PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Is there any way to get the "old" style picker window back in 2016?

Is there any way to get the "old" style picker window back in 2016?

I really tried to love the new style picker window, but I just never bonded with it.

I'm doing a new fake disk (Real Book Sixth Edition) and to match songs, I'm doing a lot of style 'browsing'.

For me it just isn't easy to browse styles with the new dialog. If the song search works, it's OK, but for the tunes in this book, few of the song titles bring up anything useful.

I can set the filters, and no matter how I set them, I get too many inappropriate genres of styles for the "Real Book" and if I try to test the styles on the song, it changes the tempo to the tempo of the style, not the song.

I'm sure it is better for some people, but I like the old one better.

Suggestion to Peter -- perhaps two buttons, one for the new and one for the old?

Thanks
Notes

I just put a request in the Beta forum:

Is it possible to have a checkbox choice in Options for
TStylePickerDialog or TStylzDialog ?
Like: "Use Classic Style Picker"

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=351426

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=335583

I agree wholeheartedly with Notes!!!
Cecil

What the new StylePicker needs is the ability to create user categorization, which Peter mentioned was intended to be a feature of BIAB 2016.

My vote for the ability to toggle between those two options

KR
SC

There isn't a way to get the old stylepicker back, but there is a way to change the two features that you mentioned that you don't like.

Changing the tempo is a setting in the options... Press the options button.

Showing a lot of styles can be solved by deselecting "show similar styles" checkbox.. Note that the styles are sorted from best to worst, so showing a lot isn't a bad thing, because you can just ignore the ones that are more styles than you want to see.

If you have other features that you liked, please mention them and I'll tell you how to do them, in the new stylepicker, or will add them to the features todo
list

Yep...I've never really liked the "new and improved" style picker either.

"If you have other features that you liked, please mention them and I'll tell you how to do them..."

old dogs, new tricks ?

Notes:

We've gone the rounds on the new StylePicker window in several other threads. I gave a couple of examples awhile back (can't find the thread at the moment) of how I thought the new StylePicker should work.

I think it's safe to say, there are a number of "old time" BIAB users who are less than enamoured with it. Perhaps it would be helpful if you could provide a specific example of what you tried, what the results were, and why they didn't meet your needs.

I recently tried to find a style for the "original" version of Kansas City. I ended up going back (as you have intimated) to the old StylePicker window to get what I wanted. (I keep an older version of BIAB on a separate machine, just for that purpose).

Good luck!
LLOYD S

OK, I'm doing John Coltrane's "Mr. P.C."

Problem 1

I set the filters to

• Jazz
• 4/4
• Sw8
• 256
• Real
• No Soloists

I unchecked "Include Similar" per Peter Gannon's suggestion and I get 3 styles _GYPSYJF, _GYPSYCN, and _GYPSYJD, none of which are appropriate.

I uncheck "Include Similar" and I get hundreds of styles including flok, bluegrass, country, soul, R&B, Funk, Lite Pop, Reggae, Celtic, Synth Pop, Blues, Latin, Modern Pop and more including hundreds of Ev8 styles (when the filter still says Sw8).

Even if I click the "Jazz" Genre heading, the fourth style is country, the 15th is Ev8 and so on.

Putting "Mr. P.C." in the familiar song dialog brings up the Gypsy Jazz first and no logical order to me underneath.

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.

Unless every song ever written is in the database, the search for song title is worthless.

Problem 2

So I scroll to jazz styles to find what I think might be a bop style and to test I want to click "Play Using Current Chordsheet For Song". This seems appropriate, but instead of the mm=256 for "Mr. P.C." it changes the tempo to 190 and I have to re-type 256 in the box to try it out. Same for all the the other styles.

With thousands of styles to choose from, this extra typing becomes a huge time sink (not to mention carpal tunnel bait).

For me, browsing the old style picker box was much better. On the other hand, I'm sure for others the new one is fine.

Notes

Notes:

I tried your "browse" with similar results and agree with your findings.
Another thing that is troubling to me is, the first style that comes up, _GYPSYJF, doesn't show "mr. p.c." as an "example" in the "memo" box in the bottom LH corner of the StylePicker window. (and in fact, it shows NO examples).

If you go to the next style in the list, _GYPSYCN, it shows "Examples:Sweet Georgia Brown, Minor Swing".

I would have thought there would have been a tighter correlation between the Styles and the Examples.

Did you have a MIDI style that you liked for this song? If so, did you try loading that, then see if there was a suggested RealTracks style replacement?

LLOYD S

Thank you for the detailed description. It may not be appropriate for the song you have in mind, but it did give you exactly what you asked for. It sounds like what you want to do is browse the styles like you used to in the old StylePicker, rather than use the filters. You can do this:

1. Make sure "include similar" is unchecked and press the Clear button if you have any filters on.
2. Select the category that you want to browse from the Category menu.
3. Browse the styles.

E.G. Selecting "Everything Jazz" is equivalent to choosing "Jazz[all]" in the old StylePicker. Does that help at all?



There are several thousand songs in the Song title database. We have not added all of those songs to specific style memos. In fact I wouldn't think Mr P.C. should go there as an example for that style. The song title helps you find a style that works for a given song. For many songs it IS a perfect match, in some cases it will just be the style that has similar characteristics.



I disagree... maybe we are missing some popular songs, but we can easily continue to expand the database to fill in those gaps. The feature is more useful to some people than others. For myself, I find it quick and easy to think of a popular song that has the feel I'm after. Say, Superstition - I can just type that in, rather than having to know that I am looking for a style that is Even 16, 4/4, Funk, at a tempo of about 100bpm.

Good idea Lloyd, but my favorite MIDI BeBop styles are Norton Music styles. Besides, I'm trying to do the Real Book with all Real Styles so loading MIDI styles will just slow down the process.

Notes

Thanks for your quick response and suggestions Andrew


This went from too many to too few styles. Some of which are 3 variations of the same style. I actually only hear 2 styles with enough variations (change piano to guitar or organ, add drums, etc.) to make 10 variations of only 2 different styles. Neither one is appropriate for the song.

Are they the only Sw8, no solo, Real Jazz styles you have? I think you have more than that.

If I check "Include Similar" the list is full of country, lite pop, folk, Ev8, and so on.



But both my styles and PG music styles are also guilty of putting the wrong style in the memo. It comes from the early days when there were few styles to choose from. The best style for the song seemed to be ????????.sty at the time, it was closer than the others, but with all the better styles out there, it no longer works.

We all were willing to settle for less in the early days of BiaB, because it was the best we had. It still is the best we have, but it's gotten much better, we've been spoiled, and what we would settle for in the 1990s is no longer appropriate.



1) This doesn't work for a song I want to write myself. And isn't that a prime reason to use BiaB? Say I lay down a chord progression to a song in my head, and I want to try some funk styles for it, but I don't want it to sound like Superstition, or don't know exactly what I want it to sound like. I could browse the funk styles, and then perhaps figure maybe it would be better as an 8-beat and browse some more.

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.

I have a reference book that lists the Top40 songs on the Billboard Rock charts from 1955 to 2000. Songs that made the Hot 100 but not top 40 are not there. Country chart songs aren't in there. AOR songs aren't there. R&B chart songs aren't there. Hit songs from the 21st century aren't there. Easy Listening chart songs aren't there. And yet there are over 10,000 titles in there (along with chart positions and other data).

You would need hundreds of thousands of songs in the database, and every year when new hit songs come out, the database should get revised.

There is more than one right way to do most anything. For others this may work. For me trying to (1) enter songs not in the database (2) browse different styles for chord progressions of other popular songs to write new melodies to and (3) trying to browse styles for a song I might write myself the new style picker window doesn't work nearly as good as the old one.

Any more hints to make it work for me would be appreciated though. Like I said, I'm really trying to bond with it and perhaps there is a secret I just don't know yet.

Notes

I'm having trouble understanding Andrew's statement:

"In fact I wouldn't think Mr P.C. should go there as an example for that style."

That is, he's saying, I think, that Mr P.C. should not be listed as an Example for the _GYPSYJF style. If that's the case, then why does that style show up at the top of the list as the "best" style to use?

Is the StylePicker saying, "this is the best style for that song, but it's not so good that we would use it as an 'example' of the song?"

I must be missing something here <grin>.
Someone please enlighten me.

LLOYD S

"Mr. P.C." should be a bop style with light drums, walking bass on both the A and B substyle, and McCoy Tyner style piano.

So far less than half the songs in "The Real Book Sixth Edition" have shown up in the suggestion box, and the majority of the ones that do appear there are inappropriate.

Perhaps as time goes on, and PG Music hears our difficulties with the new way, they will refine it to make it better for me and others that work like me.

PG has always been responsive to their customers needs. It's one reason why they are still here.

My suggestion to PG Music is to buy an off the shelf Fake Book, and make a Fake Disk out of it. This will let you know the frustrations we have.

My partner Leilani, who does most of the fake books reverted to an earlier version of BiaB. And she knows the styles so well, she heard a YouTube video yesterday and said, "Bob, come listen, they used one of your Polka styles" and sure enough, they did.

Notes

Yes... but the problem you are describing is not solved by the old StylePicker - At least the new StylePicker has the *potential* to solve it, by us periodically revising and expanding the song title and style databases. In what way would the old StylePicker have made it easier to find a suitable style for Mr P.C.?

The filters in the old stylepicker are identical to the new one, though they are much harder to access in the Old one. The issue here Bob is the tempo of 256, which you've Input as a filter which eliminates almost all styles. Try a lower tempo, like 190 or no tempo at all as a filter. Then you'll see the list you want.

Here is a case that illustrates the flexibility of the new stylepicker vs the old one. If you input an out of range tempo, the old stylepicker would just show you those 3 styles. The new one will show the 3 styles, but if you select show similar styles, it will, after showing styles that perfectly match, then show styles that are the next best match which will be the ones you're looking for (ones that don't match your tempo filter).

I suspect that you're not using a filter in the old stylepicker, because it's time consuming to use. Is that the case?

Note that you can sort the list with MIDI styles at the top, bottom or not present at all, and same for real styles. This is a preference which sticks between sessions. This is not possible for the old Stylepicker, but was a request from users who preferred MIDI or Realstyles.

))) Quote: Unless every song ever written is in the database, the search for song title is worthless.

There are about 10,000 songs in the database, and, no, that isn't every song ever written. Nor does it need to be. The idea is to input a real popular song, I'm sorry that "Mr PC" didn't make it, but keep in mind that we're adding to the database. Imdb.com doesn't have every movie ever written, and it's not "worthless".

Moreover, you don't need to use the search for titles feature to find a style. If I was looking for a jazz swing style, I would set the filters to jazz, swing, 8th notes (no tempo filter). Then sort by tempo by clicking on the column for tempo (you can't do this in the old stylepicker by the way, as no column sort exists). You'll now have jazz swing styles sorted by tempo, with Realstyles at the top, then MIDI styles (unless you have set to show MIDI styles first as in the message above this.