PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist Multi Track Real Tracks

The medley feature allows about 10 RealTracks per track, so you could have up to 70 RealTracks at once using the 7 tracks.
- this wouldn't use that much memory, because the 70 tracks are never in memory at the same time, they just get merged into the 7 tracks.
- if there was a bottleneck, it is that playback is started right away and the tracks are being generated in the background. If the song was playing faster than tha background process you would hear dropouts. The solution there is to press song settings and disable fast generation for this song. Doing this it will take longer to generate this song before the music starts but once it starts it's fully generated and will play smoothly.

http://www.screentogif.com/ just do short ones under 2meg, set fps to about 6.

Another way to avoid memory issues is to render the mix to audio and import that audio and move the audio from the audio track to another track as a Performance Track. A Performance Track does not regenerate so at that point and you can then add an additional 60 RealTracks to the remaining 6 tracks if you desire, repeat the render to audio and again transfer it from audio track to a Performance Track and continue on and on with no loss of quality...

Thanks Pipeline. I'll give that software a look.

Well, I've played with the program Pipeline suggested and it works great. I can create screen grab gif files. I haven't been able to get them to all show up in a post... Only one screenshot will post and the others show as downloadable links. Not been able to create a workable workflow post yet.

I'll attempt to explain the workflow better.

1. create a song using the first 7 tracks, a style, any RT or midi changes, mix, pan, set volumes and plug ins, etc.

2. Render your mix to audio and note where it saves to.

3. Import the rendered track. It imports to the Audio Track. The default import settings should be correct to import the audio so it syncs with the song.

3. Move the Audio Track to a Performance Track. <Audio/Move Audio to Performance Track>
You can choose any track. I usually start at the top with the Bass Track, but any track will do except Drums.

4. At this point I normally mute the Drums track and set the Drums Track volume to 0.
The Performance Track does not regenerate so I am free to change Style, Realtracks, midi tracks, the chord chart and other parameters without effecting the Performance Track. So here I will use the remaining six tracks (you can use the Audio Track or Drums Track if needed) and repeat step two. You do not have to mute the Performance Track, but if you don't it is included with the mix you are making at this point. So if this is a far as you need to bounce tracks, include the PT and Render your final mix. If you want to continue to add tracks and instruments, you need to mute the PT.

5. Mix and Render the additional change mix you've created.

5. Import this mix and move it to another Performance Track. You now have two Performance tracks and seven available tracks (less Drums Track but including the Audio Track if you are recording or importing Audio) My Mixer normally shows PT tracks on the Bass and Piano track.

6. If you fill all seven tracks with Performance Track mixes. You can Render this mix to Audio, import it and have 7 tracks to replace existing performance tracks with new RealTracks, Midi or Super Midi and even live or imported audio -

Once you have rendered a mix to audio and then import the audio back into BIAB Audio Track, all of the other mixer tracks are available to have the existing instrument replaced with a new instrument or instruments. Each track can have up to 10 instrument changes so this process allows a mix to contain hundreds of instrument changes, crossfades between instruments on dozens of tracks.

The BIAB Mixer works like the old style 8 track recorders and the bounce technique is old school recording with the benefit of being digital and having digital storage, you have unlimited instruments and track saving capabilities.

While my example takes bouncing to the extreme, that's just for demonstration. You may never want to put 10 instruments on a track but if you put two on a track and then create a 2nd track with the same instruments swapping places, a fiddle and guitar on track one, then, the same instruments place on the 2nd track guitar and fiddle, using panning, volume changes and F5 muting - you can create very interesting and realistic crossfades between the two.

This doesn't replace a DAW but I hope to show that BIAB is much more versitile and a creative tool than some my have been aware of.

I hope this explanation is clearer as a workflow process.

I have included a gif to show how I move my imported audio to a Performance Track. Thanks to Pipeline for the software suggestion.

To get them to show in the post just right click on the link > Copy Link Location/Shortcut > Edit Post > Then click Enter Image button above.
you can put that in the spoiler tag so it don't load/show unless you click:




or show all the time without the spoiler,
I think it's just an old thing for bandwidth usage, not loading large images with every view.

you can paste the image link in the Link button above to give
an Open in New Tab full screen view with bold tag on the link text.



View Full Screen

Thanks Pipeline. I'll follow these instructions in future posts.

Charlie

Very informative, Pipeline! Thank you!

Charlie,

This looks like it was a pretty good Christmas!



It's an excellent glimpse into the past.

All the best,
Noel

Thanks Noel. Thinking of the past, the tape recorder mic looks like a carbon mic similar to what would be found in an old telephone. The recorder was likely intended and optimized for voice dictation and not music.....

Such tech details would have never crossed my mind back in those days... Apparently, neither would a hair brush!

Charlie

I've been using BIAB since the 2011 version and have never been aware of this capability. Thanks a bunch, Charlie - gonna have to play around with this as soon as my wife gets well (just came home from the hospital). Appreciate you putting this information out there!

Thanks again and Merry Christmas.

Alan

Sorry to hear Ms. Di has been sick. Glad she is home and you are there taking care of her. Sending thoughts and prayers.

When you do get a chance to experiment with multi tracks, you'll hopefully find it as enjoyable as I do. It applies old school multitrack principles to the BIAB program. There are several other recent threads you may enjoy reviewing where I go into more detail of some of the procedures and features to get the most out of the technique. I think most are in the Recording and Beginners Forums.

Look for threads starting with "How many Tracks..."; Tricks of the trade; (Solved) Move Audio....

I've probably been a bit too vocal promoting this feature so I'll leave you to your research and experimenting. If you have any issues, feel free to ask and I'll be happy to reply.

Thank you Peter for your advice. I mainly want to use it switch between different instruments like a funk bass in the verse and then a pop bass in the chorus. I really wish you could do this with the drum track as well and be able to switch to different drum styles rather than different variations of the drum track, like going from a bossa nova drum to a swing jazz drum.

Dr. Gannon's post indicates the medley feature is available in both the PC Version and MAC version of BIAB. If that is the case, and you can create your own RealTrack Medleys in the PC version, so I will assume it is the same for MAC users.

To create a custom RT medley in a PC, open Bar Settings and Select the RealTrack Button to choose any RealTrack to be added or replaced at any bar.

To create a custom Real Drum medley in a PC, open Bar Settings and Select the RealDrum Button to choose any RealDrum kit in any style to be added or replaced at any bar.

Replacing drums should work similarly in MACs.