PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows real tracks vs midi tracks & styles

It seems to me that when you use a real track instrument to replace one of the biab tracks you loose any real control over the part. It also seems to me that if I use biab to create a track I and convert to midi I can change notes, velocity and other aspects of notes that I can't so with the real track. I happen to still be very happy with using external sound units that have excellent sound and messing with those tracks until I get what I want. It also seems that when I replace a biab style track with a reaI track that the style is always changed. The real track doesn't play the same as the style. I realize that many of you here are very excited with the real tracks and the direction that PG Music has gone with them and I have no problem with that, BUT does this mean we have seen the last of the development of new styles? It seemed that the improvements to 2009 and 2009.5 where all real track based.

I used to be really excited whenever a new soft synth came out until I began to realize that none of them ever seemed to sound as good the real out board units did. I wonder if any one else out there has some thoughts on this. Do you really like the soft synths and samplers or do you think they are things of the past to be replaced totally by the real tracks?

I would bet more styles will come as time goes on, but RTs are the focus now as they are so cutting edge. One can always make any style they want with the stylemaker. You are right notes can't be changed with Rts, but once you get the midi tracks down, they make really nice add on tracks the make the song sound very, well .... Real.

I am sure that development of both sides of the program will continue, and until also do not count out the styles you can get from Bob Nortons site, they are quite good.

I'm all for the RT focus

While I really like the Realtracks, I also agree with Earl. Midi has an awful lot to offer that RTs do not. As long as electronic instruments are around, I'd imagine that midi will be sitting in the passenger seat.

I have a feeling that that the RT has little to do with the style aside from the feel and tempo. You can put an Acoustic Swing Bass 110 in any style matching feel and tempo and you will hear the same phrases. I don't think the underlying Midi notes have anything to do with the RT phrase created. With Midi, many styles have quite different phrasing and it's easy to add or modify more. RTs are restricted to the phrases actually recorded.

I've heard some pretty good soft synths, especially in the Soundfont arena. But I don't think they compare to a halfway decent hard synth. Some of the demos I've heard with the more expensive softsynths such as Garritan are very impressive. Will these be replaced by RTs? I doubt it. At my gigs I use BIAB on my laptop connected to my keyboard for Midi sounds (Bass and guitar). The sounds are far superior to my softsynths. Also, much less load on the laptop.

One day, I hope to be completely weaned off needing my laptop at gigs. I'm currenly replacing Midi bass with RT Bass in my arrangements. With the exception of a few Midi notes inserted for Shots and Holds, it is moving along very well. Once completed, I'll Render the songs to MP3 and use my MP3 player. I'll probably still have the laptop in the car just in case.

R

Well, I'm just an amateur, but the Ketron SD2 is far superior to the soft synth's that I have. Of course, I can't make it sound like Mac does, but I'm very pleased with what even a dumb bozo like me can do with it. I was very excited about real tracks when I first got some. They have a nice sound, but I use the Ketron more than the real tracks now. I'm not saying that midi is better or worse than real tracks. These are all tools that we can all use as needed.

Stan

Personally, I wouldn't be without the RTs and I am delighted that PG came up with a way for us to get Real musicians on our tracks

It goes to show just how flexable BIAB and RB for that matter are. Both the midi and the RT, and Rd development are interesting, and useful. I use a combo of both, but currently far more midi with softsynths. I even find GM synths like TTS to sound great in a live situation, especially with background noise, and PA renderings. I hope to try a ketron someday soon, and see just how good it can sound.

I'm with FirstBassman on the subject, a good dialogue on this kind of subject is what makes this forum so helpful.

I agree with the Ketron remarks, it's a gem. Sometimes on tunes one realtrack dialed into the background does an illusion, making the whole thing sound better.

Over the years I've heard lots of groups with midi in the mix, even groups of 5 guys and an Atari they used are still going strong.

Those beer drinkers in the audience wouldn't know a cheesy midi sound from having a pro on stage running the same riff. At the end of they day some really old cheesy midi thing comes on the radio and my Mom is gushing over it.

Too many of use become far to critical of the real thing, and when you get to the gig the guy is trying to pick up the girl, and two guys are talking about pickups, and some women are discussing their husband, and even if you think 4 or 5 people are there to actually listen, they too start on about something.

The only way that changes is when they start booking you into bigger venues, and the techs mess with your gear, and they bring in ringers and arrangers and you lose control over the whole thing.

Usually the most important thing is how you fit into the equation. I get asked back a lot, just me, their piano, and a big briefcase of books. Read the mood and select the songs from there.

Earl, that was very well stated and you must have been reading my mind when you wrote it, as I also like midi over RTs. That’s not to say I’m against RT’s. I have used a few of them in the past and will probably use some in the future but I find midi much more useful for me. RT’s are a specially tool for me and not a bread-and-butter tool.

I use some old hardware synths and I have many soft-synths and one sampler, Kontakt. I like soft-synths/samplers as they can be a good emulation of the hardware synths at a fraction of the cost.

I’m also concerned about RT’s being the main thrust in PG Music’s development, but I see that as a very good business decision. They have developed a product that many people really while not taking anything away from us midi users. Selling RT’s could become the main thrust in PG Music. Take a tenor sax for example. Think about how many ways it can be played and how many tones it can produce. Now multiply those factors by the number of sample sets needed to cover all of the tempos. You would have many of tenor sax RT sets, each sold separately, to cover everything.

I would like more midi styles also. I have asked Santa for some of Note Norton’s styles. But I modify just about every style in Sonar so getting the perfect style isn’t necessary for me.

Thanx for starting this topic.

Because I'm a performer...basically a singer of bistro-type songs, I've always relied on gigs to "lean on" dependable hardware...real synths like the Yamaha Motif ES-88, Triton, Karma, EPS+, Yamaha or Roland keboard synth/arrangers...even still depending on my ol' M1+ keyboard, with all the accompanying memory cards for whatever jazz or ethnic gig you may stumble upon!!

Until Real Band, I never much got interested in all the composing or midi features of BIAB whether in the realm of Analog or midi output.

My midi interest (except in Studio recordings, of course), was to "controller purposes" relating to the live background "action of hardware"--- sampled instruments, for the most part, on chips embeded within the musical hardware. Of course some of those "hardware workstation keyboard synths" are also very dependable, as well as adept at "outputting" their own great personally created/sampled sounds...!

But, as I get more and more into the very real sound "replicated" in Real Band, of real good real musicians, I find the product much more attractive...damn attractive, these days. Let me swing ... not compose...EXCEPT if I'm taking a solo or extended motif (no pun intended).

Give me a quiet gig where I can just do basically my "thing", which is the songs other people wrote...Like Sammy Kahn, Gershwin, et al. Because I'm rooted deeply in the esoceric world of jazz and what fabulous tunes and arrangement derived from their experiences and talented composing/orchestrations...

I have always...since my Dixieland days...when most everything was based on improvisation-on-a-theme....been most happy either being in the middle of a group...or, better, off on a stage by myself...Interpreting and Coalescing with the "jazz vibe" of the moment....whether "real" or real, hardware or software-based, and now with software (MP3) generated REAL SOUNDING music backing that jells so well as a "Real Band" concept!

http://www.thegigbaby.com

"Make new friends, but keep the old."


"One is silver and the other is gold..."


I noted that some people were declaring the demise of MIDI when RealTracks first came out.

Don't know why folks seem to jump to such conclusions, but they do.

I personally expect PGMusic to continue to release new MIDI based styles in the future.

I also expect to see more *combination* MIDI with RealTracks styles to come around, too. To date, we've mostly seen the use of older PGMusic MIDI styles being combined with RealTracks to create a "new" style, but I think that is because PGMusic already has so many MIDI only styles (My current Stylepicker shows the count is up to 1,753, which includes some that I've created or found, but the majority of those are PGMusic MIDI styles...).

MIDI is often misunderstood.

This is partially due to the proliferation of cheap GM MIDI synth solutions, designed for home computer usage and the like, price driven by market.

It is also due to musicians who come to the world of MIDI with expectations of Instant Gratification and when such does not appear to be the case, they prefer complaints to good old fashioned practice, study, equipment upgrades and elbow grease (hard work).

It is interesting to note that we never see someone who just bought their first guitar voicing a complaint that the thing doesn't sound like their favorite artist. In the case of every other musical instrument, it is understood that mastery takes time, discipline, learning, a teacher (for those we *really* want to decrease the time curve anyway) and so many other aspects.

But for MIDI, the expectation is not the same at all.

The same people that knock MIDI as being cheezy sounding likely don't realize how many places they hear MIDI music every day. Movies. Television. Commercials. Jingles. Popular Songs.

I've worked with some consummate MIDI pros in studios, people who show up with rack upon rack of MIDI based synths, keyboard controllers, guitar controllers, EVI and EWI controllers, custom sample banks, you name it.

Experts in their craft, knowledgeable in several differing fields, able to layer patches in ways that sometimes defy conventional wisdom in order to come up with a sound that is much more than its composite parts would seem to indicate, the person who is first call MIDIOT is almost always a very qualified musician on an acoustic instrument or two, with background in a wide variety of performance genre, keen ears, ability to sight read notes that look like a fly crapped on the ledger lines, and do it without an instrument present, no less.

Then there are the true synthesists, who hire out to do the next-to-impossible on a daily basis. These folks are often called upon to literally create a sound for the composer/arranger with nothing more to go on than a few notes on the staff along with a written description of what that composer/arranger thinks that the sound should "sound like". They literally *sculpt* the sound in realtime during the play-throughs, responding to verbal descriptions from bandleaders that defy belief. "That's too cold, Mike!" (Um, should I turn the thermostat up?) or, "Not 'alien' enough!" (Close Encounter of the 10th Kind, maybe?) -- and usually manage to make him or her smile before the take.

I was recently on a Jingle date where the request was for me to come up with a Piano patch that "sounds like a Rhodes Grand Piano". Whatever That might be. Problem was solved in the third or fourth attempt by layering the Yamaha W5 tiney Rhodes sound with the Ketron SD4's mellow Stereo Grand Piano sound, but combining the audio output of the two through two separate MoogerFooger filters adjusted such that the attack of the Rhodes synth's ADSR was slow and the sustain of the Grand Piano synth's ADSR was long. Weird, "paddy" kind of sound that wouldn't work on fast passages. Also fed the stereo result from that through a Leslie simulator set to a slower-than-chorale speed, for spaciality. i doubt if the sound obtained was exactly what the director had in mind originally, but in the end it worked.

Sometimes the job is to be more of a mediator than a musician.

Envoice sent.


--Mac

Let me add this to Mac's excellent post.

I think MIDI gets a bad reputation from amateur musicians for 3 reasons:

1. MIDI has the ability to recreate the nuances of a live performance using the continuous controllers, but most beginners do not know about the cc's nor do they know how to use them.
   
2. Cheezy MIDI synths on computer sound cards. Computer manufacturing is a cutthroat business. The major manufacturers go with very small profit margins per unit sold. So they save wherever they can. Since pro musicians are a very small group of computer users, one way to save a buck is to put a cheap MIDI synth on the computer's sound card. They will let the WAV sounds come in with good fidelity, because that is what most people use, but the MIDI sounds are a place to save a few bucks. And a few bucks times a few hundred thousand computers adds up.
   
3. Quantization and/or step-entering. Too many amateurs step enter or quantize the music into a MIDI sequencer because they are not experienced enough to be able to play the music into the sequencer in real time. The result is something robotic with no life in it.

But a good musician welcomes MIDI because he/she knows the extraordinary capabilities that are possible with that system.

Just about every synthesizer made since the DX7 days uses MIDI, either internally between the keys and the sound module or externally. You hear MIDI instrument (yes, even MIDI drums) every day on CD's, TV shows, Radio ads, and just about every medium where modern music is created. I've watched movies and in the extras the composer explained how the entire movie soundtrack was made with synthesizers (any pro can see he meant MIDI as he demonstrated the technique). Much of the music made with MIDI would be impossible to recreate with traditional acoustic or acoustic-electric instruments.

I'm not saying that MIDI is superior to acoustic and acoustic-electric instruments, but it definitely is not inferior either. They each have their strong and weak points.

Once again, I am not dissing PG Music and the RT's. I think PG has done a fantastic job with them and there is nothing wrong with anyone who prefers RTs. But for me, I like the flexibility of being able to transform a very good BiaB song into something much better, and I can only do that with MIDI.

Music is not only about tone, although tone is important. But good tone is subjective and personal.

Take saxophone tone (it's my first instrument). Is good sax tone Stan Getz? John Coltrane? Stanley Turrentine? Clarence Clemmons? Dexter Gordon? Junior Walker? Joe Henderson? King Curtis? There is quite a difference.

Play Getz and Coltrane to an uneducated ear and they probably wouldn't think those two people are even playing the same instrument. And your audience consists of uneducated ears.

On the other hand, the audience does understand expression, song specific licks, crescendos, diminuendos, accelerandos, ritardandos, holds, shots, kicks, and so many of the things that one cannot do with RTs (yet).

IMHO the audience is better served by compromising tone a bit to the musician (since each audience member probably has a different opinion as to what is great tone) and using the expressive devices available by exporting the file to MIDI and "doctoring" it up.

My backing tracks have been featured on MTV, CBS, ABC, NBC, commercial CDs, advertisements, on cruise ships, in 5 star hotels, and have helped Leilani and I to work steadily for the past 14 years at rates higher than most if not all of the other duos in the area. If you are interested in reading how I create and use my backing tracks, go to: http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html

So it always irks me when I hear people dis MIDI files or MIDI sounds, because they have either a lame MIDI sound card synth or don't know how to fully use the expressive capabilities of MIDI.

There is more than one "right way" to make music, and MIDI is definitely one of the right ways to do it.

So for all the people who prefer MIDI styles, I will continue to make them as long as you care to continue purchasing them. I won't abandon you unless you all abandon me.

For those who prefer RT's, enjoy the great job PG has done with them.

Notes

I agree with the Earl, the OP. Realtracks are too much of a problem for me. They just take up
too much drive space, and way too much time loading. I bought the special USB hard drive, and its been less than underwhelming. It stopped working. I spent "a lot" of time on it, over an hour. That's a lot of time. Did not try working with pgmusic tech support, and yeah, maybe they'd have a solution. But it would definitely take more time.

pgmusic is clearly not the only software on my PC. I'm not going to dedicate a PC to a program (though I did have a hard drive dedicated).

Sometimes less is more. The most valuable feature for any program is to run at any time without problems. Once MIDI is set up BIAB has worked fine for me. Can't say the same about Realtracks.

To me, it seems that Realtracks is aiming to "solve" a totally different need, with very different trade offs. If I'm looking for hi fidelity, I use Sonar - or one could use pg's Protracks. If I want "intelligent" transposition, practise, etc. etc. I use BIAB. But I'm not likely to pay more money for another bundle which includes realtracks. Got to really target my music expenditures.

Of course, Realtracks are apparrantly great for some people - to each their own.