it basic midi commands like volume, expression, modulation. None of those will take advantage of T's full capabilities. For that you have to be manipulating a midi controller live in real time while the bass part is playing to make T sound like you want. The only way Biab could do that is if it had internal midi programming that was specifically tailored to Trillian. That would also mean specific song styles for T because it's the styles that control everything Biab does.

Now, when you think about that you can see just how complex this could get. People use and like all kinds of different plugins. For Biab to take full advantage of them they would have to have that programming and song styles for every big name VSTi out there. You think we have too many styles now? Think of all the duplicate styles that would be specific to all these different VSTi's.

The only way to take full advantage of something like Trillian would be to take the basic Biab generated bass track to a separate DAW, set up T with your controller and record the midi commands onto the existing track. Then you would get a finished product and this is exactly one reason why so many people will tell you they use Biab to create the basic song but then they import the tracks into a DAW for final finishing.

Bob

Bob’s explanation is right on. I will add to his last paragraph by saying that most all DAWs will allow you to write in MIDI commands. Thus if you don’t have a MIDI controller you still can those commands. I do this in the PRV, piano roll view, however it can be done in the MIDI edit list view also, at least in Sonar.

Although I can do this it is easier using a keyboard MIDI controller.

FWIW-I use a wind controller, EWI-USB, for horn and monophonic synth inputs. This way I can control volume (CC2), velocity (air pressure), pitch bend (mouth piece + thumb controllers and a few other assignable CC controls simultaneously.

The notion that one can add more realism to a MIDI track by overlapping notes may be junk science.

Here's why:

MIDI synths and samples are dependent upon a fixed Attack.

The Bass, as in this example, has an Attack to it for each note sample that is either going to be the pluck of a finger, thumb, or plectrum.

That Attack will always be there at the beginning of each note played, regardless of how long the duration of the previous note is extended.

While some mistakenly believe that the overlap can MASK the articulation of the Attack, and it may do so for lesser ears, the fact remains that the Attacks will always still be there.

As for the notion that a Bass player will let a previous note ring longer when moving to a note on a different string, well, that would be the exception case and certainly not the rule. I would place such more into the realm of an effect than something used consistently in practice.

A walking or otherwise quick transitioning bass part in which a previous note that is likely adjacent by either a whole step or half step that has that previous note sustained well into the succeeding note is also a recipe for enharmonic clash down at the fundamental, it would also serve to add unnecessary muddiness to a recording. The Bass is the last place we need to impose that kind of smearing, simply due to the long wavelengths involved. Cancellations, reinforcements, the fact that the two adjacent frequencies will create a rather stout beat note at low freq because the combination of the two will generate two other frequencies at half the amplitude of the original, one the sum of the two frequencies and the other the difference, I would avoid doing that to my recording.

But by all means experiment.

Experimenting, though, also often means being selective as to whether or not to incorporate the results of each experiment or not, and I encourage those who do so to "listen through" and listen well before the rush to acceptance, along with listening to one's own work with the mindset of harsh judgement, often hard to do.

Given the amount of time and work necessary to edit all the notes in a given bassline, it would likely be a much better situation to look into better MIDI patches, better sounding MIDI synths to include the top end hardware synths as well as software, and just learn your personal arsenal well enough to be able to make good decisions as to which will fill the requirement of the project at hand.

You might find that judicious use of the spatial effects, such as reverb, especially reverb in which you can select the frequency bands being affected, would work better than note overlapping.


--Mac

Better patches and better synths rule.

I have one module that varies the attack on the bass according to velocity. I don't know how many samples are used, and how much crossfade is used between them, but when playing loud you even can hear the wood rattle.

I have a snare patch that with velocities over 120 you can hear the stick hit the rim as well as the head.

My Physical Modeling synth plays like a real instrument with an uncountable number of attacks depending on the MIDI controllers and velocity applied. I can even get the sax to go "fwa-da" or the trumpet to do 'lip slurs'.

The best synths will recognize all 128 continuous controllers, the lousy synths will only recognize a few. Most are somewhere in between.

As a rule, better synths also have better sounding patches, but in my limited experience, not one synth has all the best ones. The guitar on one might be better and the sax will be better on another.

But learning how to use the continuous controllers is mandatory if you want to make good sounding MIDI files. Take it step by step, experiment with one at a time, research it on the web. Eventually they become second nature and the music just comes out better. Learning MIDI is like learning an instrument. And learning what each patch will do is also like learning an instrument without having to learn the fingering.

It's a little late and I feel I might be rambling a bit. I hope this comes through understandably.

Insights and incites by Notes

The connection between what i'm saying and the subject of GM is a not fair. I never mentioned GM. If you haven't hooked up your vst synths to products by NTOnyx, for eg, you may not have a clue what i was saying. Standardization with respect to articulation parameters that are unavailable in midi makes no sense anyway. The way trillian (bass vst) handles (proprietarily) round robin and overlap is strikingly realistic since we're talking gigobytes. Yes, overlaps in specific sample module situations do help. With respect to trillian I didn't say in the low instrument ranges. Actually my particular case is a "stick" up in the higher ranges. The best thing to do is check out trillian's video demo. I guess bass is a bad example because most "bass" isn't chordal or legato-riff based. And I agree that in most situations applying this to bass MIDI would be a big mistake. In a soundtrack bass solo part it might make sense - in typical midi bass files you end up lengthening notes, some overlap, most don't. It sounds more realistic than unnatural clipped notes, instant cutoffs.. Reverb is a mask but not ideal. If u are a bass player or guitarist, probably you found yourself playing a root, letting it ring while playing it's octave. Walking bass lines are one style. That clavinet riff style is another. Still If we apply what i said to cheesy '80s MIDI it makes no sense. Or if the stuff is played through your guitar amp.

Anyway, NTOnyx substantiates this reality, IF we are talking about quality VST stuff like trillian, hollywood strings, pianoteq and samplemodelling etc., THEN running a MIDI data edit makes a huge difference in terms of sound track production. It helps that Onyx does this in real time so there's instant feedback. Check out examples of there articulation variations. And remember they are one example. Other products do this. I'm not saying anything novel. If you want to compare this to a casio keyboard its not the same but i mean no disrespect to what anyone believes. I was fortunate to have heard what this concept does. Maybe you'll experience it and if so you'll be glad, believe me.

The most amazing thing about this articulation stuff is how it applies to existing MIDI, whereas biab does things through performers recording stuff, the technology i refer to allows a user to interact and influence it in beautiful ways that biab may not feel the need to explore yet.

And thanks, Notes, for your welcome comments that i completely concur with.

First of all, I did not wish to argue, was just trying to help you out. I've been there and tried that.



Neither did I.

But I feel I must inject that "GM" only gets a bad name from people who have never spent the kind of money it takes to obtain a MIDI solution that indeed has a great sounding GM bank in it as well as the Upper Banks.

Knocking "GM" is a sign of what someone does NOT know about MIDI, actually. It shows that all they know about it is the cheaper stuff that comes bundled with, well, cheaper stuff.




To ssy that this old tried and true pro MIDIOT may not have a clue to what you were saying is beyond the pale.

I am familiar with the ntonyx stuff.

The ntonyz Style Enhancer can indeed add some realism to the MIDI performance, but with mine I have never heard it overlap notes as you describe. Even the demos on their website don't do that, incidentally.


(there's supposed to be an 'a' in that last word...

Sample size has naught to do with the ADSR of the sample.

The Attacks are still in there.

That is because samples, by definition, are static. A literal recording is made of a plucked bass note.

The hard part of sampling is in the looping.

Yes, yours truly has been involved in the creation of MIDI sampling for commercial uses.

A smaller sample size must rely on a shorter sample length, and to therefore extend the duration of a note, it must be looped.

Larger sample sizes can do away with the short samples, but at some point in the length of the note they too resort to looping. However, the larger samples don't have to loop the note in the majority of cases, since the sample is typically as long as almost two bars of 4/4 at 120 bpm.

BTW FYI, I also own and use Gigasampler samples, which positively dwarf the ntonyx offerings as to sample size. Still the Attack of each note must be there.




Please point us to a sample in a url that demonstrates that, I'm all ears. Literally, as folks who know me around here can testify to.




Please forgive me for taking the second paragraph of your first post on this thread seriously then:



And now we have a gamechanger:



That's exactly what I was trying to tell you, so why the argumentative note here?



I am s multinstrumentslist, Trumpet, Keyboards, Bass and Guitar and can and have sat the Drumkit as well.

As I said in my post that you seem belligerent enough to be condescending to me about: "As for the notion that a Bass player will let a previous note ring longer when moving to a note on a different string, well, that would be the exception case and certainly not the rule. I would place such more into the realm of an effect than something used consistently in practice."

Sounds like you are trying to say basically the same thing there.

But I can overlap notes such as the octave by simply entering the two MIDI notes onto the track. You can, too. I don't see a way that could be automated easily.

Heck, in jazz work I might choose to hold the third, the fifth, as well as the octave or even the tritone stuff, but again, I can easily enter that onto a MIDI track, although my favorite method of making MIDI tracks is to play them in in realtime, using the click, with keyboard or MIDI guitar rather than step-entry stuff. This automatically yields as much of the human factor that the aging MIDI standard will allow without a lot of editing. Layered samples yield touch from the Velocity data, Good Long Loops yield seamless durations, use of modwheel parameters in realtime, as well as Expression (cc11 Expression, NOT cc7 Volume as found in most downloaded free MIDI files) and it all can be done quite quickly by comparison.



I have found over the years that I don't have to do a lot of that sort of MIDI editing to get realistic sounding results.

And that has been not only with ntonyx, but with simply HUGE Gigasampler, etc. solutions.

Lately, however, I do find that I greatly prefer use of my HARDWARE MIDI solutions, there's a half rack of 'em sitting here, as well as the ones built into the various keyboards.
I like the zero latency of the hardware synth, for one thing. And a lot of today's hardware synth tout some really good sounds. They ain't cheap, and unlike many VSTs. they ain't free neither. They also ain't gonna become unusable should operating systems etc. change over time. Yeah, been bitten by that one in the past.

My hardware synths also can respond to SYSEX data on the fly as well. Built in effects, even SYSEX realtime parameter controls in some cases.



I don't think that BiaB can "feel" anything, but I do know that Peter Gannon and the developers have proven time and time again to respond to various user Wishlist requests and your request doesn't sound like a bad idea to me at all.

I suggest you place your request nice 'n politely on the Band in a Box Wishlist forum, for that is where development looks when deciding on ideas to implement or not.

Peace,


--Mac

Anytime someone knocks GM I quit reading the rest of hi/her post, because I know the person doesn't know what he/she is 'talking' about.

GM does nothing but specify patch names to patch numbers so patch 1 is always a grand piano, 12 is always a vibraphone, 18 is always a percussive organ, 28 is always a clean guitar, 33 is always an acoustic bass, and so on.

OK it does specify a few other standards like continuous controller numbers so that 64 is always sustain, 91 is always reverb level, etc.

Repeat after me: GeneralMIDI has absolutely noting to do with the quality of the sounds or how many continuous controllers the synth can respond to.

It only designates patch number to voice name so that if you create a sequence on one synth and transport the MIDI file to another, it will play the same instruments. See http://www.midi.org/techspecs/gm1sound.php

My SD-90 has 2 GM banks and the sounds on the average range from quite good to excellent. I believe it responds to all 128 continuous controllers and by using those cc numbers I can make variations on the GM patches so that for example the clean electric guitar can be a generic one, a telecaster bridge pickup, a TC neck pickup, a 335, a Strat, a Les Paul and so on.

Some of the SD-90 GM instruments like the clean guitar have 12 different variations, and you can choose the one you want by sending 3 continuous controller messages in a row (or use the MSB/LSB dialog box in your sequencer or work station patch name function to do it for you).

If you want to dis GM, get your self a good MIDI book and learn. By dissing GM you show the world how ignorant you are about MIDI (and I don't mean unintelligent - just misinformed and therefore ignorant of the truth).

Use your intelligence, learn the facts, and you will be happier for it and able to make better music, and isn't that what it is all about?

As far as stylistic interpretations like bass notes overlapping, this can be done with any polyphonic synth.

I played bass for a living and for most of the time I played one note at a time, sometimes staccato, sometimes legato, but for certain songs more than one note at a time is the appropriate choice. I can duplicate either with the cheesy software synth in my computer.

After saying that, I must add that I prefer hardware synths. I have about a half dozen with the choice of thousands of sounds.

They all have a latency of 4 to 6 milliseconds (for all practical purposes, no delay) so I can mix and match the best sound for the song from all of them.

So if the best bass sound for the song I'm working on is from my i3, the best guitar from my SD-90, the best snare drum from my Peavy sample player, the best synth sound from my MT-32, the bets sax sound from my VL70-m, and the best Rhodes sound from my TX81z, I can use them all with no noticeable latency, and no load on the computer's CPU.

I've had a fling with software synths, but until they get to the point where I can load a dozen of them at one time and have no more than 6 ms latency, not load the computer's CPU down and guarantee that they will work when the newer OS comes around, I won't take them seriously.

The Akai S900 sampler, the Yamaha TX81z, and the Roland MT-32 that I used with my Atari ST, "IBM Compatible" PC with DOS 5 and Windows 3.1 and my Mac Classic with a Motorola chip and OS6 all still work today, all have some very good voices in them, all have from 4-6ms latency, and all can be mixed and matched with my newer synth modules. None have gone the way of the Virtual Sound Canvas and so many other soft-synths.

The tools for making expressive MIDI music are there if you know how to use them. To paraphrase Alan Parsons, MIDI has been embedded in the DNA of virtually every popular song for the last 30 years. So obviously it's capable of doing the job. But MIDI is like any other musical skill or instrument. You have to learn how to play it, learn what it will do, learn what it will not do, and then use your talent to coax expressive music out of it.

You don't pick up the guitar and play without a lot of education and practice, you don't pick up a drum kit and learn to play without a lot of education and practice, same for sax, violin, tuba, trombone, or MIDI.

What was asked at the beginning of this thread can be accomplished on almost any GM or other synth made in the last 20 or more years. You just have to learn to do it. Get a good sequencer, a good book on MIDI or a good teacher and have fun.

Insights and incites by Notes