PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows My BiaB evaluation and first impressions

Hi everyone, this is my first post but an important one for me as I am trying to figure out if BB is really what I need, so I thought I would get some input from some of the great commentators here on the forum. I purchased the "Everything" Pack and am on my 30 day eval. I should mention that like many, I am a novice with this stuff. Mac's tagline referenced "You must be Audiominds" site (love the wordplay) is education and helpful as well.

So here's my deal: I am an accordionist who specializes in French music, especially "musette" type (although I play other genres). I would like to use BB and/or other software to create my background music and then play live over that so that I will be able to make some decent recordings, and also to use for gigging.

So over the holiday break I started out with a little test. I took a musette waltz from an existing recording and then tried to duplicate the background as much as possible.
I first entered the chord progressions in BB and then selected various styles, limiting to only bass and drums. The result was not that great in that it just did not sound cohesive, a jumble of sounds with no direction. The basic style/idea /background and technical chord changes are there, but it just didn't fit.
I tried various combinations of RT's for both drums and bass, again with mixed results. One real problem was the bass, in that really for it to blend well I would have to change the bass so that it more closely followed the bass line on the recording, or for that song.

So at this point my testing took another parallel direction - I started experimenting using Reaper, NI Bandstand Acoustic Bass, and Jamstix to create the background track. In this case, I was able to enter the bassline exactly as the recording, and use Jamstix (another learning curve there) as the drummer.
Results - Bass sounds good, but Jamstix sounded a bit robotic and has a million variables to control how the drummer plays which looks like an enormous learning curve.

I realize that BB is not primarily for making perfect copies of background tracks. ( Although - when I was researching on the web and on Ketron's SD2 site (Ketron SD2 Demos)
and came across Mac's cover version of "Peg", just blew my socks off how close it was. The other sounds on the SD2 are incredible as well - including the accordion sounds. )

Also, during all this I also had a slight case of that feeling of "Gee, I'm not playing my instrument, I'm on the computer"), which is why I strayed away in the first place of trying to create background music myself. I know, I know, there are trade-offs!

Anyhoos I think my post itself lost it's direction and point, but I thought I would relate what I am doing so far. I think next I might try inputting the bass as a melody line in BB via the NI VST plugin to see if I can do something similar in BB as I was doing in Reaper. My goal now is not to emulate *exactly* what the recording is, but to simply get a background track that fits and mixes well with the live instrument so I can scream "Yes, that's it!".

Seeing as you're just starting out with this I would suggest you move out of BIAB and into Real Band. You can use Real Instruments, midi Instruments or any combination to give you your rythmn section and you have 48 tracks to work with were you can put in the required parts that you need to make it sound authentic.

SB,

You might start here to see what one accordionist has done with BIAB. He is a regular, username (? furry), graham1281 on youtube.

He has done some work in the musette style; hunt around and you'll find it. I am not acquainted with the genre, but to my ears his stuff sounds spot on. You might try to PM (private message) him if you see him for some tips.

R.

Hi Squeezebox,

You are not alone. I think that everyone who starts out with BiaB finds that sort of frustration. At first.

In my case, I put the thing away and didn't work with it for a year or two. To my loss.

Here's the deal:

Band in a Box is a new instrument.

Approach it in that fashion.

Just like you were to pick up some instrument other than accordian and start to learn to play it, you will likely find out that you can buy the guitar, but you aren't bery likely to sound like Django, Segovia or Joe Pass on the first day. Or the first month. Or the first year. But with daily practice and also backing up to work on the basic things first, bite sized chunks, as it were, the care and feeding of BiaB will indeed build into the ability to get a lot more out of it.

Start again, but pick a very simple song. Make it work. Put it away for a few days, come back to it with fresh ears and brain cells and make it work better than it did before.

TIP: A lot can be learned about the use of BiaB by opening up the PGMusic supplied Demo Songs in all those folders and simply push play and watch it work. As you see it go over certain things, red outlines around bar numbers, periods and letters after chord names, etc. you can hit Stop and investigate what commands were used to create the situation you just heard.

SECOND TIP: RealTracks are wonderful, but they are not the only sounds BiaB can make. Don't let the MIDI styles languish, especially when after certain genres, accompaniment patterns, etc. MIDI styles can make for wonderful backups to the French Musette music. You might take a look at some of the TOOTS styles and use your squeezevox instead of Toot's harmonica for the lead.

THIRD TIP: Audition your song with different styles from the Stylepicker. I like to check off the "Loop" to the right of the Songtitle window, then open Stylepicker, make sure that "Play on doubleclick" is checked at the bottom, then use the filter dropdown to the right to filter the style list by Tempo or by Feel and Tempo and then just doubleclick my way down the list, listening to the good, the bad and the ugly, occasionally making a note of styles that I think I might like to try on the song. Often, this leads me to a place where I would not have thought about and ends up as a different, but better accompaniment for the target song. Serendippity rules in my studio. Of course, we should never TELL people about happy accidents, just as we should never apologize for a performance beforehand. Just let it play and smile and wave at the people.


--Mac

The right style is everything in Biab. Try finding Graham (Furry) he knows about this style of accordian playing and if he's not around, try Googling "Band in a Box styles".
The best way to do it and probably what you will wind up doing, is to jump right into the Stylemaker and make your own. That how the pro's do it but it's a bit daunting for somebody who's just learning the program. I'm pretty sure you're going to be using strictly midi for now because I don't think there are Real Tracks that will work for what you want but I could be wrong about that since I'm not that familiar with this stuff. Like Mac said, experiment. The big difference between midi and the Real Tracks is the RT's are prerecorded and you can't change them. As you've already found out, if that bass part isn't exactly what you wanted you're stuck with it. Midi can be tweaked to do exactly what you want it to do but you're playing a synth as opposed to hearing studio recordings. Such is life in the world of computer music.
In my opinion you don't need Real Band yet but keep it in mind for the future. You can also Google some song names with the word "midi". You may find some midi files of exactly what you want. Those are different from Biab styles. If you find those, then Real Band is better so come back and ask about that.
Most likely, as a brand new person to these programs Biab is enough for you right now. I also use Jamstix, it's way beyond what you need at the moment but we can talk about it later.
With the right style, Biab will sound great assuming you have a good sounding synth to play it through.

Bob

The real tracks fiddle adds a good dimension to that type of music. It's a bit country but at a low volume blends in pretty well. The 2 background ones, the one at 80 and the other faster one are the best. For your type of music stay away from the train stuff.

Give me an example of some tunes one might find on youtube. I speak French Canadian and often play old time fiddle & accordion music....

Well I also speak some various accents from Midi (s. France) et Suisse.

J'ai eu de l'experience avec une bel-lle jun-nee fiyyeue, l'accent etait moite italien moite parisenne.

I spent the day working on Je t'appartiens...old song that.

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies! I will continue to experiment with Biab, along the lines like Mac mentioned, of looking at Biab as a new instrument within itself and I am simply learning how to "play it". I think a good idea would be to experiment with one feature a little at a time and simply take a slow, measured approach, and have fun with it.

John - Here's a great youtube example of musette, Graham Wilson playing (as some of the posts above mentioned)
Musette Style (Je peux bien imaginer "bel-lle jun-nee fiyyeue", avec un fort accent du midi!)

On his web page, Graham says he uses Biab, all MIDI, then exports to Sonar and tweaks as needed. I think the backgrounds he creates are fine. Good stuff. I'm inspired to continue on. Thank you again.

Check Furry's posts, or find one from him. He posts lots of accordion stuff, and lives in Scotland. It's top notch, I forget if he has a website. There's a lot to absorb. If you are playing accordion then you mute the other parts right? When I play celtic music I sometimes play the keyboard as an accordion. I started music playing the standard 120 bass note buttons, with 5 switches on the piano side and 3 on the bass side, italian style box in the 60's. So I get all the other instruments going, change things in a and out, find a style and tempo I like and voila, I play along.

I'm checking out Furry's posts, lots of good accordion related stuff. Yes, I mute the Biab extra parts, just try to get down to bass, drums and then add from there as appropriate as I am learning. With accordion the left hand side (button side on a piano accordion) is accompaniment, less important than right hand side. On good accordion recordings, the bass side is not even heard if there is a "real" background accompaniment, playing the buttons would just muddle it all it up..... (Not to say the bass side does not sound good on an "unplugged" accordion!)

That's right.

And the "less is more" concept should always be observed.

If there are two instruments or instrument sections in your tracks playing the same thing, one of them is very likely to be superfluous.


--Mac

SqueezeBox,
If the bass line is the main problem you are having with BB, then I would suggest the following. Pick a style as close to the original arrangement as possible. Search the web for the sheet music (song) you are trying to duplicate, that has the correct bass notes for the song. Use the edit function of BB and change the bass part to match what you've found in the sheet music, or you can make a midi file of the bass part and import that into your arrangement. Turn off the Bass in BB, only if you imported midi, and play your song. I use the latter technique when I make CD's for people. The bass line is very important and it needs to be right because it carries the down beat of the whole song. The only problem is that it takes a little more time to produce. PS. If you use the edit function to change the bass line, be sure to save the arrangement or you will lose what you've just spent an hour or so doing the next time you play the song. BB regenerates everytime the song is played so you get a slightly different version each time.
All in all, you will enjoy working with BB. It is a very powerful piece of software, along with it are a bunch of powerful experts here in the fourm, excluding myself, that can and will help you through your learning curve.

Thanks David - I do have a midi file generated already, which was an export from my sheet music software, where I had already manually entered the bass line. I might also try step-entering it again into BB just for the experience. If I understand, my options are:
1. Import the midi file into the melody or soloist track and mute the Bass track.
OR
2. Edit the actual bass track via step entry via the "Notes view".

3. Use the MIDI Style Wizard to create a custom BB Style file from a MIDI file...


--Mac

As Mac mentioned you can create a style from midi. Check this web page out for details.

After step entering a bass track make sure you freeze it. Otherwise it will re-generate.