The other frustrating thing is that is actually hit-and-miss. Sometimes I can get it to work. Don't ask me why or how, but i can apply a custom MIDI style to the Melodist track.
OK, that can be frustrating . This was my first thought, it is workflow.
BIAB has redundant menus and workflows to accomplish the same thing. I have suspected some work and some may not. Don't have the time to really birddog these possible inconsistencies since that would interfere with making music.
As pointed out - Turn off the "auto generate track labels" feature. A long time source of confusion.
But back to point, how did the inserted midi track work out for you? As you can tell, not many folks use this feature but I suspect it can be a cool idea.
Dan, yes, if "auto generate" turned off then it gives the default (legacy) track names which unfortunately simply highlights another issue that needs attention
I can get it to work 'sometimes' but I cannot find what enables/prevents this from working always. Because I've had it working previously on many songs quite successfully tells me this is very possible, as you can see from posts above. Just sometimes it doesn't work. If only I could have that code in a debugger in a development environment... The PGM team could find this easily, I'm sure.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors
Can't disagree with anything mentioned except that if I can't 'Assign a custom MIDI style' to the Melodist or Soloist tracks, then those tracks simply shouldn't be available for this function. No?
I'm going to report it. Hopefully they can fix it. Why waste two unused tracks?
Hi I don’t think they are wasted as I do not think that the intelligent style arranger works on any more than 5 parts (the first 5 tracks in the mixer). So style data on the melody track would be ignored by the track generator, when assembling the backing style to suit your chord progression. I think ? Mike
You're on a roll Trevor. This is either a bug or the Help file is incorrect.
The screenshot is from the Help window that opens up if you hit Help from the Midi Tracks Picker. It clearly says it includes "even the Melody and Soloist tracks" in the top part of the pic and then it's in the yellow box "Melody is OK".
This kind of thing I would use RB but it's part of Biab so it should work.
VideoTrack, Have you tried to do any of this in the Stylemaker, essentially you can build a hybrid style. I have used this function extensively, but probably never onto a melody track. It certainly works to put an instrument from another style on the soloist track.
As was noted previously, when you change the style on a song using the style picker, it doesn't affect the melody that is already there.
BIAB for Windows Version 2019 (643) Windows 10 (1909)
Yes indeed Dan looks as if I underestimated BIAB it has just worked fine for me on the melody track. I chose the patch to be bright piano as I had enough guitar on there and its fine you can see that my voice is bright Piano although I am using the guitar 1 track from the midi style. All info shown in the mixer track for melody is spot on and it works well. So it does in fact seem you can use the melody track for this and I was wrong to doubt it. Mike
Yes, I think this is another example of the Help files needing some help. MusicStudent, I think you're correct too, it's a combination of workflow and the different screens being very confusing.
In my case I'm testing a song that was an old downloaded midi style that I changed to a Real Style, then changed a couple of parts. Lots of experimentation. It's a Crooner style and I messed around with using the original Strings track for a second Crooner horn section. I then replaced that track with a Vibes soloist. Now, I replaced the Vibes track with a Strings track using this procedure including a different style for that track.
In the Midi Track Picker window I changed the Vibes to Strings then to the right selected a style that has a strings part in it. I hit OK and the mixer and instrument both changed to Strings. Good I thought but then I hit Play and it goes back to Vibes but it sounds like a Strings part. Then I manually right clicked on instrument and selected Strings and now it's ok, it's playing strings and the mixer and instrument also shows Strings.
Another strange thing, in the Picker window the From track says Horn Section. That wasn't even the original part in the original RT style, it was an RT horn section part I had added, then changed to midi Vibes and now just changed to Strings! Confusing to say the least. It seems like all my previous changes and the fact this started out as a 25 year old original Biab midi style is messing with the system too.
And, as I'm doing this my brain is going DO THIS IN REAL BAND! But, it's part of Biab so let's see what's up.
To add to my last post and I'm laughing here. What it's doing is taking the patch from the last one used, not the current one. I'll get specific, I'm using Witchcraft with the Sinatra midi style. On the Soloist track I go into the Midi Track Picker window, seclect Harpsichord plus a style that goes with it. Again, hit OK in that window and the mixer and soloist changes to Harpsichord but when I hit play it's playing piano which is the last patch I tried in the first song. Like before I had to manually change the midi patch to Harpsichord and now it plays that. And it is a harp style part. I changed to to organ, selected a style with organ and doing all that again hit play, it goes to Harpsichord. Change it to guitar it plays Organ until I manually change that. The last one I changed to accordion, I picked a cajun zydeco accordion style and I get Organ playing that accordion part. Why I'm laughing is organ playing a bouncy zydeco style in Witchcraft almost fits!
I see no difference in doing this by right clicking on the instrument part up top or using the mixer. Same o same o.
One more thing, Undo doesn't apply for this function, the last Undo is me changing the part volume in the mixer. I think this is related to a comment I made in another thread. If you're changing styles there's no Undo for that.
Trevor, to get back to your original post, forget most of those screenshots. Here's what you do:
1. Right click on the Melody track and select Custom Midi Style. 2. Select the patch you want and the style. 3. Forget everything else. 4. Hit OK, then hit Regen. 5. You get the correct style on the Melody track but the prior instrument patch. 6. Manually change to the correct patch and you're good to go.
I was selecting Melody in the From box but that doesn't seem to make any difference. I just now tried all of them. What it's doing is if you go back in it's showing your patch you just selected for the Melody track. I don't know what that box for now because it doesn't seem to do anything.
The Automatic Patch naming function seems to be working correctly, all of our confusion was caused by the bug, and yes it's a bug, that this function seems to be using the previous patch when you Play (but the style you selected is playing) and you have to manually change it.
Other than that it seems to be working fine and it saves OK too. It's a bug and the workaround is you have to manually change the patch after the first time you generate the song. At least on my system, latest build. I've done this about a dozen times.
Trevor, to get back to your original post, forget most of those screenshots. Here's what you do:
1. Right click on the Melody track and select Custom Midi Style. 2. Select the patch you want and the style. 3. Forget everything else. 4. Hit OK, then hit Regen. 5. You get the correct style on the Melody track but the prior instrument patch. 6. Manually change to the correct patch and you're good to go.
Thanks for that detail. When I try that exact workflow, I do get the correct style, but when I re-generated, it always delivered an empty track.
However, after further experimenting, I found that if the last track in the top 5 was frozen, then the Melodist or Soloist track didn't generate. I could unfreeze any or all other tracks and nothing was generated. The 5th track needed to be unfrozen.
I even created a new song with nothing on Track 5. If it was frozen, the selected MIDI style on the 6th or 7th tracks never generated.
This I think is the last piece in the puzzle. I don't use this word lightly, but yes, another bug. Perhaps someone could verify?
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors
VideoTrack, Have you tried to do any of this in the Stylemaker, essentially you can build a hybrid style.
Dave, no, I hadn't tried that. I was following the steps in the PGM video. However, as mentioned above, I think I now found the actual reason.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors
I reported it to the developers. Let's see what happens.
Thanks everyone for their input.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors
Cool. So it's been established that this can work, and the problem is why it sometimes doesn't?
Matt, it appears to be a bug related to Track 5 being frozen. If I'm adding a track to an existing song, I would normally have all other tracks frozen as I would not want them to regenerate. It is only Track 5 that stops the generation, no other tracks. Let's see if they can resolve.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors
Thanks. Out of sheer frustration there was a requirement to 'leave no stone un-turned'.
I just kept repeating the exercise with big and small changes everywhere, including deploying different Styles, number of tracks, different mix of the number of RealTracks vs MIDI tracks, if the song had been previously saved, if a track had been renamed, and more. But until I found it I had never expected it would come down to the frozen status of a single, very separate track. Who would've thought...
It's over to PGM Team now.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, Pioneer Active Monitors
the point of frezing is to stop regeneration on a track but: That does seem strange that having track 5 frozen prevents it from generating on the Melody track or was that frozen as well.
Or had you given up on the melody track, and inserting on track 5 just to test.
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. This was my first thought, it is workflow. 
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