PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Latest & greatest methods to get BIAB Midi Melody to sound real.

I basically get what you and everyone else is saying Bob. It is not exactly the most complex thing to understand. What I write below should make if very clear that I indeed understand everyone but additionally help you understand my stance as well (touch wood).

The melody of a song is not the only enjoyable part of a song but lets focus only on melody at the moment. It can be broken down into a continuum. I give you the continuum below. Some are happy at #1. I am happy at #4. You and others in the thread are happy at #6. Some are not happy until they get to #8. I don't understand how people can be happy at #1 but I accept that they are indeed happy there and I do not put myself on a pedestal and say there is something wrong with them. You don't understand how I can be happy at #4. You need to understand that I am indeed happy at the lower levels but at the same time I am maybe a touch happier at the higher levels and am totally in joy if I can play at level #8 but I roll with the punches better than most from the sounds of it.

• 1: Talking. No Melody. (rap music or the marketing name "Hip Hop" that some in jazz give it.)
  
• 2: Melody with boring note selection and tiny and monotone.
  
• 3: Melody with great note selection but still tiny and monotone.
  
• 4: Melody with great notes and great tone played on a midi that actually sounds like a great guitar but played monotone.
  
• 5: Melody with great notes and great tone played on a midi that actually sounds like a great guitar but played with varying volume adjustments to show emotion.
  
• 6: Melody with great notes and great tone played on a midi that actually sounds like a great guitar but played with varying volume adjustments to show emotion and added techniques to make it sound interesting.
  
• 7: Melody with great notes and great tone played on a midi that actually sounds like a great guitar but played with varying volume adjustments to show emotion and added techniques to make it sound interesting plus the player draws respect because they show they can sight read and improvise (play the notes exact and later improvise them).
  
• 8: Melody with great notes and great tone played on a midi that actually sounds like a great guitar but played with varying volume adjustments to show emotion and added techniques to make it sound interesting plus the player draws even more respect because they show they can right read and improvise (play the notes exact and later improvise them and they can put in extremely difficult improvising to).

Because I am happy at #4 this allows me to enter record lift notation into BIAB rather than Musescore such that I can have it played by BIAB at a jam if no one is there that can play it (to busy playing something else or it is just too difficult to play). These BIAB midi sub melodies or filler melodies are not the main attraction of the show (our live playing is). We hide the fact that one member of our group (BIAB Midi fill in melody) has no emotion. But this is not to say that this fill in melody can not make a good contribution at level #4. Our live playing takes the overall performance up to a level 7 and even at times a level 8. In the end the participants at our jams have a heck of a lot of fun. Many don't have the time to come out but they stay on the list hoping they eventually will.

The other use of putting filler melody in BIAB is just to have a place to record it so it is not forgotten. Better in BIAB than in Musescore so we can at least use it at a jam.

Now if I can use a midi guitar to take the BIAB midi melody to #6 at times (with bends, trills, volume adjust, octaves, slides, etc) I will indeed do so. I will be a bit happier at that level but I will still enter midi melodies in BIAB using BIAB notation if I have trouble playing them. I don't burn the house down just because it isn't perfectly clean. If the continuum didn't work hopefully the analogy did.

I might see if I can rent hardware midi and midi guitar after I finish the course. I am more likely to be able to add interesting techniques on guitar than on keyboard. I also need to see if I can find software that can do midi snap-to so the midi notation is sight readable. In other words if it was suppose to look like a triplet swing I won't want to see it written as a 64th note. I will create a BIAB wish list for this.