PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows If a style is all RealTracks can I add a midi track?

Hi Bob, glad you solved your issue but for future reference when you may need the choice of either finding a style with strings (which is what you want) or a preset, let me explain a safe way to include midi tracks with your RealTracks projects. I'm sure there are many others that face the same difficulties trying to mix midi and RealTracks with their project as you did with this project you're working on. I have and it seems Fiddler has also in the past. It's more fun to fiddle with music (pun intended Fiddler than to deal with frustration.

This technique is nothing new but rather an evolution over time for me as I slowly put together snippets of conversations from here on the forum and elsewhere with my knowledge of multitrack recording. There may be hundreds of thousands of BIAB users already using this technique but I haven't seen it discussed in any depth in the forums and don't see much evidence of its use in the Users Showcase. Forgive me if I'm wrong. It will either be 10 minutes you'll never get back or it will change the way you make music with BIAB.

The process steps are simple but it's not an easy thing to do because to get the best results from it, you must know at the beginning for the most part, what results you want to get. In other words, you need to have an idea what you want your song to sound like in the end because you have to create a pathway (construct your instrumentation) that is clear and where instruments are complimentary where they are supposed to be and contrasting where they are supposed to be and finally each instrument can be clearly heard and has its space in the mix with panning and volume and Fx in the final version of the mix. The good news is because of the digital world of BIAB, the process is completely non-destructive.

Don't be put off by this method because I'm describing it to be more complex than it has to be. I describe it that way to make the point that you can use this method to make very complex songs that have dozens of tracks with dozens of instruments and special effects all from within BIAB without need of a DAW. The analogy is I'm giving you the steps to walk to a door, turn the knob and open the door. What happens once you cross the threshold, is limited only by your imagination.

In this case I'll use your project as an example and give you the steps to quickly, safely and non-destructively add midi tracks to your project mix.

I'll be using your current project as the foundation. In this example, it appears your song consists of two guitars with strings added to verse two. I'll assume you have correctly leveled and balanced the three tracks using volume and panning and applied the appropriate FX's. Your song could be finished at this point but let's take further. For clarity, the two guitars are panned + and - 20 on the scale and the RT strings are -35

1. Name and save this project

2. Render the audio mix

3. Locate and import the audio mix

4. Do Save As of the mix with the audio imported - You are now working with a new project and your initial project is safely saved.
You may or may not have to sync the audio with Bar One but you do that if necessary by opening the Audio Edit Window and Right Clicking to access the steps.

5. With the tracks synced, open the StylePicker

6. Filter to match your search for the current project: ie- POP,4/4, Ev8, 95, MIDI. Alternately, if you are doing a cover, you may want to search for the song
title. You can alter these search parameters to get the appropriate amount of Styles you want to work with. I rarely use the Category at first unless the
search results have too many in the list. Then I redo the search using different categories one at a time. In the upper box for this project, I would also
limit my search to 'Strings' since I'm searching for that particular instrument. I would leave Category blank in my initial search.

My BIAB version has 6,762 Styles that includes some Norton Third Party Styles. Filtered for Strings, Category blank, 4/4, Ev8, 95, MIDI = Located 131 Midi
Styles which is a reasonable number to work with.

7. Audition Styles and Tracks
By this I mean you should notate interesting instruments you come across as you audition styles. Here's why.

Although my search was for Strings which is the only thing I thought I wanted to add, one of the Styles listed was an All Percussion Midi Style named CALLING. From the Memo: Slow new age Style with low 8th note marimba, low slow strings, and warm pad. Add itopia voices and shaker at B sections. T=60-130. My project did not have drums or percussion. Why not audition CALLING as see how it works with my song? In BIAB Stylepicker, I use the Play using current Chordsheet with Song option a lot. Midi generates very quickly so a quick audition and I really like what I'm hearing and decide I will add this style of Percussion to my song.

Open the CALLING Style. Center all instruments except for the Strings. In the circumstance of my chordsheet, the midi strings match the RealTrack strings already in my project so I will use both and pan them opposite of each other. -35 and +35. Were they to mismatch, I would simply Mute The MIDI strings. Had I not chosen RT strings, I would use the MIDI strings.

That's how to safely and non-destructively add MIDI Tracks to your song and all the while give yourself many additional options to put creativity into your project.


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But you still have thousands of BIAB styles and thousands of instruments, thousands of loops and samples, unlimited audio and unlimited sound effects waiting to be found and used in your project. Two features of BIAB I don't see mentioned much but have been expanded on in the 2019 version is the MEDLEY feature that allows up to 10 instruments (RealTracks) to change out per Channel on the Mixer. In the Bar Setting Window, you'll see this option can also be applied to change midi patches. The second feature is to export audio sub mixes, import the mix and convert the Audio to a Performance Track and move it from the Audio Track to another Track to free the Audio Track for further export/import audio sub mixes.

Using these two features along with the technique I just outlined provides the ability to produce a very complex arrangement solely using BIAB that consists of Dozens of Instruments on Dozens of Tracks. Because BIAB resides in the Digital World, these sub mixes are high quality first generation mixes.....

Hopefully some will find some use and motivation from my post and not to hijack the thread, if anyone wants to go deeper or has questions, start a new thread to carry on the discussion.