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I posted this over on the Tips and Tricks section, but it was suggested that I repost it here. I hope that's OK.
The last couple of songs I have tried to work with in the Audio Wizard have had some challenges that I hope someone can help me with. The wizard works fine, it is the songs themselves that have the challenges. The basic issue is that I keep running into songs that fall into a nice 4/4 pattern, for say 8 verses of 4 bars each, but end the final verse by stretching out the final bar to melodically emphasize the words of the song. This often amounts to adding something like another half measure or measure to the final verse of a series. Then the song chorus repeats from the beginning again. Th wizard works fine and identifies this as a change in tempo and just stretches this normal four beat (4/4) out and then switch back to the normal tempo on the start of each of these sequence. The problem is that the stretched area timing is not right. The places that the wizard chooses to place the beats are not correct. In reading the Biab docs, they advocate changing the time signature to match the actual beats. I tried this and it just seems to cause odd behavior for styles when you get back to Biab. When you change the time signature you can hear the "band" slowing down or speeding up when you do this. This might be what you want for some songs, but not in my case. In the real performance, the player is just elongating certain syllables for emphasize, not changing the timing of the song. In many ways this is like what a lot of people do at the ending of the song were you want to sustain a note at the end by holding it and emphasize it before fading out. The difference is that this is part of the chorus itself and the pattern repeats.
For my purposes, I want to create a very clean song, so I have been trying to avoid using the tempo map generated by the wizard and instead I am trying to capture the song timing in a generic way that does not need this. All in all the wizard is doing a fantastic job of analyzing the song, I just can't seem to get these odd cases back out into Biab in such a way that the style can deal with it properly. I suppose that this has been covered before in discussions about 5/4 timing and such, so I hope there is a great thread out there that covers this. I have not been able to find it though. Thanks for any help you can provide.
-Bill
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"so I have been trying to avoid using the tempo map generated by the wizard"
This may be something to try changing. Try using the tempo map the ACW generates. It may look complex, but it may smooth things out to the ear.
I don't think the realtracks are going to work well with the odd time signatures you end up with though. Same with styles. They weren't really designed with this in mind (as far as I know)
You are breaking ground here for a lot of people, so keep us posted on what tricks you find.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I just worked on another song and ACW did another great job of breaking it down. What I found was that the song worked best when I started out with 4/4 time signature then changed the first two verses to 5/4, the next 4 set to 4/4, and then repeated this sequence for the whole duration of the song. All the beats fall in the right places in ACW and the bars are correct. However when I go back to Biab now without using the tempo map, it sounds like Biab just ignores the 5/4 time signatures and sets everything to 4/4. If I use the tempo map, then everything sounds bad as the tempo shifts up and down.
Oh - I am sooo confused.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Since you can feel the song, have you ran thru the song in the ACW while tapping the F8 key on the first beat of each measure? This sets where 1 is in each measure; you can see the ACW adjusting in realtime.
Sometimes this can guide the ACW along in the tempo map, especially if the tempo changes quite a bit throughout the song. However, if it changes for only 1 beat, this will not solve the problem .. as that measure will be adjusted and not just the note. However, this may get you closer to being able to change the time sig for that one measure
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Yes - in this particular song the tempo is constant and I can see that the first two verses don't follow 4/4 timing. In order to get ACW to match up the very clear beats I changed the time signatures for the first couple of verses over to 5/4 and manually adjusted the positions of the bars on the blue lines and by listening to the song. After doing this for the first couple of verses, I could hear the song change to a new pattern that now followed 4/4 timing perfectly. In fact I did not even have to make any adjustments to the next four verses since they all matched perfectly up using the identified tempo. Then the song switches back to 5/4 again and the pattern repeats.
There may be other ways to deal with this thing, but the existing docs that I have read seemed to say that adjusting the time signature is the way to go work with songs that add partial measures and such. The trouble is that this works fine in ACW but I can't seem to get Biab to then do something useful this info. When I get back into Biab, I suspect now that I am support to only use certain styles that can make sense of this odd time signature switching. I don't see any styles that say "any time signature". Is that even possible?
Again - I want to emphasize that I am have success getting ACW to correctly match the rhythm of the song using a variety manual adjustments and changing time signatures. I am trying to stick to songs that don't actually change the tempo of the song as they go, but that's next on my agenda and will further complicate things I am sure.
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What is the name of the song? I use the ACW as a guide here, not for tempo map etc . . . Once I get the chords, I send to Biab and layout the song. Biab will not generate a perfect match of the original, so I choose a compatible style to get the beat,shots & holds etc... Inserting a 2/4 bar here and there should NOT affect the tempo, even for holds etc . . . You probably need to place the correct 2/4 bars where needed and it should line up with the original tempo. Don't forget to set the next bar back to 4/4 though  Trax
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I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the reason BIAB ignores the 5/4 time is because BIAB doesn't support 5/4 time. There's no such thing as a 5/4 bar in BIAB. It (just like all compound time signatures) is merely simulated (sound-wise) within either a 4/4 or 3/4 bar, or some combination thereof.
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 2x2TB, 1x4TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 2x1.5TB, 2x2TB, 1x4TB SATA BB2025/UMC404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/MixBus/Notion/Finale/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com
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Inside BIAB we have to do 5/4 as one bar of three followed by one bar of two -- or the inverse, one bar of two followed by one bar of three.
You have to invoke that bar setting like that at every bar.
The ACW is likely sending the bar tempo and chord info in one bar, though.
Don't think that's going to work at this point in time. Not automatically anyway.
--Mac
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Its not the ACW that is the problem then..
try it in RB, at least you can have 5/4 bars in RB ...
you won't get notation, but you can have the odd times sigs.
..and no, I don't know of any styles that will work with odd time sigs..
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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OK - this is interesting. I had not idea that RB had this ability. Still -- how do RB deal with the styles issue? Based on what you all have been saying, most every style is usless when you try to use odd time signatures. Are you aware of an example song that I could look at this does this?
-Bill
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I don't know of any styles that work in odd times, especially if the time signature keeps changing
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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OK - I was thinking of trying that anyway - so thanks for the hint. I need to go back through ACW and actually break my 5/4 bars down into a 3/4 and 2/4 or the inverse and then maybe Biab will be happier when I get back.
>You have to invoke that bar setting like that at every bar.
Oh - I will still need to fix the result up directly in Biab rather then having it use what I did in ACW?
>The ACW is likely sending the bar tempo and chord info in one bar, though.
Could you elaborate on this comment? Do you have any references on how exactly ACW communicates its results back to BiaB. You seem to be saying that it comes back in the first bar, or something like that (when not using the tempo map). I would really love to know how this work both with and without the tempo map being used.
PS: The other thing I am curious about is the "Notes" data. I have seen what looks like really good results in the Notes data and was hoping to see this come back into Biab in a usable form - like in the bass track.
-Bill
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There are indeed some Odd Time Signature Styles, just look at the top of the Stylepicker list after hitting ALL (MIDI) on the LH side.
However, they don't notate correctly.
--Mac
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Quote:
<snip> Once I get the chords, I send to Biab and layout the song. <snip>
Trax
How do you send chords from RB to BIAB? I've never been able to move songs in that direction
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He was referring to moving the output of ACW back to Biab, not RB to Biab. There is no way I have seen to move RB SEQ back to Biab.
-Bill
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