PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production PAT file collections? Pointers?

Good morning Kevin and welcome to our forum!

A couple of thoughts as I use MIDI quite a bit as you can imagine from my sig below. The way I look at things PAT (or INI) files and CC commands are quite different from each other.

With PAT files, you can select the patch you want from a listing of patches that your VSTi or "hard" synth supports while still in BIAB / RB or other DAW that you might be using. In other words, the PAT file allows you to select a patch...that's it...no regards to sound levels, reverb, modulation, etc.

The world of MIDI really opens up when you start using CC's (change controls or continuous controllers). There are up to 127 of these with values from 0 to 127, although your synth or VSTi might not support all of them....many don't and some synths and VSti's support these in non-traditional or synth/VSti specific ways depending on the manufacturer. These can control volume, modulation, panning, reverb patch changes and many other parameters of the sound.

They don't change the patch as the items in the PAT do, but they modify what you hear. You can find many lists of standard CC commands on the internet, but keep in mind your specific synth or VSTi may use these in non-standard ways or use "undefined" CC's in a particular way.

From my experience, in using and modifying these, its difficult to do in BIAB. While you can see these scroll by using BIAB's midi monitor, its difficult to modify or change them in BIAB. This is where RB or your DAW come in. In these its easy to modify, change, add or delete the CC's to any parameter you need.

The best part, if your working in BIAB and want to change the CC's, is to open the BIAB file in Realband (RB) which opens "native" BIAB files.

Go to the "Event List" in RB (up there on the top row to the left) and you can see the CC's on each track and modify, add or delete these as needed. Then do a "save as" and save the modified file as a BIAB file (either MGU or SGU). Just don't save it as a RB SEQ file, if you do that BIAB won't be able to open the SEQ file again.

The go back into BIAB and open the file as normal and your CC's will be changed.

Another way of going about this is to open the file in RB and using the Event List...strip out (delete) the CC's for say volume, reverb or panning, then save the file, again in BIAB format. Go back into BIAB. Since you stripped these out in RB, now you can control and change these levels in BIAB using the BIAB mixer. Doing this, when you re-save the BIAB file the Mixer settings will also be saved. Big tip here, this will only work if you have gone into BIAB, click on "FILE' go down to "SAVE SPECIAL, click on "SAVE SONG WITH PATCHES AND HARMONIES" and then click the check mark "SAVE ALL SETTINGS WITH SONGS". This is a global command for all songs you save with BIAB so once its set your go to go with all future songs you chnange.

Again welcome to the forum. Have questions? Ask away, us users are more than happy to help.

Jeff