I am desperately waiting, (as I suspect are most other BIAB/Realband users!), for the arrival of some new realstyles but, pending that happy event, I have decided to have a trawl of some of the old midi style disks to see if any of them could be pepped up with the judicious addition of a few realtracks.

I haven't touched the midi styles much since the arrival of Realtracks because the quality improvement in the audio tracks was so vast, so I wasn't expecting too much out of the exercise, but I was pleasantly surprised by some of the results. Just blending in a couple of audio realtracks into the mix really seemed to lift the quality of a lot of the midi tracks - particularly on those tracks featuring keyboard and string section type instruments which midi tends to handle better than it does, say, guitar.

One midi style disk which I rediscovered and which I thought was a standout was disk 40 - "Rhythm & Blues". This has got a whole bunch of classic motown/soul type styles on it which were hugely lifted just by the introduction of realdrums. Nashville Pop 16ths seemed to be the default realdrums style for most of the songs on this disk and it worked a treat.

The midi electric and acoustic pianos and clav's sounded pretty good even through the Roland VSC and I am sure that even greater quality can be coaxed out of them with a better Rompler/synth within Realband or another DAW.

The only weak link was the guitar sounds which midi in general (and the VSC in particular) don't seem to be to great at.

PETER GANNON (sorry - didn't mean to shout!) if you read this I would definitely vote for some electric guitar realstyles to fit in with the styles on this style disk. (and If it's not too greedy to ask, one or two of the bass guitar styles would also be very nice, thanks!)

As a songwriter the songs on this styledisk are exactly what I am looking for - they give a high quality rendition within a particular genre of music without, (in the main), sounding too much like any one particular song. They therefore provide a wonderful palette to develop new songs from. Given the recent success of artists such as Amy Winehouse and Duffy with classic motown grooves these styles are also suddenly very 'relevant' again as well.

There is such a huge back catalogue of midi styles out there that I am sure most people will find a few old gems in their own favoured genre that can be freshened up with a realtracks or two. I can definitely recommend having a second look at those old midi styles.

If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor.