PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Beginners Forum Simple (and perhaps dumb!?) question about styles...

I'm new to BiaB and I'm just trying to understand the basics. What actual effect does changing the style have in regards to RealTracks? Do different styles somehow generate the tracks differently, or will a particular RealTrack play essentially the same thing in all styles?

You may get a bit of controversy on this question, but my answer is you are correct in your assumption. Recordings just play what was recorded.

jdchess, Welcome to the forum!

Nobody outside PG Music knows for sure. I believe the answer is it depends if you are using Band-in-a-Box or RealBand.

I believe style selection and the chord chart strongly influences what section of a RealTrack gets chosen. I don't think style influences section selection as strongly in RealBand.

Again, I don't know for sure but that is the impression I have.

I have personally found that a style can sound drastically different over my chord progression than it does in comparison to the style demo. In many cases, a RealTrack sounds completely different between the demo and chord chart generation.

Charlie

I am not that proficient with BIAB or RB yet.
I discovered a number of things that do change a style in relation to the demo.
First bpm, change it and the tempo changes. depending on real track selection tempo it may sound wobbly or ducky, especially in some of the blues styles.
Perhaps compare the comparable BPM of the real track to the bpm range of the selected style.
Real drums, bass and organ are the main culprits.

Chord selection in my opinion also changes how a style changes. Open chords with no 6ths or dims create the basic canvass of the song. chord changes can be made as the tune develops.

Tip: Start chord sequences as simple as possible.
Select the relevant style and press "play using current chord sheet for song" as a preview to your chord sequence.
Note drum types and beats such as even 8 or even 16 or swing 8 and swing 16 can change the feel of a composition.

The choice makes song development exciting as a selected style or beat rhythm may generate a total unexpected and pleasing result.

Happy comping

Thank you guys for the replies. I really appreciate the information.

It does seem like using the same group of RealTracks/RealDrums in different styles, say Country vs. Jazz vs. Rock, generates essentially the same result.

Another question in the same vein...

Does the style choice greatly alter the generation of the same MIDI track (vs what it does for a RealTrack)?

Outside of grouping a particular set of instruments/tracks (MIDI or Real), what does style choice really alter?

BIAB has basically four engines for how the riffs you hear for each instrument are generated. There is an engine for traditional MIDI styles, a separate engine for super-MIDI styles, an engine for RealDrums, and for RealTracks.

MIDI Styles
MIDI styles are defined with various riffs for five tracks (traditionally defined as Drums, Bass, Piano, Guitar, and Strings; however, any instrument can appear on any track except for the drums, which must follow the channel 10 percussion standard for MIDI - you can have different drum kits, but there are no pitches associated with the MIDI notes, merely various percussion hits).

Very few styles have riffs up to their full capability; however, you can define up to 30 8-beat riffs, 30 4-beat riffs, 30 2-beat riffs, and 30 1-beat riffs for every "A" substyles and again the same for every "B" substyles (drums are a little different, but you get the idea).

Each of those riffs can be weights as to how often they play (1-8, with 9 being a special weighting that serves as a filter (or mask) for other requirements - such as only play on bar 3 of 4, or 7 of 8, of right before a fill, etc. The default is a weight of 5, so if all the riffs are set to 5, then they are played for the most part evenly distributed across the song.

What the engine does is looks ahead and see how long it is before the next chord. If there is at least 8 beats to the next chord, then it's going to pick a riff from the up-to-30 8-beat patterns. If there are none defined, it will drop down to the 4-beat patterns, etc. If it only need a 2-beat pattern, it will select from the available 2-beat patterns. If there are only 8-beat patterns defined, and you need a 4-beat pattern, it will use the first 4-beats of the 8-beat pattern in that case.

So you can see that mathematically, there can literally be thousands and thousands of possibilities for each chord. Just for 8-beat patterns, with 30 riffs among 5 instruments, you can potentially have 142506 possibilities. Likewise for the 4-beat patterns, etc.

Granted, many of the riffs among the 30 may very well be very similar with just a few note differences, so there will only be minor differences (obviously, if you are playing a style of music that calls for only hitting notes on the beat, then yes, you can change notes, but there will not be much rhythmic variance and the only differences between the riffs are the actual notes hit).

But, as you can see, within a single MIDI style, there are many, many possible variations.

It used to be that you could only have one MIDI style per song. Then they added the ability to changes styles in the middle of a song, so that effectively doubled the possibilities. Then later PGMusic added the capability to mix and match instrument definitions from other MIDI styles, which increased the options even more; however, the rules for how the engine selected which riffs to play remained constant across the styles.

RealDrums

RealDrums are audio files that are merely sliced and diced with the RealDrums engine. I believe that the number of variations you get is really dependent upon how long the recorded RealDrum file is. RealDrums also contain variations (such as brushes vs sticks, hihat vs ride cymbal, etc.)

You can even create your own RealDrums, which gives some insight into how they work. You have to conform to one of several templates when creating RealDrums:

• 1. 32_bars_of_drumming.txt
• 2. 32_bars_of_drumming_with_shots.txt
• 3. 32_bars_of_drumming_with_shots_two_endings.txt
• 4. 64_bars_of_drumming.txt
• 5. 64_bars_of_drumming_with_shots.txt
• 6. 64_bars_of_drumming_with_shots_two_endings.txt

And the instructions go on to define what needs to be played in the bars within that template (for example, count-in, postfills, fills, normal playing, etc.)

RealTracks

RealTracks, like RealDrums, are recorded audio, You cannot use RealTracks to play individual notes (unless you go into a DAW and slice and dice them yourself, but then you are just creating a sample set which won't necessarily sound any better than any other sample set, but I digress). The RealTracks follow a chord progression (and you can learn more about how this works by reading up on UserTracks, which work similarly). The RealTracks follow a chord progression template and the more chords you play, the less the RealTracks engine has to pitch shift the audio. The variations you get really depend upon the length of the resulting WAV file, from which the various riffs will be extracted to create the sound you get. There's not a lot of information about how the RealTracks (or UserTracks) engine decides which riffs to play, but generally, the more recorded material you have, the more riffs you have to choose from.

But, unlike MIDI, what you get is going to be based on the chord where the riff was played. With MIDI styles, it will create the chord from the notes of the chord using the riff defined in the style, so the MIDI styles are not chord dependent at all - all supported chords can be created from a MIDI style.

With RealTracks, however, (as I understand it) if your song has a C7sus chord in it, then the engine is going to look for a C7sus in the RealTracks file. If there is only one, that's the one it's going to use every time. If there are 10, then there are 10 to choose from. If there is no C7sus chord in the RT, then it's going to look for a sus7 chord close to the C (maybe a Bsus7 or C#sus7 or Bbsus7 or Dsus7) and use that as a pitch shifted chord. However, if it finds the chord you want, it's not going to look for other chord pitches to use - if you only have one, that's the one it's going to use. If it doesn't find any sus7 chords, then it's going to look for a sus chord and use it instead, so it will step down to a point. Sometimes you actually get nothing.

So, as long as your RealTrack is made up of playing many, many different chords, you'll have a lot to choose from, but a RealTrack can't create a chord that isn't there (unlike the MIDI style). Also, you need to have recorded riffs of varying lengths, so it knows whether to use a 1-beat, 2-beat, 4-beat, 8-beat, etc riff. Otherwise, if all you did was record long 8-beat riffs, if it has to chop the audio into 1- or 2-beat riffs, it's going to sound pretty choppy when you play it back.

More is better. That is why for UserTracks, you can actually create multiple files from which to choose from, to give it a greater flexibility to choose riffs for the chords you enter.

Super-MIDI Styles
I don't have a lot of information about how these are created and selected and PGMusic hasn't published it, but as I understand it, I suspect that the Super-MIDI tracks engine works kind of like a hybrid between the MIDI engine and the RealTracks engine.

Okay, I suspect that's more than you cared to know, but hopefully it made sense and helps.

If I have stated something in error, I hope PGMusic (or someone more knowledgeable) will offer correction, but that's how I understand it at this point.

john,
Thanks for the information.

Always great to understand a little more of what's going on under the hood.

Thank you Mr Ford. I had no idea what was going on the background. It treat BB like my car. If its keeps going I dont open the bonnet and look inside at the engine. If it stops I call Ghostb--- XX I put a post on the forum. lol
I just finished my first sgu using three realtracks and a realdrums. Its like having the guys in your front room. F.A.B.
WendyM

I would like to address the questions by jdchess, the original poster. You have received some terrific explanations of what is going on. It is my opinion that your conclusions are correct, that the same RealTrack will sound very much the same if played in another genre. What can fool you is that, when you combine different tracks, the one track can be perceived very differently depending on what else is played with it. Just solo the track and you'll get the real picture.

Another way to answer this question is to talk from the perspective of styles. Styles are only collections of RealTracks and/or MIDI tracks that make sense to the person who created the style. But you can substitute individual tracks from that pre-made style, and even save the result as your own name. Or you can go the other way: build your own unique style from a collection of tracks you assemble. And when you do that, the BIAB chosen style does not matter!

WendyM, although some of us have years or decades of experience with BIAB, we do not always know exactly how something works, either. Sometimes a few of us report problems to the company, but again, we are just fellow users.

PG Music has created a proprietary product and they have some company secrets. We users make our best guess sometimes, unless and until PG Music staff tell all of us the specific answer. Regularly, they do just that, and then we can assist others.

All this is fine. We support the company and their right to create something unique and profit from it. Our job is what the company founder, Peter Gannon, says in the signature for all his posts: "Have Fun!".

John and Matt,

Thank you both for the information and insight. It is greatly appreciated.

I too am a complete newbie having my BIAB for ONE WHOLE day and already enduring my 12th headache!!
Anyway not to bore you with too much of my personal dilemas............

I spent an hour or so going through many variations of the country styles and found one fitted the vocal melody to the chords I had in mind for my song.
Unfortunatley BIAB seems to have regenerated the style and its not now the same feel. I keep pressing the regenerate button and nothing seems to have that feel the first one did.

SO,

If I keep regenerating will that variation come around again?
Is there a certain number of generations to each style (if you get my drift)otherwise I may have to go through the 2000 + to return to where I was
How do I make BIAB not regenerate

PS Many Thanks to John & Matt for the 'inner workings' the goings on under the hood as it were of BIAB/RB
PPS
i'M NOT 100 % SURE but when selecting my styles I stored some in favourites, I then from that list, chose the one I thought most suitable. After BIAB re generated the style I didnt think it worked , hence my frustration and post above. However I think I am back to the original after going back into favourites and choosing the same style has brought it back to the same feel. (still with me anyone?)
Or
Maybe I have heard so many instruments and sounds going around in my head all day everything is begging to become muddled.

Conduct a TEST of this.

Start with any BB song that you have created and saved.

Observe the style. Lets say it's country. You know what the song sounds like in BB & RB,

Simply change that style to Reggae in BB and save it with a different name and then open it in RB and see what it sounds like. You will notice the changes immediately in BB, but open it in RB to see how RB treats it.

jdchess,

As our dear friend Mac would say: "The only stupid question is the one never asked!"

We are all in various stages of learning the software so we learn along with you as fellow users answer your questions so don't hesitate to ask. In 15 years on these PG forums, I have yet to see anyone flamed for asking a question.

There are users at every level of expertise in musicology who hang their egos at the door and willingly help others. Totally unlike some other sites.

True, we've had a few trolls and trouble-makers over the years but they generally don't last long. They can't confront the depth of knowledge found here. Also, the moderators do a superior job.

Donny

Yorkshireknight, what you are asking about, to not regenerate a track, is called Freeze Track. You can freeze one, many or all tracks. Also be aware there are two Play buttons. Play will not regenerate (unless you changed the song), and Gen/Play does.

About continuing to regenerate to get the exact same track you once liked, I think the answer is yes, but you'll need lots of patience. In RealBand, you can regenerate just a section of a track.

Thank you Matt. Also interesting about the part track generate, could be very useful.

I have experimented with several things and so I am becoming more aware of the capabilities of BIAB/RB and so can strat to enjoy it now I know a little more.

Knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing!