PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows BIAB 2016: Do the new styles support MIDI?

Pumps,

Realtracks never save as midi - they cannot because they are audio.

It's the Realcharts that save as midi. While Realcharts are generated in parallel to Realtracks, the Realcharts are created from a separate file. They have never been created by BIAB taking a Realtrack, electronically interpreting it and then converting it to midi.

If a Realtrack has a chart associated with it, it can be saved as midi. If it does not, then it cannot be saved as midi. That's why I created the pdf file for you. If you look down the "Chart" column, you'll see three possibilities. These are "N", "Gt" and blank.

If the cell is blank for a particular RT, then no chart exists and so that particular Realtrack will not be able to be saved in a midi. If the reference cell contains, N or Gt, a midi approximation of the RT (from the RealChart) will be able to be saved as midi information.

Hope this makes sense.

Noel

P.S. Activating the "Realchart save as midi" I mentioned a few posts back, tells BIAB that when you create a midi file, if any of the Realtracks used contain charts, you want that information saved as an instrument in the midi file. (This makes it seem like the Realtrack has been saved in a midi file even though that is an impossibility because RTs are audio).

.
These fora frequently see questions from users who love the sound of Real Tracks and want to have an editable MIDI track that will sound that good.

The answer is no.

As VideoTracks mentioned, the MIDI capability that some RTs seem to have is a workaround. The MIDI data is created after the RT is recorded. It is kind of a translation, and the translation is for from perfect.

I would advise Pumps to look at the MIDI Super Tracks. These have much of the nuance and phrasing of the RTs. They are recorded as long phrases by live players. They are 100% MIDI-editable. I find they are preferable to RTs in cases where I want to retain a higher degree of creative control than RTs allow.

Surely that is a matter of opinion and also a matter of the context of the job at hand. Please be aware that many of the advanced VSTis are able to impart some nuance of their own that makes for a more human sounding playback. And the overall control a person has with a MIDI base can allow a much better final product. After all, with RealTracks, the proposition is that you either accept 100% of what BIAB produces or else you can't use it. With a MIDI base, one has the ability to adapt the playback as needed, and in many cases, that can sound far better (or far more appropriate to the task at hand) than what BIAB produces on its own.



Yes, of course I use them when they will fit the groove I need. There just aren't very many of them. There are 2000 RealTracks and only 150 SuperTracks. The new release apparently adds only 3 more. Not very likely to cover what I need. So I end up using mostly the styles that have been out there since 2005 or earlier.

Yes it does, and I appreciate it. Just to make sure I am not misunderstanding, there is nothing in the Style Picker that I could use to include styles that have charts and/or MIDI, but exclude the styles that are audio-only, is that correct?

>>>... There just aren't very many of them. There are 2000 RealTracks and only 150 SuperTracks.... >>>>>

Me too.. I would like to see a lot more super tracks, and a picker window that makes them easy to use. Maybe if users post all the way they are using them, PG will give them more attention.

There's a recent post by PG Music about the bonus 49-pak. That post says there are 11 more SuperTracks there. http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=322990#Post322990

I saw that. I was disappointed to see that I'd have to spend an additional $50 even though I have already been paying for the EverythingPak. For the jobs I do, there is very little in the 2016 base release that will help me. Honestly it is only those 14 supertracks that would motivate me.

That works out to about $15 per track, and in all likelihood, I wouldn't use most of them. I don't know how relevant they are for me because I can't find any descriptions or demos. (I don't do bluegrass, gospel, hard rock or techno.) So unless these are all killer tracks that I am likely to use, I'll probably just wait for 2017.

Hi again, Pumps.

I've had a play around with the new Stylepicker and I can't see a way of filtering styles with/without charts.

That being said, where Realtracks are concerned, they do not rely on a particular style to define them. A realtrack's feel/style is determined by the recording artist when s/he plays them. When I create songs, I load a style as a starting place and then I change a number of the tracks to suit. In Realtrack picker, it's definitely possible to sort by the Charts column and isolate those Realtracks with Gt or N.

All the best,
Noel

Perhaps the idea for the stylepicker to search and sort by midi notation can be reposted to both the RealBand and Band-in-a-Box wishlists. The stylepicker is new so ideas to make it more useful are good.

FWIW from a new user, I want MIDI for everything. RealTracks hold little value for me.

Interesting comment from BobF

>>>...FWIW from a new user, I want MIDI for everything. RealTracks hold little value for me....>>>

BiaB styles were all MIDI for years. Real Tracks are pretty new. They sounded revolutionary when they first came out.

Just curious - What is it about what you do that makes you want MIDI? Are there enough MIDI styles now to suit your needs? Do you think that more MIDI supertracks is going to be useful for you?

I use just-MIDI for one of my BiaB setups: My synth/keyboard has its own laptop, and there I only use MIDI because all this setup does is drive the keyboard. This setup is for playalong, singing, and keyboard practice.

.

The need to transport content to other programs (DAWs and notation programs. The desire to use the best VSTis out there. The requirement to edit (usually simplify) some of the content.


One would think 2000 would be enough, but 90% of the styles are musical genres I would never use and the remaining 200 include lots of near-duplicates. The later styles tend to be better than the earlier ones also.


The MIDI supertracks are very good, but limited in range. That's the issue. The company seems to be putting 90% of its efforts into the "walled garden". I would much prefer to see those efforts go into MIDI supertracks, but I may be a minority view.

When I have an idea pretty well firmed up, moving the tracks into a DAW as MIDI gives the greatest flexibility for further refinement of the arrangement; different instruments/variations, etc.

In the end, very little if any of the original BiaB material will still exist without being heavily modified.

I'm not against RealTracks. I would just hate to see the MIDI side get abandoned. As it is already, a fresh install is very RealTracks focused as the default.

As far as whether or not there is already enough MIDI goes, I'll let you know. The question does make me curious though. How much of anything is "enough"?

From what I've seen so far, it will take a while to get bored with what's already included (Mega).

We both are!

I just want to echo Bob's comments, as this is almost exactly the same way I work. I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that we all may have different goals and we all may have different work flows that get us to those goals, so I am not trying to say that how I work is "the right way" or more respectable than how anybody else works.

For me, writer's block can be a major factor, and compositionally, I am very intuitive and iterative. A concept has to tr grow on me. I am simply not one of those people who can sit down and crank out a great song or arrangement just by writing it down directly.

BIAB has always been an invaluable tool for me. For my arrangements, I really need to feel the groove before orchestrating the wind parts, and the MIDI tracks let me do that. And for me, it turns out exactly as Bob says almost every time. I use BIAB to get the harmonic scheme and the song structure in place. That may take a bunch of iterations before I am happy with the overall concept. At that point, I put those BIAB tracks into Finale which gives me a "canvas" to work on. From that point forward, all my editing is done either in Finale or Sonar, never in BIAB.

As various parts of the arrangement fall into place, I might go back and either simplify the rhythm parts, or rewrite parts of that altogether to make the whole chart work. Probably less than 65% of the original BIAB MIDI remains in my completed Finale project, and any if the original BIAB that does remain is hidden under slash notation, used only for playback, not for notation.

Even though I have used BIAB for at least 15 releases, I have learned some useful things from this thread. These tips will help me make better use of the MIDI-capable tracks that are there already. I do think that clutter has always been one of the biggest problems in BIAB, and even though they have reworked the style picker in 2016, it seems to me this needs a lot more work to help people who really only want MIDI-capable output.

I find it very interesting that here are a couple of people who prefer everything to be midi.

To answer that you have to look at PGM's primary market. That market is for average folks who may or may not be good players, to create good backing tracks to play along with either for fun or to practice. That's it. That market went absolutely crazy for first the Real Drums, then the Real Tracks. It was the biggest thing to hit the Biab user base since the program was first created.

Backing tracks are exactly that, no more no less. Biab is not designed for higher level pros to write their next movie soundtrack with or to create good covers of hit songs.

What composers do with it is use it to get the overall feel, structure and chords correct. It really doesn't matter if it's audio or midi and it doesn't matter if you're using the best VSTi's or not. You're simply putting the thing together. At this point you don't focus on the best sound, any half decent GM synth is good enough. Then the project gets moved to a DAW and that's where you get to go crazy with multi thousand dollar sound libraries and spending days deciding just which piano, guitar, bass etc out of several dozen of each to choose from and using the the best controllers to get that perfect nuance plus some live recording or whatever else.

Biab can't work with all that stuff and was never designed for and cannot operate at the level you guys are talking about. A few years ago when this subject came up (again) I suggested that there could be two versions of Biab. One would be the standard version we have now and the other one the Awesome Cool Dude version that will sit proudly in a million dollar studio and do all this stuff. Alas, I never heard back on that...

One last comment about people asking why can't they get a midi file from an RT. The answer to that is to simply have a listen to your favorite commercial recording of your favorite artist and ask that EXACT SAME question. How do I get a midi file of that performance? Not just a midi file of that song, those are available all over the web. No, you want a midi file of WHAT YOU'RE HEARING ON THAT RECORDING.

People keep making this mistake all the time when they don't realize an RT and a studio recording of your favorite artist is the EXACT SAME THING. They're both audio files, simple as that. So the question should is this:

How do you make a midi file out of an audio file?

Bob

Thanks for deciding for me that I don't really want MIDI. Everything is flowers and butterflies now.

We do have 3,000+ MIDI styles included in the UltraPak.

Why do people continually read something into a post that isn't there? Where did I say you or anybody else doesn't want midi?

If you want to work with midi, there are thousands of midi styles from PGM and Norton Music has thousands more. Plus, don't forget you can roll your own and create as many as you want. Where's the problem?

Bob

Maybe it had to do with the fact you began your commentary with "I find it very interesting that here are a couple of people who prefer everything to be midi."

I would humbly suggest that are a few more than "a couple of people" who work as we have described.