Jean,

Real styles use RealTracks that are made up of audio files. Audio files do not use midi. PG Music includes a midi transcription with many RealTracks so the Band-in-a-Box and RealBand piano keyboard windows can work and so that notation can be printed. The midi has nothing at all to do with what you hear when you're listening to a Real style using RealTracks.

Of course Band-in-a-Box also includes midi (only) styles and hybrid styles as well as midiSuperTracks. All of these use midi commands to tell a soft synth what to play and how to play it. The most common format for songs to follow is general midi. General midi has 16 channels (like a mixer channel) and each channel can play one instrument from a standard list of 128 instruments. The 128 instrument list is standard so that when a midi or Band-in-a-Box song file says load up instrument number 1 a piano instrument sound will always be be loaded. While the general midi standard has 128 instruments, it is not the only standard midi instrument list. Roland and Yamaha also have midi instrument lists. General midi added additional instrument sounds that is called General Midi 2 (gm2).

The most popular midi instruments are keyboards that have midi instrument sounds built-in. If a keyboard has a USB or five pin midi connection and it has speakers then the keyboard most likely is GM or GM2 compliant and can play all the instruments in a midi song file at one time. That is also the way the midi players built into Windows and Android works but, it is not the only way midi players can work. Some players can play only one instrument sound at a time. That's the way many synths works. Some midi software players like Kontakt and SampleTank work that way. That means there has to be a player for each instrument in a song.

Jim Fogle - 2025 BiaB (Build 1128) RB (Build 5) - Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home