Z

This discussion comes up every so often; usually after a new BIAB release. It's good to see it conducted so decently. Ten years back the dialogue was anything but civilised but it did jolt PG into a change of direction that persists to this day.

Namely that midi was dead in the water and Real Tracks/Drums were the way to go.

Notwithstanding the improvements that ushered in, the down side was that very little of the original core midi capability in the stylemaker has been improved upon since then.

Midi styles still work off two or one or two bar patterns which more than anything limit the flow and realism of the randomised choices heard in playback. This is mitigated to some degree by pattern bar masks and the possibility of pattern chains and dedicated riffs for chords. Yet the chord masks are too generalised and could be doing with a lot of tweaking.

Styles with more varied sub-sections were eventually brought in but the feeling remains that BIAB has too many styles that lack varied dynamic levels and degrees of intensity. This only undercuts the undoubted sonic improvements that Real Tracks represent. Even then you have to wonder what the difference is between a really good midi sound set, patterns imported from a third party like XLN drums for example and real tracks. It may be that in the rush for all things 'Real' BIAB ditched midi just as it was beginning to fight back.


Speaking as a young person,a program that emphasises song structure at the expense of loop based modernisms and the various sonic manipulations of the DJ scene isn't the issue for me.
It's more that within it's chosen field, BIAB never really aspired to be a fully featured arranging platform to render a final performance that could stand comparison with the real-life thing.

Instead it still went for the initial approach that basically said 'let us do all the work for you with 'our' take on a particular style'.
That leaves a lot of end user definition out of the equation and severely frustrates any attempt to impose a more personalised rendition of a style or song that a more modular and elemental approach to style creation and hybridisation would have given.

Beyond technicalities the problems as far as the youth market lie deeper. In the modern music scene, the notion of 'style' and 'genre' as purist concepts have become so meaningless in the last 25 years. The culture of inventive stylistic cross-breeding that young musicians aspire to happens at a very organic and molecular level that goes way beyond the capabilities of BIAB style hybrids. In any event even if a batch of new styles or loops were available, the culture of making something fresh rather than recreating the past would likely tell against any significant uptake by creative musicians looking for their own personal style rather than a platform like BIAB that can only frustrate the aims of serious musical experimentation.


Alan