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Styles versus Tracks

In BIAB, you can have up to five automatically generated tracks, with each track representing one instrument you might find in a band. By legacy naming convention, these are called Bass, Piano, Drums, Guitar, and Strings, although the instruments found on those tracks do not have to be those instruments (in other words, you can have a guitar on the Piano track, which can lead to confusion, but that's a discussion for another day).

Each of the tracks can be either MIDI or Audio, or some combination of MIDI and Audio. Originally, BIAB was a MIDI only application. In order to generate the tracks, you would use the StyleMaker to define the various riffs/phrases/rhythms/notes/volumes/panning/instrument for each of the five tracks. You would then save this definition into a "bundle" (for lack of a better word) called a "style". When you click Generate, BIAB algorithmically figures out an accompaniment part for each of the tracks based on the definitions defined in the StyleMaker.

Eventually, BIAB added a new concept called RealTracks. These are pre-recorded audio phrases that can be sliced and diced and transposed by the RealTrack engine to create an accompaniment part based on that pre-recorded instrument. They are called RealTracks, because Real Musicians recorded them on real instruments (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, violin, trumpet, etc).

When RealTracks first came out, there were only three instruments (we've come a long way since then). You would select one of the five auto-accompaniment tracks and instead of the auto-generated phrase from the MIDI style being played, the RealTrack would play on that track instead, also following your chord progression just as the MIDI tracks do. So you had hybrid of MIDI and RealTrack audio.

As time went on and more and more RealTracks were developed, BIAB started finding various RealTracks that worked well together (this bass, that guitar, a certain sax sound, etc) and as with the original MIDI styles, bundled them together as a RealStyle. A RealStyle just means that all the underlying tracks are RealTracks. But for the RealStyles to properly play, you have to also have all the underlying RealTracks that are referenced by that RealStyle (this is different from the MIDI style, in that all the instrument definitions were defined in the MIDI Style file, and as long as you had an appropriate General MIDI synth available, you could hear all those instruments and generated tracks).

BIAB also has "Styles with RealTracks", which are styles that contain a mix of MIDI tracks and RealTracks.

By convention, RealStyle file names all begin with an underscore (_)and "Styles with RealTracks" file names begin with the equals sign (=). You can also have "Styles with RealDrums", which are MIDI styles that have RealDrums substituted for the MIDI drum tracks. Those file names begin with a hyphen (-).

There are also "Super MIDI Tracks", which are a variation of MIDI tracks, but are singular separate tracks (much like RealTracks are), but can also be included in a style definition. Super MIDI tracks information are just referenced by the style file (and played back using a different engine than standard MIDI tracks).

So, if you only have style files (which are indicated with a .STY extension, and are different than, for example, the .STY files you get with Yamaha digital keyboards), for any style files that rely on RealTracks, Super MIDI Tracks, or RealDrums, you have to also have those Real and Super tracks available before you can play them properly.

When you by Style files, you are not buying the underlying RealTracks. That's why PGMusic says you need to have either the UltraPak or the AudiophilePak to use the new XTRA styles, since those are the BIAB versions that come with "ALL the styles" (another discussion I won't go into here).

General MIDI Tracks --> defined (not referenced) according to the five available tracks in a style file (fully self contained, ready to play with a General MIDI synth).

RealTracks --> referenced by one or more of the available tracks in a style file, but require the RealTrack to be available in order to hear the style as intended.

RealDrums --> referenced by the drum track in a style file, but require the RealDrum to be available in order to hear the style as intended.

Super MIDI Tracks - referenced by one or more of the available tracks in a style file, but require the Super MIDI Track to be available in order to hear the style as intended. These are processed by a different engine than general MIDI tracks, but can be played back by the same synth (or a different synth).

Clear as mud?