Question on the first example link: In the third measure of the B part, the first example marked in red, I'm guessing that the error is BIAB thinking that the Bb half note in the bass clef carries the accidental over into beat four of the treble clef.
If it's music for one player, not a score of independently-played parts, some authors of music notation guidelines believe the accidental can carry between clefs to a note of the same pitch in the other clef, which this is. Still, I would prefer to see a flat or a cautionary accidental of a flat in the treble clef.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Question on the first example link: In the third measure of the B part, the first example marked in red, I'm guessing that the error is BIAB thinking that the Bb half note in the bass clef carries the accidental over into beat four of the treble clef.
Yes, I saw that and wondered the same thing. I agree that there's a possibility that the program identifies that the Bb has been handled for that specific note, but if that's the case, it should be shown as an accidental in the treble clef also.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
You are both right! In this case it doesn’t correspond to what I heard. Your reasoning, being that the accidental got carried over, is correct. And indeed confusing,
Thx to Videotrack for shaming me by adding a neat blue arrow with a subtle shadow on top of my chaotic writing,
Thx a lot for clarifying!
Biab, Kontakt, Sampletank and lots of nice libraries, from Fluffy audio to Abbey Road drums. Check out these great contemporary Jazz Styles: www.jazzstylezz.com
Matt turned me on to the idea that Biab does play elaborate chords in Brazilian jazz. Lo and behold, styles like Janeiro do! Or at least, the piano does. Guitar and bass are only limited to bread and butter chords. There are clashes to be heard.
Investigating further has taught me this: Midi only, spoken here! 1. Older styles: all instruments know only a limited number of bread and butter chords, no mMaj7, no b9, b13 2. Newer styles (Janeiro...): piano plays all the chords right. All other instruments play only limited number of chords right... 3. Self-made styles from midi are like Older styles: all the wrong notes in elaborate chords Conclusion *only the piano can -in some cases- play all the chords. *there is an algorithm somewhere in Band in a Box that knows all the chords... *...but it is only used for piano for some styles starting 2011 or so.
Now... if there is an algorithm that works, how can it be applied to bass, guitar and other instruments?
Biab, Kontakt, Sampletank and lots of nice libraries, from Fluffy audio to Abbey Road drums. Check out these great contemporary Jazz Styles: www.jazzstylezz.com
You're bringing up some good points and really pinpointing some areas of improvement. I appreciate that and thank you for your thoughtfulness and dedication.
One question if I may, while acknowledging the limitations you've highlighted, if the limitations were fixed how would those corrections help the audio I hear? I'm asking because I'm trying to understand if the issues has more affect on notation or the audio playback.
Audio-wise, I think this will prove to be a huge relief for some. As things are now, there are subtle and not so subtle clashes between bass and piano, piano and guitar or your interpretation as soloist and the accompaniment.
Thing is, most people won’t hear it as a mistake, but just a rubbing sensation that “something is wrong”, but you can’t put your finger on it.
On the other hand. If people use unaltered chords and mostly triads, there will be no real change. It’s for the speciall chords, mostly used in jazz, Joni Mitchell, Michael Franks, James Taylor and some alternative or indie Country or rock,
Thx
Dzjang
Biab, Kontakt, Sampletank and lots of nice libraries, from Fluffy audio to Abbey Road drums. Check out these great contemporary Jazz Styles: www.jazzstylezz.com
Thank you for taking time to provide your considered response.
This was the sentence that most helped me to understand your point of view:
Quote:
Thing is, most people won’t hear it as a mistake, but just a rubbing sensation that “something is wrong”, but you can’t put your finger on it.
I have that "something's wrong" feeling more than once but have always discounted it. Invariably, when I get the feeling it is with an music exercise or song that I end up disliking and don't know why. Perhaps this dissonance between the instrument tracks is part of the answer.
You've definitely given me some ideas to think about.
I'm trying to understand if the issues has more affect on notation or the audio playback.
If it's in the notation, it's in the audio. If it isn't then that's a bug.
I totally appreciate wishing this gets cleaned up too but there are less and less of us who care. There was a recent thread asking about how Biab can be made to generate modern pop music. Very little of that has extended chords and neither does modern country.
15 years ago Biab was something like 70-75% jazz oriented. Then came the introduction of Real Tracks and that attracted tons of rock/country/folk guitarists and they requested all of that sort of stuff. Just look at all the guitar and related stringed instruments RT's now.
Electrics, acoustics,6 string, 12 string, steel string, nylon string, pedal steel, dobro, banjo, resonator, I can't even list them all. There's a bunch of accordians, bouzoukies and fiddles! There's tons of fiddles and pages and pages and pages of guitars. It's like 20 to 1 (or more) of those RT's vs new jazz RT's.
The RT's transformed the company by attracting all these guitar players. Midi can be good but one thing it's not good for is guitar and the guitar and related RT's sound awesome. I think they were surprised because the RT's started with a lot of jazz but that changed in a hurry. Great for PG and I'm happy for them but not so good for us jazzers.
... snip I think they were surprised because the RT's started with a lot of jazz but that changed in a hurry. Great for PG and I'm happy for them but not so good for us jazzers. Bob
Bob, the thought above brought a smile to my face. RealTracks Set #1 has no name but includes pedal steel, tenor sax and acoustic guitar. Set # 2 is named "Country Ballad", 3 is "Swingin' Country", 4 is "Modern Country" and so on. It's not until set 7 that you encounter "Acoustic Jazz Bass and Rock Sax".
Judging from the RealTrack set names I'd say PG Music had an idea country and rock RealTracks would be more popular than jazz tracks. Of course as many users have discovered RealTracks named for one genre can be used in other genres.
Jan (Dzjang) was kind enough to acknowledge my point that some of what he has carefully reported may not always be true and bears more examination, like the mMaj7. All white cats with blue eyes are deaf. Well, most are, but not every one.
Let me do the same and acknowledge that a great deal of what he has said is true and I don't mean to lose sight of any of that. I DO hear those 'clashes' and I DO think 'something is wrong'. But I also tend to overlook it, as this is pretty common in live jazz playing with both a guitar and a piano on the gig. I kind of enjoy it and as a jazz player am not put off by it. At the same time, I recognize someone using any style that is slightly jazzy but desiring a more 'straight' rendering could be confused and put off by the resulting sound. No question about it.
And the bass player is often the one I question, just as Jan said.
All this, like Natural Arrangement, involves algorithms we don't understand. We probably never will, as they are almost certainly proprietary. I can live with that, but some comment from the developers would be welcomed. In the meantime, we can keep making clear and respectful posts detailing the issues. When something crosses over into being likely a real bug, and we're pretty sure about that, then some of us can report it directly to the developers.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I came into this thread because of wanting mMaj7 chords with RealTracks. I see it's a bit of an old thread, and I'm only 2 weeks into using BiaB. But to distill some of the detail down, I did turn off Natural Arrangements for this song, and voila - exactly what I wanted with RealTracks!
Chuck Wiggins
BIAB 2023 Win UltraPak, Cakewalk, Windows 10 Pro Custom AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, Focusrite Scarlett 4x4 interface
Yes, many of us want to know more about Natural Arrangements, and why a 32 bar song with one chord (C) gives this peculiar message:
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
For the sake of clarity: natural arrangement or disabled, in MIDI... it does not matter. No mMaj7 on the bass part. Which is so sad (Chelsea Bridge, Strayhorn’s great tune, a lot of Horace Silver or Bill Evans stuff) because modern jazz asks for these chords.
Even Jazz Realtracks have a limited number of chords: most of them don’t play the phrygian chord correctly, some miss out on the mMaj7, some play it correctly, there’s not always a Cmaj7#5 chord or a decent modern lydian chord, Aeolian gets played with a natural 6. I could give examples, but I already gave up on Realstyles. Only works on pre-Coltrane, pre-Shorter, pre-Hancock jazz. And does a great job at playing that music.
By the way: most midi styles have all the above problems and only play 7 chord types, but on some styles the piano gets it right, while the bass plays it wrong. After experimenting I noticed that if you put the bass part in the piano part of some styles, it plays all the chords right! So, the hilarious thing is: Biab only plays seven chord types, but there is an algorithm there that CAN translate the style parts to ALL the different chord types
But, you’re stuck with a tone deaf bass player!
Weird, or what? But, that being said. It’s a mystery why they can’t apply the same algorithm to all parts of the style. That alone would help all serious musicians play Weather Report, Jarrett, the Bill Evans changes, Wayne Shorter tunes, Ecm jazz, Marsalis, Kirkland, Metheny...
An example of what’s sad: you can buy all the realbooks for Biab at Norton Music. It’s done with great care, even has all the accents, holds and pushes and all the reharmonizations that are listed, like in The New Real Books. But Biab messes it up. That’s sad. If Biab could play it all decently (and it has got the algorithm), it would enable us to really learn harmony, to experiment with chord substitution.
Except, it doesn’t! It makes all the tunes sound old fashioned.
Take the Jazz Piano book: by Mark Levine: the susb9 (phrygian) chord. That would be nice to experiment with. Or the B/C chord as a reharmonization of the I chord in minor (or in major if you want)... we could use Biab to help us study the music better.
Biab, Kontakt, Sampletank and lots of nice libraries, from Fluffy audio to Abbey Road drums. Check out these great contemporary Jazz Styles: www.jazzstylezz.com
I haven't read the whole thread so sorry if it's already been said, but BiaB will certainly recognise most of these chords - just press shift+enter to listen. I can clearly hear those jazzy extensions.
Whether the particular MIDI or RT style will accommodate it, though, is another story, and I do sometimes find that I can't get the particular chord I want with the particular style I want, but I assume that PG Music do have limited time and resources so they probably don't bother recording a 7sus#5#9 for a pop RealTrack (or program it for a pop MIDI track).
When I can't get a fancy chord working on one of my bebop/modal/etc RealTracks, however, that can be frustrating!
Mike and Jan, I will just repeat from a very early comment that you can report a 'missing' chord and I've done so and so should you. A patch may fix it.
As I mentioned, in the early days of RealTracks, the piano would simply drop out if I wrote mMaj7. They fixed it. I don't know if this means they changed some index value somewhere, or brought back the performer to record that chord in all keys. I suspect it's the index based on two things: 1) they fixed it right away and 2) I think I recall they said something about an index (I'm trying to remember this well over a decade later).
As far as the stylemaker, I looked at that about twenty years ago and balked (and I was a college programming professor). Perhaps I'll find some time to look again.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Bass only knows 7 7th chords and triads, but none of the fancy chords or alterations. In a limited number of midi styles Guitar and Piano play all chords correctly, which clashes with the bass sadly.
I had a PM conversation with Peter Gannon, where I showed him notation examples of the obvious mistakes and the absurd situation where piano plays the right chords and the bass doesn’t. He stressed that “most” jazz can be played by BIAB and urged me to steer clear of elaborate chords.
Leaves us with reharmonization chords, that don’t sound good and alternative changes (Bill Evans reharms in New Real Book) that don’t work. Marsalis tunes and Joey Calderazzo tunes, Fred Hersch songs often use chords that Biab doesn’t know (phrygian chord...). And Wayne Shorter tunes, the Bass never plays 13b9 chords right.
I truly think PGMusic is not really interested in making their midi styles work properly or their Realstyles play all the chords. Most musicians who use BIAB don’t really know much about harmony, I’ve come to learn. There are forums where musicians are really into harmony (jazzguitar.be) and some are quite literate, but I think most PGmusic users never got past Chapter 1 of the Levine jazz piano book or the jazz harmony book. Ii-v’s and triads rule.
And that’s cool. Leaves most serious jazz amateurs in the cold, but, hey, PGmusic is a succesful company and that proves they are right in their approach. Hope Bandora or Jjazzlab step up for us,
Biab, Kontakt, Sampletank and lots of nice libraries, from Fluffy audio to Abbey Road drums. Check out these great contemporary Jazz Styles: www.jazzstylezz.com
I've read the Mark Levine jazz piano book. Extraordinary stuff. But I've also come under criticism here for believing music notation is important. Such is the wide range of users.
As a workaround, when I don't like what a bass is playing, I copy the bass track to the Soloist and edit it, then use F5 to mute tracks as needed.
Thank you for the detailed research you have done to see what's under the hood.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Notation is such a wonderful feature of BIAB and Realband. No other system of accompaniment has this covered.
BIAB is full of flaws, but taking everything in consideration it is still my favorite over Bandora, iReal, Yamaha, V-arranger, Impro-visor, Jjazzlab...
Btw: copying the bass and tweaking it in soloist... never thought of that as a workaround. Pianoroll, I guess. Select all, copy. You could change notes in notation, velocity in the pianoroll. I am going to use this, great idea.
Biab, Kontakt, Sampletank and lots of nice libraries, from Fluffy audio to Abbey Road drums. Check out these great contemporary Jazz Styles: www.jazzstylezz.com
I may not have been clear so let me try again just in case.
I meant copying the bass track to the Soloist track. This track is editable and is one of the two that is not regenerated. Then I mute/unmute the bass and the Soloist tracks as needed.
In other words, I did not mean the Soloist function in BIAB. I've never used that because that's what I do - record jazz solos and arrangements on people's CDs.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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