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As always - I learned a lot from this conversation...thanks to all for your thoughtful and detailed contributions.
BB remains in the number one spot of music programs for me - it does so many things...and is IMHO probably incredibly underutilized across the education community in terms of what it can offer.
I especially like the things it offers that absolutely no other program offers - in terms of rockstar_not's comments about analyzing a song for the overall feel, production, mix, and 'audio magic' in it - and the exercise of analyzing it and trying to get that feel yourself using the tool. Also for lambada's comment about using it in the way I do - to really learn how those instruments you don't play complement each other to create the groove and the feel of a song, and to communicate to other musician's articulately with respect to this.
As always - loving this program and the wonderful community here on the forums.
Last edited by Joe V; 10/31/16 11:09 PM.
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Pardon me for not reading all the previous posts. I might be repeating another. But I have an early lunchtime gig today, and time is short.
Here is my take:
1) When there were very few styles, both PG Music and myself made judgement calls. A particular style might be the best style at the time for a particular song, but not really that close. But when there were only a hundred or so styles, it was "close enough" and at that time the best way to do the song. I've removed and replaced a lot of those assignments in my styles, but there are plenty of others lurking that I haven't noticed yet.
2) BiaB styles are generic by design and not song specific. Years ago I had a few requests to do a style for Elvis Presley's song, "Don't Be Cruel."
"Don't Be Cruel" uses a song specific guitar lick and without that lick, you don't have the song. I soon realized that that particular style was good for one song and one song only. Put it in any other song and as soon as you hear that signature guitar lick, you think "Don't Be Cruel".
So I realized what is the use of making a song-specific style that only works for one song? It's actually a lot easier to do the song in a DAW or Sequencer than to write a style and jump through the hurdles to overcome the limitations of Band-in-a-Box.
With zillions of styles, it sometimes makes it difficult to find the best style for that song. I know, we create fake 'disks' for BiaB. It takes longer to find the best style for each song than any other part of the process. And even then, when new styles come out, what we chose for a fake 'disk' last year might be replaced by an even better one next.
Band-in-a-Box is a tool and a toy. We play music and so try to think about it as playing, enjoy the process, and think about it as the journey as much as the result.
Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Peter, Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE those Plus styles and all the other unusual time signatures and amazing "non +" styles that pull up when you just type in +. Wow!!!!!!! So glad I was reading this thread. My life has just changed--again!! Get ready world!! Weird cross-over Bollywood Space Age Celtic Rock is on the way in multi-styles! Be warned! But ok, I have to say this is funny: Are you saying that if Hotel California goes Bm, F#m, A E, G, D and the demo is G, C and D that it isn't going to sound like Hotel California...?? are you saying that you have to actually type in the same chords as the song...so it will sound like it? Oh my goodness, I see it now! I think I get it! Ha ha ha ha ha ha. That was funny.
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A very nice copy of Beck. I would be interested in seeing the Google Doc.
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Band-in-a-Box is a tool and a toy. We play music and so try to think about it as playing, enjoy the process, and think about it as the journey as much as the result. This is a big part of it for me too. I have a large collection of midi files that are almost perfect copies of some great tunes and I have the skills with Biab to use those to make all kinds of song specific styles but have no interest in doing that. Sometimes I'll que them up and play along after I've muted the keys part but for me part of the fun is messing around with Biab or RB to create something myself. Also for live gigging, I don't play with tribute bands and could not give a rip if I do a song exactly like a record or not. For the gigs I play nobody cares about that. We do different changeups on the fly like just a week ago I suggested Take 5 as a reggae. We looked at each other and the drummer went what? I said do it something like this so I started a reggae feel riff using the intro to Take 5. The rest of the band just jumped in and it sounded pretty good. This was in a restaurant and the people who were paying attention really liked it. Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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I'll put up a Google-docs spreadsheet of a song I've recently 'reverse arranged' in order to make notes on our band's cover of the song. I would like to see the spreadsheet very much. Thanks Dr. Gannon for adding your voice to the conversation. The demonstration is very impressive. How you created the demonstration is most informative.
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I'll put up a Google-docs spreadsheet of a song I've recently 'reverse arranged' in order to make notes on our band's cover of the song. I would like to see the spreadsheet very much. The most recent one I did was for a song called "This Is Amazing Grace" which is a pretty popular worship song right now. I can post that, or perhaps what might be more useful to you and the community would be to go through this exercise with a more well known song? I would be willing to do this even though it takes about an hour for a typically instrumented rock song. It's good practice. Every time I go through and do this with a song I learn something new. Would you be interested in a group exercise? You pick the song, I will do my version and put it aside, then walk through a live session with a Skype call or something, then compare the group notes with my held aside version.
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))) Would you be interested in a group exercise? You pick the song, I will do my version and put it aside, then walk through a live session with a Skype call or something, then compare the group notes with my held aside version.
This would be great. Thanks Scott!
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Sounds great. Might be a good idea to record the Skype session as people are logging in from all over the world. I'm in Hong Kong. When I post most people are asleep! 
Windows 10 Home 20H2 Build 19042.487
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I'll put up a Google-docs spreadsheet of a song I've recently 'reverse arranged' in order to make notes on our band's cover of the song. I would like to see the spreadsheet very much. The most recent one I did was for a song called "This Is Amazing Grace" which is a pretty popular worship song right now. I can post that, or perhaps what might be more useful to you and the community would be to go through this exercise with a more well known song? I would be willing to do this even though it takes about an hour for a typically instrumented rock song. It's good practice. Every time I go through and do this with a song I learn something new. Would you be interested in a group exercise? You pick the song, I will do my version and put it aside, then walk through a live session with a Skype call or something, then compare the group notes with my held aside version. Here's a link to my Google Sheets (Had to convert it from Excel just now) for Bethel Worship's version of "This Is Amazing Grace" - mostly notes for doing this song with a modern worship band. Link to the YouTube song is included in the file. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ag83fKGHjw-6xi3p7C_tdhMuyOSSnAWkzTh7RTNXcaY/edit?usp=sharingThis is the first time I've made a file public in Google Docs, so let me know if the link works or not. I will probably write a blog post on this exercise, as I think doing this has made me a better band member as well as helped me to make arrangement decisions for my own songs.
Last edited by rockstar_not; 11/01/16 03:03 PM.
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How about we do a Tom Petty song - 2 of his big hits that I really liked were "I Won't Back Down", and "Free Fallin" - were they big up North too, eh ?
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David Snyder, thanks for opening my eyes to all the midis freely available with all parts pretty true to the original songs. I had no idea there were so many. There seem to be 2 choices to access these: 1.) and Ultimate Guitar Subscription - to TabPro http://plus.ultimate-guitar.com/tab-pro/?utm_source=UltimateGuitar&utm_medium=Header&utm_campaign=UG+Tab+Pro&utm_content=Main+Index2.) Guitar Pro subscription https://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index.php?pg=tabsThis gentleman did a review and seemed to prefer the GPro - as David suggested (though he shared a link to the Ultimate Guitar website). https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1597210With tech moving so fast - I completely missed the huge library of accurate midis available for such low cost. And imported and played in BB - that's the icing on the cake - to slice and dice them up - view and play those tracks separately, in combination, or with different volumes. I'm actually curious to know how they got all these midis together with such accuracy. I know there are books out there that have been transcribed and are sold as "authorized transcriptions", etc. - do they actually have a tool to scan these pages in and/or just generate the midis as the transcriptions are done in Sibelius or some similar program ? And I would bet there's something interesting going on with the copyright in that domain too lol
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How about we do a Tom Petty song - 2 of his big hits that I really liked were "I Won't Back Down", and "Free Fallin" - were they big up North too, eh ? OK - "Free Fallin'" it is. I pick that one over "I Won't Back Down" because I think it's got better application to this method; that is, it has more variety of 'parts' particularly to start the song and the new parts that get introduced are pretty stark and very clear when they occur. By the way, when you do this reverse arranging activity, it's best to listen via headphones. You'll hear how the mixing engineer/producer placed tracks on the sound stage much better than over speakers.
Last edited by rockstar_not; 11/01/16 04:47 PM.
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The Google Doc worked fine. I'm looking at it while listening to the song on YouTube from your link. It's a whole stage of analysis that I have never really bothered to do. Interesting and will be integrated into my own backing tracks creation as I'm feeling ready now to create closer copies of songs. Sitting here listening to Free Fallin'. I'm not very familiar with Tom Petty, but it seems very contemporary sounding given how long he's been around. Maybe we should try to do an analysis similar to yours and see what we come up with? 
Last edited by lambada; 11/01/16 08:07 PM.
Windows 10 Home 20H2 Build 19042.487
BIAB 2021 (Build 818)
Intel(R) Core(TM), i3-4160, CPU @3.60 GHz RAM 16 GB, 64 Bit X64-based processor
Zoom UAC-2 (USB 3 interface-built in midi)
VoiceLive 3 Extreme, Sputnik Valve Condenser Mic
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J*3
I am one musician that absolutely loves the song style filter and I use it everyday of life. I don't like using midi files and working with them. This is because I am actually trying NOT to sound like the original. What biab gives me in terms of feel, tempo and suggested styles is invaluable. I am busy working on a folk swing version of Greensleeves right now.
Then when I am done I can release a my own unique cover version of a song to iTunes rather than just a bad copy which does not sound as good as the original. +1 Joanne! Ian
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If anyone wants to cover a song, there are plenty of MIDI file vendors who sell cover version MIDI files, Tran Tracks, Midi Hits, BandTrax, Peter Solley, Geerdes and more. I found these with a Google search, so I can't tell you whether they are great or not, but I did listen to a couple of demo files, and they sound good. (I used to re-sell some of Tran's work back in the 1990s and he did a great job back then, so I'm sure he still does.)
This seems like it would get you a more accurate cover version of the song than BiaB would do.
I heard a local band do Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire" as a Reggae song. It went over great with the audience. If you want to do something like this, Band-in-a-Box is the tool to use.
We do Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" as a jazz swing tune, using zzjazz almost stock out of the box (only a few edits in a sequencer) and people really like that.
We do Jimmy Buffett's "A Pirate Looks At 40" and "Son Of A Son Of A Sailor" like a Caribbean band with a steel drum player, also with big help from BiaB, and people tell me they like them better than the Jimmy Buffett versions.
Band-in-a-Box is an extremely powerful tool if you want to re-imagine songs, if you want to do a note for note cover, there are better ways to do that. This is in no way a criticism of BiaB - I absolutely love BiaB and it is one of the most important tools in my musical tool box. But there are other tools as well. Different tools for different jobs.
When I do cover songs myself, I do them by adding a track at a time into a DAW or Sequencer. I do this for a few reasons (1) I can (2) by doing this I know the song inside and out (3) I can leave an instrument or two out to play live on stage (4) I can make subtle or drastic changes that I think would enhance the experience. But if I didn't have the skills to do them myself, I'd probably buy the MIDI sequence if I wanted a close cover.
Insights and incites by Notes
Last edited by Notes Norton; 11/02/16 01:05 AM.
Bob "Notes" Norton Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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A wee bit off topic.
Quote from Peter's thread
Instead, type the first 8 bars of the chord progression that you want for your song, and don't play the pre-prepared demo, press the PLAY button (after first selecting 4 bar preview. Then you will hear the style that this feature chose, along with the chords that you want.
Is this function available in Realband?
If not can I open a SEQ file in BiaB, or do I have to key in the chords from scratch?
Chris
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A wee bit off topic.
Quote from Peter's thread
Instead, type the first 8 bars of the chord progression that you want for your song, and don't play the pre-prepared demo, press the PLAY button (after first selecting 4 bar preview. Then you will hear the style that this feature chose, along with the chords that you want.
Is this function available in Realband?
If not can I open a SEQ file in BiaB, or do I have to key in the chords from scratch?
In realband, It isn't available from the stylepicker but you can do it in realband. In realband, you would choose the style that you want, and then exit the stylepicker, so that the style loads into realband . Then type in the chords for 8 bars, and set the song duration to 8 bars. Note that this only works if you have a blank song, because you'd be wiping out existing work. If you want to do it with an existing project, to prevent wiping it out you could save it prior to doing this.
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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The Google Doc worked fine. I'm looking at it while listening to the song on YouTube from your link. It's a whole stage of analysis that I have never really bothered to do. Interesting and will be integrated into my own backing tracks creation as I'm feeling ready now to create closer copies of songs. Sitting here listening to Free Fallin'. I'm not very familiar with Tom Petty, but it seems very contemporary sounding given how long he's been around. Maybe we should try to do an analysis similar to yours and see what we come up with? I have my analysis of Free Fallin' about 2/3 done. It does get tedious listening through the same song over and over, but this is also part of the discipline needed to make covers that sound authentic (if that is the goal).
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