PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Jazz Standards????

Thanks Gary and for the kind words. Thanks also to Matt.

It's good to see you on the forum again Gary. You were missed around here.

Leilani and I are still gigging and grinning and it's the middle of our tourist season so we are delightfully busy.

I really prefer MIDI styles. I can export them to a MIDI sequencer or DAW and edit them to my heart's content. I can change instruments (change that Rhodes to a Grand, and so on), change chord inversions so the melody note is on top, exaggerate the groove, re-mix the drum set to emphasize or suppress one or more of the instruments, and thousands of things more. Plus I can put a proper intro or ending on it.

A good MIDI synth will sound 90-95% as good as a real track instrument. MIDI sequences are thousands of times more editable than audio tracks. It's a trade off, but for me to make the very good output of BiaB into something that is as excellent and ready for stage, I choose MIDI.

I wouldn't go on stage with an unedited Real Track song. They are good, but I can edit to make MIDI tracks much better.

Of course, there is more than one right way to make music. That is my way.

Right now Leilani and I are working on two new style disks and three new fake disks. Mostly jazz and rock content. Hopefully a release in a month or two, depending on how many problems need fixing. Stay tuned.

Notes

Thanks for the welcome back, everyone. No, things are not well with me, look at my signature line.

Bob, with the newest generation of sound generators, I agree that you can do a lot more with MIDI now than you could with it, even seven or eight years ago. The technology has gotten a lot better, and the price has come down significantly.

When I bought my PA800, it was like $3,800. Today, the PA1000, which surpasses it in every regard, is only $2,200! So, yeah, tech is getting better and cheaper.

Still, RealTracks provides for the ability to lay down some very amazing tracks quickly and easily with a very Pro sound without all the work necessary of tweaking a MIDI track.

Gary,

My first and ONLY question: What can we do to help you?.

You've certainly paid your dues around here.

I noticed that FB has a money collection service but I have no clue how it works.

The Bobs nailed it!

Gary! Wow, seriously homeless? Very sorry to hear that since you can post again, are you back on your feet?

Bob

Don,
Really, there's nothing you can do. Prayer is always good, of course, just to let God know there are others thinking about me.
I'm in a Transitional Housing program for Vets, so I have a place to sleep, eat, I have clothes on my back, and I make a couple of dollars working around here. Not much, but something.

What I need is to get the court to see that I'm not the monster I was made out to be, and get them to lift the order of protection against me. That has been the thing that destroyed me, since no one will hire me with it in place. It's not even a criminal charge, nor is it sexual based, but there's nothing in the background checks that indicate that, so people just assume the worst.

However, my list of 'Oh boy, that would be great for when I get back to working and get my own place' is pretty long. But, I'll keep that one to myself. LOL

Really, even knowing you'd be willing to do something like that is pretty awesome. Thanks!

No, far from it Bob, but working on getting there. I'm alive, that's the important part.

Gary

I can only relate my own personal experience with popular song layouts that I have used that don't have melodies or lyrics and only chords and a style.

Personally I have found that it is so easy to get totally lost when using just the chords only without any melody or lyric included, and I totally understand the copyright reasons why it can't be included.

The song may have an intro but it can be a pain to determine exactly where the actual intro ends and song or even chorus starts in the chord layout, and unless one is 100% totally familiar with the song it can be a real pain to follow it through from start to finish correctly.

Even if I am 100% familiar with the song I still get lost.

I know everyone's ear is different and it may seem a doddle to do so from the actual writers point of view, but I have found it to be more trouble than its worth.

Martin57
.

Most of my fake disks are made with a published fake book.

You can open the book, play the fake disk song and read the melody while the backing track plays.

I originally wanted to put the melodies in my fake disks. I called the Harry Fox agency, who represents the majority of the publishers, and found some publishers flat turned me down and others wanted up to $2.50 per song with an up-front payment for thousands of copies.

I said, "I can buy a fake book with hundreds of songs in it for about $0.08 per song", and the rep said, "Then buy the fake book."

That's when I got the idea to do my fake disks based on fake books published by Hal Leonard, Warner Brothers, and other major publishers. Some of the books sadly are out of print, but new ones come out, and compiling the new ones take a lot of time, but it's rewarding.

We enter the chords into BiaB, exactly as they appear in the book (sometimes if BiaB can't play a particular chord, we leave an extension off). Then choose a temporary style and check our work. We fix typo errors, and then send the disk on to subcontractors.

I choose working musicians to assign a final style from all the available styles from PG Music and Norton Music. I tell them not to favor my styles, but to pick whatever works with the song best.

The reason I pay subcontractors to pick styles is because I'd probably favor my own because I know them so well they would jump into my mind first.

Of course if you don't have my style or the PG style that was assigned, you can pick your own style. Also, especially with jazz, the standard have been done so many different ways that you might want to choose a different style. You could do a jazz waltz as a 4/4 swing, a swing as a Latin, and so on.

Then when I get the files back from the subcontractor, Leilani and I go through it page by page, auditioning each song, playing every song in real-time while triple checking for typos and a half dozen other things to make the song as good as the current version of BiaB can make it sound. In rare cases we might simplify a chord simply because it doesn't work with BiaB in that instance. In rarer cases we might override a style choice made by a subcontractor.

Then we release it to the BiaB public. Judging from my repeat sales, I think they are a good value.

Like I said, you can do this yourself, but in some cases it might take a day or two to finish a song, in other cases 10 minutes, then the style, check, fix, double check and so on it also very time consuming. But as I said, it's a labor of love.

Insights and incites by Notes

Notes said "I think they are a good value." Actually they are an excellent value IMHO. Anytime I want to practice site reading, doing a song for someone else, or just want to have fun I grab my fake book(s) and the accompanying Notes fake disk. His disks save me a lot of time and they follow the fake book notation perfectly.

Do not hesitate to look at and buy one of his fake disks.

Note that I do not work for Notes, I just like his products.

Yes. As many times as is needed, I am pleased to post a +1 for the quality of Notes’ work.

Gary

I just noticed what you said and your situation. You have my prayers and as a retired USAF Vietnam Vet let me know if the is anything I can do, calls I can make, etc. PM if there is


God Bless

Larry

Larry,

That's the empathy that I've grown to love about this wonderful PG Family.

Kudos, sir.

Thanks Mario and Matt for the kind words.

Bob

One of the other things that I want to bring up in this thread, and it was alluded to earlier in blank melody and a set of chords, in contrafacts.

How many great jazz songs have been done from contrafacts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_contrafacts

I thought "Back Home In Indiana" was the leader, but Jerome Kern seems to have more contrafacts of 'All The Things You Are.'

Ray Noble has even more with "Cherokee!"

The absolute winner though is George and Ira Gershwin, well, George anyway, with 'I've Got Rhythm."

So, having nothing but the chords from Notes and being able to change keys easily gives you a wonderful opportunity to take a chord progression from someone else and write an entire new song. At least you'll know that somewhere in there, it's already a hit.

Larry, send us a little of that Arizona desert warmth?

No, one Air Force Vet to another, I thank you very much, but I am fine, and will be fine.

My experience with making jazz fake disks puts variations on the good old 12 bar blues as the most popular chord progression and variations on "I Got Rhythm" in second place.

There have been some very interesting and creative chord substitutions to both of them.

Notes