PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist What are the killer features making upgrade worthwhile

Sorry to be a party pooper, but is that all?

"There are many exciting new features"

Such as?

redesign of the style picker?

Chord sheet enhanced?

No 64 bit, No VST, no bug fixes

If you take the last 1000 wishlist features have any been included?

Perhaps the real tracks are good and worth having, but is there anything really worthwhile? Id the program still littered with bugs and counterproductive, counter intuitive anomalies?

I hope someone can say there is something...

Z

I had a similar reaction but I will probably upgrade anyway to get the new RealTracks.

Hi John,
I just dont think the development team are listeing. I call it a team, but probably its just a couple of old school programmers

that's my opinion, I just don't think they care enough to do the work.

Yes, Music XML for one is a huge improvement for my workflow, and is in direct response to the Wishlist. The enhanced style picker also.

You will see more examples and positive comments in a thread in the main BIAB for Windows forum.

I wonder how many BIAB users will actually use this? I guess if you need the feature it is great!

In that same thread, I explain how one will indeed actually use this. Check it out.

I guess I was interested in whether this is useful to everyone/most users or only those using a music notation program?

Hello Zero,

I think we are underselling it by using the word enhanced ... Both the Chord sheet and StylePicker were actually rebuilt from the ground up so there are likely a ton of bugs and anomalies fixed that aren't documented. It also provides the foundation for adding other popular 'wishlist' requests that would have been very difficult to add before...

The new features video has a good demo of the Chord Sheet:
http://www.pgmusic.com/helpvideo.htm?vidid=8ePhe2qU-JE

We are currently adding to the New Features video, so it will soon have more feature demos.

The new StylePicker is important for the ease of browsing and finding styles and seeing information about them. The entire database of styles has been cleaned and categorized. You can even type in any popular song and it will find the best match - it "knows" the details about many thousands of tunes spanning several decades.

Those alone are significant features... There is also an absolutely huge amount of new material in RealTracks and other content like Artist Video Performance tutorials.

Andrew, thanks for that video! The changes to the Chord Sheet look very cool!! Can I print all of the lyrics and other info along with chords?

Watched the video. My studio is down at present so I can't access band in a box. I go a bit by my (unreliable) memory....

The video does not say too much about style picker, so maybe that's another video

The chord sheet window:

What I see seems very useful for sure. When I casually think of a song - e.g. Amazing Grace, I think of the lyrics primarily, when I play I think of the chords. This new feature in the chord window to display the lyrics is going to help me 'pictorally' memorise songs, so that lyrics and chords twin up - which is not the case in the remaining brain cells I possess - currently. I think that is a big improvement.

But...

Can you yet...

Load a VST, then hear it BEFORE you hit play - for audition purposes?

Is it still true that if you loop a section you can bounce out of it if your mouse moves and you click elsewhere? Is there any way to nail a loop down until you wish otherwise? Is it still such a lot of clicking and pointing to get a loop going and maintain it? Why not the facility to set up multiple loop regions and select and deselect them? Even save these sections with a song? You could have a loop layer, with green and yellow and purple loops - for easy eye location.

Is the recording process still so needlessly arduous and non transparent?

Why can't you see a recording? Either as MIDI or as Audio in a layer?

Even cut and paste different sections of takes, non destructively? IMO we need these facilities in BIAB and not have to outsource to some other program.

What happens if you have more than one verse? Lyric wise in the chord window?

How does this marry into the structure of a song, do we still have to write out all the repeats IF we want say alternate [a. b.)] endings, or lyrics?

Is there any view where you can see all the chords in a song, all the intros outros fills, in a structural way? Colorising these features (in pastel shades) would help them stand out in the mind.

It would be good to see a staff with MIDI on it, on the chord screen, optionally. I did not see that.

I notice in the notation window it's still blocky and unreadable when using lots of semiquaver activity, at one point the left hand side of a note completely disappeared. If the notation screen is like 2015, I found it leaped around in such a way as the eye had to be very nimble. Isn't there a way to show the notes passing your eye like items moving along an escalator - smoothly?

TBH the GUI still looks 1980's to me. Sorry, but I think my opinion is shared by many users. I just don't think that is going to attract new blood - which I wish for PG.

When looping, does the app still give visual anomalies as it jumps around, so the first take of a loop is dissimilar color wise to a second, in some cases?

As I suggested in a post a while back, PG BIAB users are unique in the way they interface with the GUI, because they have instruments in their hand, they might be on a stage in dim lighting, or in a studio with only one had to reach the GUI and a dodgy mouse mat. It just the nature of playing venues, studios, lighting/gear..
Has this been taken into account when redesigning the GUI? If you have to drill down in click land this gets hard to do quickly.

What is there is useful, but I find it hard to shout and scream about 'great new features' like being able to see a chord you type in. That sort of stuff I would take for granted anywhere else but in PG land

Z

Just a quick comment about the VST playing for audition: I stuck a cheap small Akai MPKmini MIDI keyboard on my system so I could check pitches. Once it is selected as my MIDI Input Device in BIAB, it is active the moment BIAB starts. These small keyboards are about $70 new, and there are used ones out there.

Yes Matt, but it should be auditionable after the VST is allocated - before a track starts.

I haven't gone through all your points yet, but on the topic of auditioning a VST, it should work if you are using ASIO drives. "ASIO always on" should to be selected in the audio settings.

Zero, I wasn't attempting to propose a fix, just a workaround by not using the VST. Andrew's post is hopeful, though.

Matt
I would like to know if the implementation of XML is all that we hoped for.

Do all the nuances of the song get transferred? Repeats, DS al coda, chords, note lyrics, text boxes, etc

I am waiting to find out before I buy, as it is my hot-button. The other stuff is nice, but only a better way of getting printed notation without ANY effort will convince me to move to a new version

Funny, I just commented in another thread how you can scan music but not rely completely on the accuracy of what you get, especially with handwritten scores. I've only started experimenting with exporting a BIAB song to Music XML. My regular (but odd) notation software, Encore, won't read the chords. MuseScore does read the chords but I don't know how to prevent complex chord spellings from overlapping. So I can't answer your question positively yet.

PG Music has taken a critical step forward here, one I requested and am grateful for. I think it may need some shaking out, but I don't know which vendor is responsible to do that. You see, my limited experience is that Music XML is NOT seamless ANYWHERE. Like the scanner, there always seem to be quirks.

When I've had a lot more experience with this, I will share it (and continue reporting to PG Music).

I don't usually equivocate on an answer, but I'm not ready to state you can use it seamlessly, especially if this is your critical deciding issue.

And I wish we were talking about this in the main BIAB forum, not here.

Agreed, this is good stuff. Thanks for keeping us informed. I look forward to the rest of the story.

Are there any plans for BIAB to go to 64-Bit???

Sorry to be a party pooper, but is that all?

"There are many exciting new features"

Such as?

redesign of the style picker?
- yes not just redesigned but redone from scratch including an amazing feature where you can type in the title to a song and it will choose compatible styles ordered from best to worst

Chord sheet enhanced?
- yes also completely redone with lots of new features including layers and other requested features

There are other major new features such as 201 new real tracks. This represents over 200 hours of digital studio audio recordings with top-of-the-line studio musicians. This brings the grand total to over 2500 hours of studio musician recordings in real tracks available with the full package

)))No 64 bit,
64 bit plugins are supported and work seemelessly with jbridge ($10). Otherwise the program is 32 bit and works fine on 32 and 64 bit OS`s

)))No VST,
Not sure what you mean there, but VST has been for years.
)))no bug fixes
_ we don't list bug fixes with a new release, but we do list them with the patches during the year. A rough estimate would be 50 bugs/issues fixed between 205 and 2016.

)))If you take the last 1000 wishlist features have any been included?
_ yes, many of the 60 new features came form the wish list.

Regardless of which package you purchase from Pro through Audiophile, the purchase price is worth it for just the Audio Chord Wizard alone.

Regardless which package you purchase, the purchase price is worth it just for the teaching and practice tools alone.

Regardless which package you purchase, the purchase price is worth it just for changing key signatures alone.

Regardless which package you purchase, the purchase price is worth it just for the fact BIAB/RB suite stand alone in the software world in the ease and quality of generating backing tracks.

If you make home movies and need a soundtrack, the BIAB Sound track feature may be the most valuable element of the software.

If you play live, it may be the conductor.

Value is always in the eye of the beholder. The bottom line is regardless of use or what you think the shortcomings of BIAB/RB are, you get your money's worth. For me, the ACW is invaluable.