I folks:

I'm relatively new to BIAB. I have BIAB2014, received as a gift. It came with a few Real Tracks and such. Not many mind you, but enough to make me appreciate how cool they are.

Anyways, I'm trying to make my first BIAB file. I wanted to take the sheet music for Vince Guaraldi's O Tannenbaum and make a BIAB file to use to play along as my band while I play on my upright piano.

Please understand, I'm kind of new at this. But I'm looking for some advice.

I created a new file and chose ZZJAZWAL.STY Jazz Waltz Style to get a 3/4 score going. (Took me the longest time to figure out time signature is tied to the style).

I edited my song settings to have (1) chorus. I really plan on manually creating the sheet music measures end to end, not really in a form of AABA or anything. Just plan on entering in all the bars manually for the whole song.

I've added the first 16 bars using chord notation in my BIAB file. WHen I play it, it kind of sounds bad.

So I was looking around at the Real Drums I got with my version. I Found something called 'jazz brushes' that seems to make it sound better. (it took me a while to figure out that most of my Real Drums are incompatible with 3/4 time).

Anyways, I guess it's a long winded way of asking if anyone has ideas for better Bass, drum, or other RealTracks (?) that might make the accompaniment sound better.

I have very few (maybe 6) basic Acoustic base RealTracks. Accoustic base simple and very simple work, but are boring. The four others just don't seem to match the feel of the song.

THe original Guaraldi version doesn't really have much more than drums (brushes), base, piano, I think.

But I was wondering if there's some other suggestions that might add some interest to the accompaniment? Maybe jazz guitar or something.

Anyways, this is just all for practice. It is my hope that I can use it to practice by.

I took a year of Jazz piano lessons and can kind of play the first 16 bars just by sheet reading. I never learned improv, but i"m hoping to be able to use this to eventually practice my own improvisations over the 2nd 16 bars, and conclude with a repeat of the first 16 bars.

This is just for fun, just for learning.

I'm a 49 year old jazz piano novice hoping to be able to play better and maybe learn enough to improve with this one song. THen on to the next!

I know I have years of practice in front of me. But this Christmas, I would really like to see if i can play this one all the way through and sound not half bad as a Christmas present to me. I've hacked this song for years and never really got serious about getting through end to end.

Thanks for reading (if you've read this far). I'd love to see if you have any ideas.

Robert P. Britton, Jr.
Jazz Piano student, Oil Painter
My Oil Paintings