BIAB Midi for Beginners Lesson 1

By David Snyder

Lesson 1

Using the midi files created by Band in a Box demos may be the best way for beginners to tip toe into the world of midi, which can get exceedingly complex real fast.

Misconceptions

A common misconception of Midi is that it sounds “cheesy.” Midi does not sound cheesy. Midi is just computer code. The software you are playing it back through might sound cheesy, but if these notes are played back through the right instruments and samples hosted by a solid VST, they can sound gorgeous.

The default midi player in Real Band is Coyote, which is not all that bad actually. Real Band also comes with Sample Tank, which has some pretty decent sounds.

Those who become enamored of midi and want to do orchestral scores will eventually want to get a serious VST and Sample library such as Kontakt or Garritan Personal Orchestra, or any of the other Garritan Libraries (such as Jazz and Big Band.) But that is for later.

Getting Started

For now let’s use a simple exercise to see what midi can do, and learn about a few “curveballs” that might drive you made if you won’t know about them.

1.) For the exercise, load Band in a Box and under style picker, search for Dramatic Orchestra, select load demo, play it and listen to it. Pretty cool. In the chorus, a Timpani and snare come in. This is an all purpose good template to use for scoring. These little flourishes are nice.

I have also put this in my BIAB Drop Box.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y4ujowwpqh5y42t/AABnCcRP8YYL6ydXzoebe2Nza?dl=0

2.) Now save this file to your desktop with a name like “My Orchestra Masterpiece.”

3.) Just listen to it. It is an interesting little piece to study.

Click on preferences Icon wheel, click on channels and look at channels to see what midi channels the parts are playing on. This is an important piece of the puzzle to study.

For the time being just concentrate on this alone.

It may not sound stupendous, just yet, but if you click the link below, you will get a flavor of what it sounds like when you use other midi instruments to play these parts.

https://soundcloud.com/david-snyder-mixing-lab/dramatic-orchestra-demo

MIDI is So Awesome

By now you have probably realized that in addition to Real Tacks BIAB has a gazillion midi styles you can use to generate string parts for your songs.

That is, you don’t have to just rely on the string sections in Real Tracks for your songs, you can create your own beds and entire layered concepts using midi from thousands of midi styles that use strings.

Saving Your BIAB Midi Tracks as a Midi File

To save this entire file as a Midi file, just go to the Midi button on the tool bar and click, then save file to disk. (Desktop or another location.)

If you solo one of the tracks it will only export that part as midi, which comes in handy later. BUT, remember to take note of which CHANNEL this is on, if you export a single track.

That will be important later.

And as we will find in the next lesson (coming soon), it is actually easier to work with midi in Real Band.

That should be enough for the next few days.

Resources

The BIAB File and RB file of this demo are both in drop box.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y4ujowwpqh5y42t/AABnCcRP8YYL6ydXzoebe2Nza?dl=0

This DEMO Using Samples in from Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 (Available from PG Music as third party software or from other outlets .)

https://soundcloud.com/david-snyder-mixing-lab/dramatic-orchestra-demo

This lesson is also in drop box.


Attached Files (Click to download or enlarge) (Only available when you are logged in)
Dramatic Orchestra.png (311.04 KB, 157 downloads)
Export as Midi_File on Disk.png (287.36 KB, 157 downloads)
David Snyder
Songwriter/Renaissance Man
Studio + Fingers

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