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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Zeke Offline OP
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I would like to add 3 or 4 notes of real steel guitar before everything else begins. I put the note I wanted to use on the notation page but the song just ignores them when I play it back. Can this even be done? Thanks so much.

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Hello Zeke, and welcome to the forum. The RealTracks do not play and cannot be made to play specific notes that you enter.

You may be able to do a workaround. One way is to find a good steel guitar sound and do it in MIDI, where you can very much control exactly what is played. Another, less likely to succeed, is to continue to regenerate the song until the steel guitar tracks plays something closer to what you like.

I often us a combination of MIDI and RealTracks on one instrument. For example, I might notate a bass part in MIDI and use a good bass sound in my MIDI synth, then after the notes I want play, mute that track using F5 (bar settings) and unmute another track that has a RealTrack bass.

Another thought: when you say 3 or 4 notes before everything else begins, I assume you mean a pickup measure. You might consider having the song start on measure two, so that measure one contains the pick up. Then use F5 on measure one and silence all the instruments except the steel guitar track. If you do this, then you also need to go to measure two, press F5, and turn all the rest of the instruments back on.

I realize this is over-simplified. If you need more detail, just ask.


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I will often start a song with a couple of measures of held chords. (usually in the root chord). I sometimes use these if I want a held note at the ending of a song. Once I get the song into my DAW, I can take those held notes and insert them where needed or possibly use them to create pick-ups. Or you can often find the notes you want elsewhere in the track and can use those to create pick-ups. Either way, it's a lot easier to do in a DAW than BIAB.

I hope this makes sense. It does in my mind, but that's another story.


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When I work in Real Band every now and then, it will in fact, render pickup notes on some of the solo tracks. It's not always willing to do that though. A regeneration can lose the pickup or create it. I guess it depends on how RB is feeling about that track on the regen..... so if I have something I don't want to lose, I will insert a new track and work with it.

SO..... a work around I will use happens in the very next step in my process. When I move it to Sonar (DAW) all the tracks start on Measure 3 with 2 complete measures for the count in. With a bit of copy and paste magic I can insert the pickup notes easy enough.


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Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Just go to a new track use MultiRiffs to generate what you want and copy n paste it to the other track.


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Zeke Offline OP
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Many thanks to all of you for your help. In my original post on this topic, I forgot to mention than I'm technologically impaired. One day, I hope to understand everything each of you wrote . . . but today just isn't that day. Band-In-A-Box has a much steeper learning curb that I expected. It's really challenging for someone like me.

I do understand, however, about putting an extra measure at the beginning and then muting the other instruments for that measure. It's on my present learning level.

Thanks again. I'm so glad that there are guys like you who are willing to help us pea brains.

Many blessings,
Zeke


Last edited by Zeke; 11/13/14 11:16 PM.
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Originally Posted By: Zeke
Many thanks to all of you for your help. In my original post on this topic, I forgot to mention than I'm technologically impaired. One day, I hope to understand everything each of you wrote . . . but today just isn't that day. Band-In-A-Box has a much steeper learning curb that I expected. It's really challenging for someone like me.

I do understand, however, about putting an extra measure at the beginning and then muting the other instruments for that measure. It's on my present learning level.

Thanks again. I'm so glad that there are guys like you who are willing to help us pea brains.

Many blessings,
Zeke



Experiment....play around with things. If you screw up, no problem, just close the project...DO NOT SAVE IT.....and reopen it and start again. You learn by making mistakes and figuring things out. Another way is to open the project, immediately do a SAVE AS, close the original version and work with the "saved as" version. That way you don't touch the original at all.

As I recall, when I write a song in BiaB, save it, close it and then open it in Real Band, there are 2 timing measures at the very beginning of each track..... count in measures. That's where you can use one of the unused tracks...set it up as audio and copy a section from one of the other existing tracks and paste it to the new unused track as pickup notes.


You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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È stata aggerate la versione in Italiano del programma più amato dagli appassionati di musica, il nostro Band-in-a-Box.
Questo è il link alla nuova versione 2025.

Di seguito i link per scaricare il pacchetti di lingua italiana aggiornati per Band-in-a-Box e RealBand, anche per chi avesse già comprato la nuova versione in inglese.

Band-in-a-Box 2025 - Italiano
RealBand 2025 - Italiano

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RealBand 2025 - francisation

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https://nn.pgmusic.com/pgfiles/languagesupport/deutsch2025RB.exe

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