PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Style has bass set to Finger Bass, but plays piano

Bass track from FREEDOM.STY style states (in Patches and Mixer) Instrument 34: Finger Electric Bass. But it will not change from piano. Directly set it, remove patch and reload the style, still only plays piano - no RealTracks set, Plugins show [none][none][none][none] and the patch. Prefs: Bass channel=2, 0 octave, no pagination. Currently Song Patch Changes and Style Patch Changes are ON, but WERE off. Made no difference.

What am I dong wrong?

David,

What software or hardware synthesiser are you using? This may be related to the problem. I've just tried the style and, on my computer, all is well.

Regards,
Noel

If the origin of the song is a midi file? The redirect is likely embedded in the song with a cc. Use event editor to see what happens when the song begins playin.

Typed the chords in. And using (or trying to) all internal midi files. I can change the patch in the mixed dialog, but it does not update.

I may have some system setup anomalies. When I change style, the patches vary as to whether they change to the new sounds. Especially if I change patch or switch to a Real style, it may not change when a new style is loaded. (What should be set/reset so it will update properly?

David,

As asked in my post above, what software/hardware synth are you using?

Regards,
Noel

I am using - for this song- the internal midi synths, whatever they are, supplied in BiaB. I also have Trillian for bass linked but disabled, and also Kontakt with a bunch of libraries - Colossus, JABB, EWQLSO Silver, Afro-Latin Slam etc. in Kontakt, plus a number of other VSTis available but not enabled. I use a Nord Piano2keyboard for midi and occasionally audio input, PreSonus Audiobox audio and midi I/F. Dell XPS 8700 i5-4440 8G RAm, 2T storage+1T system drive.

It is the internal BiaB synth that does not play, nor change visible patch. And all the other Real instrument and midi Supertracks, etc. are disabled/not used.

David,

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "I also have Trillian for bass linked but disabled". This might be what's causing the problem. To check this in BIAB 2014 ...

1. Click on "Plugins"(#1) and select "Realtime VST/DXi Plugin Settings" (#2)




2. Now click on "Bass" (#1) and check that the plugin is set to "none" (#2).




3. If the Bass track doesn't have "none" as shown in the image above, click on the dropdown arrow (#1) and select "none" from the list (#2) as shown below.




4. Now individually click on each track below "Bass" - that is Piano, Drums, Guitar, Strings, Melody, etc. - and check that, in each instance, the plugin box is set to "none" (as described for the Bass above).


5. Click on "Default Synth" (#1), select the dropdown menu (#2) and then click on "Coyote WT" to set the fundamental soft synth that comes with BIAB. Close the window by clicking the "X" (#4).




6. Lastly, go to "Opt | Preferences" and select the "MIDI Driver" button. Check that your settings are the same for #1 through to #5 on the image below. Exit the set-up window with OK.




7. Now, regenerate your song and see if that makes a difference.

Hope this helps,
Noel

Noel, thanks for the extremely informative post. Unfortunately, following every step, now all channels play piano(except drums). A possible clue - I am getting notifications from SampleTank that my 10 day trial is up (I actually own v2.5, though the authorization may be on a different machine) And I just tried to authorize it and am now in a password nightmare-bad pw, email reset does not reach me...) I'll get back to you when I have ST working.

David,

I'm interested in knowing the result of your investigation.

If you've set the synth for each track to "none", and the Default Synth to "Coyote WT", you should not be getting a message from Sampletank. As you've noted, this could well be the problem.

The fact that you have a Sampletank pop-up message happening seems to be saying that Sampletank is installed as a soft synth on at least one of the BIAB tracks. If this wasn't the case, Sampletank wouldn't load and wouldn't give a message.

Does your chosen style have midi Supertracks?

Regards,
Noel

I read somewhere you're a B3 guy, so am I but I sold mine and I use the Hammond SK1. Not the same as the real thing but it weighs 12 pounds and sounds pretty nice.

Anyway the quote above may be part of your problem. There are no internal Biab midi synths. PG provides you with the Coyote WT which is nothing but a small bit of code to go with your built in Windows synth that the computer uses for sound effects. Not a very good synth, it's worth about what it cost you. Any synth you use including this one or Kontakt or any other synth has to be enabled by you, the user, inside Biab nothing happens automatically. The easy way to think of this is Biab has no midi sounds of it's own, the sounds are up to whatever the user decided to use.

Start with the basic default synth setup. On Biab's main screen see the Preferences icon right below the Melody instrument and click it. That opens another window. Click on Midi Drivers and that opens another window. This is where the fun is. Set your midi input driver, output driver and midi soundcard. This will vary depending on what you're using. In my case I use both hardware and software so I have my Roland Sonic Cell and Microsoft GS Wavetable for my input and output drivers. On the far right is the soundcard and mine is set to the General MIDI Instrument Misc. This raises a very important question, do you know what that means? Do you know the difference between a GM synth and a regular synth? If you do fine, but if you don't that's another discussion and it's vital you know that.

For now what's next is in that same window on the right but in the middle is an active screen button VSTi/DXi synth settings. Right above that is a checkbox that says Use Vsti/Dxi synth. Click that then click the synth settings active box. What you now see is whatever synths you have installed on your system that Biab can see. The Coyote Wavetable is probably the first one. Select that.

Here's where GM is important. Biab defaults to GM instrument mapping and the Coyote WT is a GM synth. Trust me everything will now play it's proper instrument but you may not like the sound quality.

Do these steps to get Biab into it's basic default sound mode and when you hear what you're supposed to hear then you can follow Noel's excellent instructions to use your other synths. However, those other synths are not GM so that means the default instruments will not be mapped correctly but all that means is for each song you have to assign the instruments manually. Not a big deal but it's not as convenient as using a GM synth.

Bob

At the moment I have enabled Sampletank again. HQ synth patches have, since installation, gone to Sampletank.

I needed the info about Coyote, now we are no the same page for that. I haven't yet had time to return to my original problem. I'll be Bach...

Thanks for the help, guys. It looks like I should delete the whole install and start from scratch. Everything points to a low-level problem, not the first time on this machine.

The HQ patches are Sampletank. Without ST you could not hear those patches. Here's a bit of background on all this.

For years PG included a decent freebie synth called the Roland VSC. They wanted the program to have at least something that customers could use to hear Biab with. The problem with that synth is it's 32 bit only. It's also a 20 year old antique legacy synth that Roland has completely abandoned so there's no 64 bit updates coming.

That means PG needed something else so first they came up with the Coyote Wavetable and then ST. ST allows anybody to create their own patches and have them link to ST. Since IKM started giving away the basic ST some years ago, PG created the ST HQ patches. But, as I referred to earlier, ST is not a GM synth so PG created that drop down box where you can link up those patches manually and it works pretty slick. You don't have to go into the plugin window itself to do the linking like you do with any other synth like Kontakt for example, it's right from Biab so that's pretty cool.

If you like the ST sounds, IKM has sales all the time where they sell their Omnisynth GM set for $10. There's a video tutorial here that explains how to get it to interface with Biab because it's not automatic but it will do it with some tweaking.

Have I said yet you need to become a computer nerd to use and work with this stuff? You do but it's fun and is part of working with digital audio. In spite of all the advertising hype, none of this stuff simply loads up and plays exactly like you want it to out of the box. Lots of tweaking and hair pulling until you get it right. This isn't a slam on PG, this is all the companies selling digital audio software and the computers that run it. PC's are not designed for this so there's workarounds for the workarounds.

Bob

Well, the sad fact IS that I (in theory but out of practice) AM(/was) a computer nerd - first box was a Kim 1 - 1K of RAM, hex input 6502, the only instructions were the 6502 Instruction Set, the 6510 I/O hardware manual and the "user Guide," which primarily said, "enter C800 into address 00FE to point to the hex display. Started with Hex machine code. I was a professional FoxPro programmer for years, and should know what I'm doing. But I expected BiaB to actually do what you said, work right out of the box. Should have known better, the Windows 3.1 interface was a big clue :-) . Not to rag on the design, I really don't care as long as it's navigable and does the job. But you have to admit it's pretty retro (cracked me up when I read that the GUI has just been updated, was the previous version a DOS screen?.)

This is valuable info, JM thanks. What was ESPECIALLY useful (and proof of my loss of nerd status) I have had ST2.5XT for years, and never knew how to load Omnisynth as a GM box, I always manually loaded the tracks in Digital Performer or Mixcraft.) Never saw the midi map - but then again, the ST GUI is so unnecessarily dense - and my eyes aren't the greatest, I gave up - I just wanted a GM synth on my PC to audition GM midi downloads. I was a Gigastudio guy - 8 shoeboxes of sample libs - so I didn't worry about it.

Now that I'd like to integrate my performance track creation software, primarily BiaB, iReal Pro on ioS and the various DAWs I routinely use, these things are becoming important again.

But right now, the main thing is stability (again...) I switched from Mac when DP released their PC version - which STILL doesn't work correctly with many VSTs and VSTis. So I use Mixcraft 6 - $79 and a better engine than many $00 DAWs, plus the best GM drum sounds, INHO.

But I do not understand why my midi sounds are not loading - the GUI says they are loaded, the app plays piano1 on all midi tracks, so I'm just going to restart the app from scratch.
I have one question about installation order, which I will ask in a new thread, to see if there are issues I need to be aware of that some users may have experienced.

That's good but I usually include the words "digital audio" along with that. You've got two threads going but I thought I would post this in this one. It sounds like you do have some experience with digital audio but from what you've written you may not really understand it? Not trying to put words in your mouth but you do sound confused about some of this and don't worry so was I, believe me.

The problem with your midi parts not playing is all part of what synth you're using and how the Biab midi drivers window is set up. I explained some of that earlier. You have to have the correct audio drivers set plus the midi drivers. Understand the driver set up has nothing to do with your synth setup.

I think what's needed now is for you to describe exactly how you have those things set up in Biab.

This is hilarious. Since I'm trying to explain some stuff to you I decided on this very hot Sunday afternoon here in SoCal to play with Biab. The last time I used it everything was fine. Now, all the songs are screwed up, the melody is offset, or the drums are offset and for one song everything was very distorted. I'm going, whatinhellhappened? I did nothing since I closed it last week. Here's what I did and what all of us have learned to do, rather than trying to figure out what went wrong I just went to Opt>Return to Factory Settings. It saves a copy of the BB file and then I closed and reopened the program and everything is fine.

Don't ask me boss, I'm just another schlep like you in spite of my "Veteran" ranking. All I can say is stuff happens and that's why PG included that function.

Bob

Bob, I just saw this reply, thanks. The "Return To Factory Settings" button is probably the one I needed most. As I said in the pother post (which must have been seen as critical, it was deleted) I see that this is a collection rather than a system. This is not a complaint, rather it tells me how to approach degug and setup.

I MAY have most of it wprkeing now. Have not yet reintegrated Sampletank, though the DXi shows available in the Plugins window.

But if I load the entire Style DEMO into a fresh tune, everything seems to fall into place, and I can then work from that beginning.

If a;; goes well, I'll reinstantiate Sampletank and try to get Omnysynth to implement as a GM. (I can load the patch map, but ST puts OS in a subdirectory. Time for more experimentation (this prog has so MUCH stuff in it, I haven't had time to even explore all the menu options - every time I think I have seen all the parts, here's another - audio chord wizard, generate soundtrack, vocal synth, etc.

I just want to make interesting backing tracks for my gig, nothing more. And I am beginning to establish a workflow. Now of the GM synth works, so I can swap midi files easily, I'll be good to go (presumably...)

No way, I read your post it was a fair conclusion and not presented in an offensive manner. Others have gone on wilder rants here. I have never seen the moderators delete a post which was not clearly offensive or one which someone did not complain about. Wonder if there is a new Moderator these days? So if it helps, I agreed with your comments.

David,

It might be that the post you're referring to is in your other thread (found here). I often find that when I have multiple threads on the go, I forget which one I posted particular comments in.

As Dan says, it's very unlikely that the moderators deleted it. PG Music have very broad shoulders and are very tolerant of criticisms.

Regards,
Noel

No, his post is missing from this thread. Someone removed it.