PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows About the Soloists...

Part one:
A lingering problem I've had for years with the midi soloist involves it not doing what I tell it to do. The majority of Biab songs I download from various sources have the melody playing on all choruses. If I click on the midi Soloist button the window opens. In the middle of that window is the area about when to solo. Under the heading "solo which choruses?" are three combo boxes. To the left of the first box is "First", I have it set as "No Solo", the second is "middle", it's set "Yes Solo" and the last is "No Solo". Below that is a line with a checkbox that says "mute melody in middle". Why does that never do anything? I can click those boxes all I want and the melody still plays. The only way to not have it play is to go back to the main screen, hit the melody button>edit melody>kill melody in middle choruses. That's the only way to get rid of the melody for the solos unless you manually mute it. Also, at least half the time when I open another song and create a midi soloist in spite of clicking the box - First "no solo" it plays anyway over the melody so either the melody is playing in the middle choruses or the solo is playing over the melody during the first chorus most of the time. What's the point of those boxes in the Solo window? I've "returned to factory settings" plenty of times and I'm using the latest build 2009.5. I don't use the soloists all that much and I've learned over the years different workarounds for this but it's been bugging me for a long time and thought I would finally ask about it. I've been going through some big directories I downloaded and experimenting with the soloists and this is happening pretty much with every song. Another thing is with the solo instruments. Quite often if the solo is playing in the wrong place or just doing something weird, clicking on the instrument or changing to a different one will fix it. There's been glitches in that solo window for a long time imho.

Part two:
The RT styles with soloists. Why do all the RT styles that have soloists as part of the style have the solo playing on the first chorus? When's the last time anybody starts soloing on the downbeat at a gig?? Most songs have melodies and the solo starts playing over it. I don't get this at all. Peter, Oliver, Miles and the rest are total pros. Nobody solos right from the start with very rare exceptions. Songs have heads and everybody plays the head first, right? I can see it for a demo song maybe but not embedded in the style. All it does is force me to immediately mute it when I'm auditioning styles. I have a few more lingering comments but this is enough for now.

Bob