If I select show similar styles, it shows too many inappropriate styles in different genres (country, rock, folk, Celtic, etc.) and even Ev8 and Ev16 which are in no way similar to a Sw8 style.
And as soon as I select one, it changes the tempo of the song and in the plau using chordsheet dialog.
And more importantly, I've lost the ability to browse by genres. Perhaps I just don't know how to browse with the new stylepicker.
What am I missing here?
I know a lot of people love the new stylepicker, so I must be doing something wrong - doing something the hard way - or missing something obvious.
Actually, "Mr PC" DID INDEED make it. When you enter "Mr. P.C." (without quotes) into the "Type in a familiar song title..." box, you get, in the results box...
Mr. P.C. [John Coltrane] [Jazz] [Bebop][4/4 sw8 255]
If Notes could have clicked on that entry, clicked on Enter (with or without the "Include Similar" box checked), and got a suitable style from the resulting list, he likely would have been quite happy with the new StylePicker.
So to me, there's a breakdown somewhere. Either the attributes that have been assigned in the StylePicker for Mr PC are inaccurate, or what Notes is after is a different version of the song or the StylePicker needs further refinement.
I've done Mr. PC for years. It's in the book of pretty every local jazz group I've played with.
For me, I would never bother searching for a style for straight ahead bop tunes because at that tempo there's only one or two RT's for each instrument that will work. Start with the Neil Swainson 190 bass and the Clark Terry drums.
There is no piano track for that tempo. The fastest one is the Miles Black at 140 and that will not work at 240. This is one glaring problem with all the jazz tracks. Few burners. Therefore all uptempo bop tunes are going to sound exactly the same with the RT's.
As for song titles, I got nothing with Mr PC either but I did with Be Bop, Impressions, Oleo and I'm sure many other. They all turn up the same two styles, Jazz BeBob Quartet and Jazz Bop Bass and Drums, that's it. I agree those two are in the middle of a list of dixieland, western swing and others and that looks weird. Peter posted some suggestions I'll mess around with but just simply opening the Picker and clicking on the combo boxes sure doesn't limit the list to jazz only even though it seems like it should.
My point here Notes is I'm surprised at your problem. I would think with you're experience you would have all of these RT's memorized by now. I know I do for a lot of them. I don't need styles for RT's because to me they're merely suggestions anyway. You're free to sub in any RT you want on any track.
All I do is put in the chords and if a song title comes up in the StylePicker I'll start with it but otherwise I'll pick any style that I know is even barely in the ballpark and go from there. Start subbing RT's and find something. Once you do save it as a user style with your own memo as to what songs it could work with.
Mr. PC made it, and gave me gypsy and other inappropriate styles.
Originally Posted By: Notes Norton
<...>And what about songs that aren't in the database. There must be millions of them. Before "Mr. P.C." I did Pat Metheney's "Missouri Uncompromised" which turned up nothing.
"Miss Ann" brought up Little Richard, and nothing for Eric Dolphy.
"Minority" brought up Green Day, not Gigi Gryce
"Milano" turned up nothing, nor did "Midwestern Nights Dream (Metheny), "Midnight Mood" (Zawinul) and dozens of others. <...>
and from another post
Quote:
2) "The Real Book" is the most popular jazz book ever written. These songs don't show up; African Flower, Afro Blue, Afternoon In Paris, Agua De Beber, All By Myself, Alright Okay You Win, Always (Irving Berlin), Ana Maria, April Joy, Arise Her Eyes, Armageddon and that is just in the A's -- one shy of half the A's in the table of contents do not show up.
Bob (Jazzmammal), I've used my own MIDI bop styles for years, because I like them better. I even have a bop with walking bass in the A and B. But I'm trying to do "The Real Book" with only "Real Styles". Perhaps that was a bad idea.
There are indeed some PG Music styles that are my favorites, and quite a few I wish I wrote myself, so I don't mean to dis PG Music in any way at all. Many of PG Music's styles are on my personal "A list" but for bop they are not.
I'm still having problems with browsing. And now that I've been addressing the problems in more depth, they have gotten worse for me.
In hindsight I think this may not be the appropriate place to be discussing this. The thread has taken a turn to where it is uncomfortable for me.
So Peter, I hope you don't mind, I'm going to e-mail you directly with my problems.
As said before: you can go to c:\bb\bb2015_backup and make a copy of the bbw.exe and rename it bbw 2015.exe copy it to c:\bb right click on it and create shortcut, now go to preferences and check run multiple instances - just above the OK button - you can run the old picker 2015 alongside 2016 just copy the name you like then paste it in 2016
Getting back to the Style Picker - I also prefer the "OLD" Style Picker and also plead for a "Toggle" switch between the two versions I was making a "Hybrid" style and I noticed that the "OLD" Style Picker came up there when you rebuilt the styles So surely as it is there it must be able to be as an alternative jazzman
BIAB - RealBand - 2022 Windows 10 64 Zoo computer with 7i processor- SSD 1TB -2TB HDD Roland keyboards
The new style picker also doesn't display non-BiaB styles properly (Norton Styles, Hawkesford Styles, Mayrent Styles, Fine Tuned styles, and any styles you might make yourself, including hybrids).
Peter says he's working on a fix for that though, but even if he accomplishes that, I prefer the old one.
A toggle would be nice. They we could choose and use whatever works best for the situation we have at hand.
The new style picker does have some merit, there are a few things I like about it, but for just browsing styles, I still definitely prefer the old style picker window.
I'm mostly okay with the new Style Picker, but want to be able to do my own categorizations (what we used to do with the LS3 files), as well as modify the comments associated with each style.
I would also like to see a common look and feel between all the various BIAB "pickers" (Styles, RealTracks, RealDrums, SuoerMIDI tracks, Songs, etc).
John
Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA
... I would also like to see a common look and feel between all the various BIAB "pickers" (Styles, RealTracks, RealDrums, SuoerMIDI tracks, Songs, etc).
In the menu code there is an "Old Stylepicker" I changed it to that but it still brings up the new style picker. You will just have to tell them the new options you need the new picker to do.
object StylePopup: TPopupMenu AutoPopup = True Left = 63 Top = 648 object Stylepicker1: TMenuItem Tag = 401 Caption = 'OLD StylePicker (browse all styles)...' OnClick = Stylepicker1Click end object NewStylepickerbeta1: TMenuItem Tag = 408 Caption = 'StylePicker...' OnClick = NewStylepickerbeta1Click end
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With the release of Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac, we’re rolling out a collection of brand-new videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll keep this forum post updated so you can easily find all the latest videos in one convenient spot.
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Along with version 2026, we've released an incredible lineup of new content! There's 202 new RealTracks, brand-new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two new RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
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If you're already using Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac®, make sure to grab the latest update! Build 904 is now available for download and includes the newest additions and enhancements from our team.
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