PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist This is essential for an accomp player that supports VST Important Peter G?

Band in a box, is, in it's core an "auto-accompaniment player" yes? It supports VST? Yes?

We have all heard this said, but can it actually do this?

Can you use a VST to play along with a song?

Yes?

Well almost, sometimes, if you really know how to do it and you don't mind resetting up every time you load a song, and oh, as long as you know you won't hear a peep of a sound unless you regenerate the song (this is a trade secret) and of course you should ingore the fact that the mixer will still call your VST an Acoustic Piano even though it may be a synth or a Hammond or even a bagpipe.

Confused? Read on:

After discussing this with PG support (which were their usual excellent selves) here is the result.

Explicitly, this is exactly what I wanted to do:

Play a standard song, use my MIDI keyboard to practice using a VST loaded into BIAB, not replacing any track but simply play along. I don't wish to record, simply play along.

Simple? Well, not at all.

Firstly, I am told that this only works with Asio.

Secondly, you have to go into options/ VST/DX Synths/Plugins and select your synth

This MUST be loaded into the 'thru' track. How do you know this? Well its on page??? of the manual, somewhere... or your lucky to be enough of a engineer to know the meaning of Thru in general MIDI, and have some general understanding of the architecture of the program, and not be say a simple musician, or a learner or a person that does not read manuals and retain photographic memories of page n.

Thirdly, you MUST regenerate the song BEFORE you can hear if your synth is loaded, It's far too easy to think something is not working unless you are "In the know" about this - most people are not.
You cant simply use the tried and tested method -load the VST, hit the keyboard to test - this simply won't happen - but how are you to know?

Fourthly,
Every Time you reload the program you will loose these settings entirely and you will have to set it all again.

Specifically, you have to go back to: Options/VST/DX Synths/Plugins and select you synth/ load your preset again (if you can recall its name), adjust volume. Regenerate the track. Only then can you play along again with the same song, using your former sound.

You might find that you can still see the name of your VST, in the plugins dialogue, but its not loaded unless you can also see its interface.


Novices might think it helps, to notice the tiny button in the bottom right of the mixer. This brings up the thru channel in the mixer which was hidden by default.

Invitingly, though I have a Omnisphere VST synth, with a weird patch name, loaded into thru and its currently working in my song, the mixer shows, "Acoustic Piano" - that's not what it is of course (it's a redundant GM MIDI name), it only says it is this, but it's not. OK?

what does the new user think?

A novice might be fooled by this, and may click on the mixer track - on this name. Wouldn't this be a reasonable thing to do if you were searching for a sound? If they do, there in deeper trouble still.
By clicking on this name, he/she may spot a promising looking list called "Select MIDI synth or Audio Plugin for Track ". Is this it, the novice thinks? After all my VST is a plugin in.. is it not?

Well, ignoring the empty pair of square brackets, er, no this is not what is sought. It just of sort of seems like it might be a way of selecting an actual VST sound but its not.

This list has no sign of the VST that we are actually seeking to hear and play on this track. Here, I can see a lot of amplitude stuff, but not much else. A complete blind alley. If you try to sample the sounds listed (suign the play button, well, (here) you just get a message with a location, and a yellow message saying there is no audio demo, that's all.

No sign of a VST just .tgs files. So, apparently a VST is not an Audio Plugin. Well, sort of....

Confused? Well I am.

Better back out of here....

BTW don't forget even when you are set up correctly, you won't hear a thing until the song is regenerated, but you will not be told this, as you look around. so, the novice is expected to guess this? Surely they are not left to apply the correct settings and not hear any acoustic feedback? Well, er, yes they are.

I thought it would be simple. Again, what the aim is, is to play a song and play a VST whilst the song is playing.


What we really need:

A straightforward facility to load any song and play a default VST along with any song - in BIAB.

A facility to change the 'default' VST for a specific song. (E.g. concernt grand as default VST and a Hammond on the blues song you are working on

A facility to save this setting with the song

The sound should play before the song has generated - otherwise most musicians would ponder when they test the sound at set up, and think it's not there, when it 'is'.

An ability to play along WITHOUT recording, or with recording. I notice that Recording a MIDI track dialogue box, offers record to Melody Track or Soloist track but NOT the Thru track - where this sound actually is (as advised by PG).

The use of the word Thru for the name of this mixer channel is opaque, archaic and misleading. It should be called something that a novice can recognise as what he needs "User Channel Instrument" or something similar. If "thru" means something to PG developers, its not what you expect a track to be named.

This should be simple, very simple in BIAB, but it's not at all. There should be a video explaining it.

My personal opinion is that this is a mission critical function that users should be taking for granted. It should be wholly intuitive in an auto-accompaniment program that supports VSTs.

I would hope to revise this implementation immediately, before biab 2016 that's only my view of course, but I think it would be shared, particularly by new users. It's a fundamental function and it's awry.

After all, you buy it, you want to load a VST and play along......simple?

No, not simple at all.

Z