PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows RT1278 SYNTH (and its group) CONSISTENTLY PLAYS BADLY

I really would like to get to the bottom of this! I've suffered it for ages but its getting to be a nuisance now! Grr!
This particular SGU relates to RT1278 but ALL of the Synths in this group exhibit the same problem.
They are never smooth but are jerky, “out of breath” sounding and jumpy (as if they are not “seeing” what is coming next and are “surprised” lol). I have no problem with any other RTs or groups of RTs – that I know of.
And worse – listen to “held” Bars 44 and the final “held” bar Bar115. What on earth? Why doesnt it play the right notes?
The Workaround is to find and use another ALL MIDI style with M49 or M50 strings just for this track and take a wav file from it but what is happening here is NOT right.

The SGU is here - https://app.box.com/s/85x1o6ocwjo8fpl4ari2jldxrv18ky0g

The mp3 of the RT1278 in isolation is here - https://app.box.com/s/2j17vy14c4f3s8eexaxqbii74egdiqlx

I have the latest 436 build and UltraPlus Pak. Prefs set for slow regen as I am using XP Pro.
Regards
Ian

sixchannel:

I see what you mean with this file. There's a lot going on in the song with all those RTs playing at once. I suppose your PC is powerful enough to have generated all of them at the same time. I have one older machine running BIAB and it sometimes bogs down when trying to generate that much info.

The MP3 of the 1278 in isolation, how was that created? Did you just take the song, mute the other tracks and record 1278?

I'm wondering what would happen if you unfreeze 1278, mute all the others and then REgenerate just 1278 and see how it plays. That way you'll be able to tell if there is a problem with the PC trying to handle all the tracks at once.

Or perhaps open a blank song and just generate a 1278 track by itself. I tried that and it sounds OK, even after I just enter a few chords.

The other thing is, since this is a Synth Pad, perhaps it's best used for songs with long sustaining chords, not that it's an excuse for it being so choppy.

The demo for 1278 sounds fine, but I don't hear a lot of "sudden" chord changes.

I'm just "shooting from the hip" here and I don't really have a solution.
Others here will likely be of more help.

Good luck!
LLOYD S

Hi Lloyd
Power ? - Geekbench score is c4500.
I opened a new BLANK style and ran 1278 on its own -
New SGU file here - https://app.box.com/s/meu0rl0mh0o576b65ufnglhrbpuxs7g8
The mp3 of it is here - https://app.box.com/s/vxipu1aexyfhtfzbo2yajn198l8p5mw0
As you can hear, its still clunky and breathless, although in THIS Re-gen Bar 44 plays OK if too loud (for whatever reason) but the final Bar is still playing the wrong notes.
Go figure, as they say.
If I go to a midi style and find one with M50 or M49 Strings it plays smooth and fine.
AND BIZARRELY - if I change the 1278 out of the original SGU and replace it with say 1943 Synth (obviously a different set of synth recordings)the track plays perfectly with no jumps, no breathiness and NO wrong notes?
What????!!!
Ian

We are looking into it. Thanks for posting the sgu (BiaB song) file. That is essential for solving an issue like this.

Just to clear up the "wrong note" issue - it occurs when it is required to HOLD i.e. - C...
I can put them anywhere, as a full bar, or as part of a bar (C,C... for example) and the chord will play up or down and even correctly totally at random with every Regen.
Ive even taken to constantly freezing all tracks in an SGU but that one, and continually re-genning it until it, eventually, plays it right in all occurences.
Maybe doing that in RB would be quicker but its not right and shouldnt be happening.
Ian

It will be interesting to find out what Peter can do with this because I get the same thing with piano RT's. The reason is it's an audio RT and not midi.

Here's the thing with RT's. They are static audio recordings done by a real player in a studio. When you're talking about sustaining chords over a chord change, the player who did the recordings is not telepathic. He doesn't know what chords a user is going to come up with. Pick any chord pattern on a keyboard and play it. Now invert the second chord. Different sound and movement, right? Now, put the second chord back and invert the last chord so it transitions smoothly back to the first chord. Again a totally different sound and since you know where you're going with this you will hold the common notes from one chord to the next and only change what notes are necessary to change the chord. That's what makes the chord transitions sound smooth.

So....what should PG tell the player who did these RT's to play? What voicings should he use? There are only so many chord variations and voicings that can fit on one RT. And not just variations but the chords themselves.

I suspect the players have a chart of common chord moves but no way can they record all the different chords plus all the inversions. Without all the possible inversions if you throw a chord change that was not exactly recorded what is the program to do with your instructions? That chord movement was not originally recorded in the proper order. Now it has to find those three chords in different places in the RT file, stitch them together and the inversions probably won't match. That's where the high/low chord sound comes from. When you play that live you know what you're going to do so your hand position is in the right place to do the correct inversions to make it sound smooth without a 4 or 5 note jump in hand position. The program has no idea what chords you're going to come up with so it has to instantly search the RT file for the chords you want and put them together.

I think you can see the issue here. There's no way there's room in an RT for all the different chord movements plus all the inversions required to make all the possible chord patterns sound smooth. I have no idea of the actual number but I suspect it's in the thousands if not tens of thousands of possible combinations. It would take a player a week in the studio to lay down all that and the file size would be huge just for one Real Track.

Then there's the sustaining between chords. My example above I talked about you holding common notes with your fingers and only changing the notes to make the chord change. Those are called cluster chords because they're right next to each other. On a piano the sustain pedal is used for that and a skilled player can use the pedal to smooth out a two octave jump or sustain an arppegio.

If a RT was recorded using the sustain pedal to smooth out chord changes that is only good for those exact recorded changes. Throw different changes onto the chord grid and there's no pedal sustain so the chord change sounds choppy. This is one reason there's no octave command on the chord grid. You put in the chord but the program decides on the voicing and octave. There is absolutely no correction for that because RT's are audio files. Think about octaves for a second. Everything I just talked about would have to be recorded in duplicate to add a second octave to an RT.

Same as my example above, the player would have to record all possible chord combos and inversions with the pedal sustain on each and every one of them. Short of that what could PG do, maybe have the program somehow create an envelope to try to sustain it instantly on the fly? That would be some amazing real time programming to create a realistic piano sustain where there was none in the recorded RT.

Up top I said the RT's are audio files and not midi tracks. The difference is midi can be programmed to play whatever exact notes you want so those chord transitions are now correct because they're written into the file, not prerecorded in a studio and can't be changed. That's why your midi file sounds good but the RT does not. Same with pedal sustain. All that can be written into a midi file but there's nothing you can do with a prerecorded audio file.

This is a long and convoluted explanation of what I think the problem is.

Bob

Hi Bob
As a constant User of RTs I'm aware of how its created etc. Sort of!
I would understand this problem IF the chords were a) unusual (like13b9#27dim14 - lol)but they are quite basic and b) within the Key are perfectly normal sort of musical transitions from one to the other.
AND - WHY doesnt my substitute RT (in desperation)1943 for 1278 exhibit this huffing and puffing?
ALSO - IT doesnt answer WHY it plays wrong notes on Holds - C... . C is C, anything else is wrong. 1943 doesnt.
BTW - am I right that even though these all have RT numbers these Synth tracks ARE actually midi, not recordings? I was told this by a Forum guy once and wouldnt know how to prove or disprove it.
Its a total PITA to have to go and find midi Styles just so I can pull out an M50 or M49 midi track in isolation but its the only Workaround that works.
I have previously Wishlisted that the tracks in EVERY RT based Style accept our general midi tracks too. It works the other way round - if I select a midi Style, I can sub an RT in. Why not the other way round?
Or am I looking at the wrong end of the dog?
Ian

Ha ha, ROTFLMAO (still)

Been there, done that

Very simple to prove or disprove this. Try to open the RT track in a midi editor and change it. Actually it's easier than that. Generate your track in Real Band and just look at the track. Is it midi or an audio wave file you see? If you see midi notes, go into the piano roll midi editor and change whatever you want but if it's audio you can't do squat to it unless you have Melodyne.

The fact that you're asking this question tells me you're not that familiar with midi and that's ok, it's a complicated subject.

Biab has midi styles and Real Tracks. If you pick a midi style in Real Band all the tracks are midi and you see that right on your screen. If it's RT's all the tracks are audio, simple as that. All you can do with audio tracks whether they're from RT's or you recording your own guitar playing, is cut and paste parts of it to rearrange the track but you can't go in and change the actual voicings of chords or individual notes. Melodyne can but that's another subject. Easy to do that with a midi track.

Bob

Hi Bob
two things - I guess that you cant sub a midi track into an RT style cos its got nothing in it if you did. But you CAN sub the other way cos you clear out the midi and have Audio to put in its place.
With regard to the 1278 being midi - what I think he meant was that it was an AUDIO recording of someone playing a Synth to the sheets PG provided and there was therefore an underlying midi as well to go with it. Why that would cause this or any other effect I dont know. I cant see how this PG Urban legend could have any substance.
Ian

This is tricky to explain because part of it concerns PG's "secret sauce".

You have midi styles and RT styles. BUT the RT styles really are not styles at all because there is no underlying style information that forces certain chord voicings or rhythms like the midi styles do. This causes a ton of confusion. A RT style is really nothing more than a collection of RT's that happen to fit a certain genre of music but that's it. A midi style has lots of midi information in it that can make it actually sound song specific. A great example of that is the "Herbie" midi style that has the actual piano figure from Canteloupe Island in it. You can open up that style in the Stylemaker and change that figure if you wanted to. No such ability exists with the RT "styles" because they're really not styles at all. As you mentioned you do understand that the RT's are fixed audio files and they can't be changed by underlying style information.

That takes us to midi info that is associated with an RT. All that is is someone manually transcribed the note information from the audio file the old fashioned way by simply listening to it and entering the notes into a midi notation program by hand. Unless the recording was made on a midi controller. This is part of the secret sauce. I have no idea if PG will record the midi info from the controller as well as the audio and then use that midi info for a Real Chart. Normally the human transcribed midi info is just the notes only, no controller info. They only use the notes so you can see what was played as a chart in the Notation part of Biab or RB. That's all the midi info is used for. You can extract that midi note information and play it back as midi by assigning a synth to it as usual but it has the volume set at zero so you won't hear anything until you go in and set the CC7 or CC11 levels.

Anyway, another long explanation that says it doesn't matter if that synth part was played on a synth keyboard or not. The RT is an audio file like any other RT and if there is any underlying midi note info that has nothing to do with your issue. The synth that was used could be a Prophet or Korg or Roland and has all kinds of internal stuff going on like envelopes, filters, portamento, expression but that has nothing to do with this. All that sound is part of the audio RT. But as far as midi all PG uses is the basic notes themselves so you can see the notation. There is no separate complete midi file of that part and even if there was it won't sound anything like the RT unless you have that same synth sitting in your house to play it through.

Bob

One thing I have noticed with some RealStyles has been using selections of instruments chosen for a style, will play similar, complimentary phrases.

In one song, a lead guitar and saxophone played off each other as if they were playing live at the same time. I was able to get them to work in just minutes using the multi riff feature in RealBand.

On another song, done completely in BIAB, using three instruments on two tracks, (this is done in the Song Menu Window) the three instruments played a seamless 4 bar introduction as if they had been mixed in a DAW. I did nothing but generate several times and freeze the tracks when they played to my satisfaction.

I don't know if it is serendipitous or intended and charted that way by PGMusic when they are recording audio but it has worked that way for me more than just a few times.