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
Pre-ECM, but, who can ignore Coltrane’s major influence on ECM style jazz? Wise One, John Coltrane
If you visit the blog on jazzstylezz.com, you can download a free mgu-file of all the tunes, including this one. Ps: I commented on the bad biab-video sync. This proved incorrect, sorry for this.
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
Dzjang and other fans of Django, you likely will enjoy +++ THIS +++ John Jorgenson interview. John Jorgenson played Django in a movie and is a world renown session and touring guitarist in his own right.
@Jim: John Jorgenson is something else, isn’t he? The ease with which he switches from rock to country to jazz and back again is mindblowing. I don’t know enough about country to really assess his skills, but in the jazz realm his playing is top notch. Curious as to what you think of players like Bill Frisell who have turned to country and rock. He has a band with a slide guitar player mixing jazz and country. I think he is a fan of country, but does he play it well, I wouldn’t know. Respect! @Matt: Thanks. For the most part I rarely consider alterations (like: Cm11 for Cm7), since I don’t use piano or guitar accompaniment on Biab. But horn players and some guitarists do. So you are very right to point this out. It’s essential to get the piano or guitar part play intresting things. I mostly think Realbook: get the basic chords down and leave the analysis to the player. But with a midi software, that doesn’t work. On the other hand, for the bass part, it’s all the same. The midi system in Band in a Box doesn’t know these chords in the bass department and ignores every alteration, sadly. (Even a b9 or b13)
More important for me though is your first suggestion: bar 14. Your use of the bass note makes for a very nice transition to the E chord (b2 substitution, I think we should call it or tritone sub for some).
I dig the suggestion to go for Eb on the C min chord, though I think what Bob Berg is trying to stress is the Phrygian character of the I chord (Cminor) in the interlude as a contrast to the “normal” minor I chord. But, Eb would add some nice bass movement. For me it’s more like Dblydian with C in the bass. Thanks for the intresting suggestions.
Payment pending. Wix takes some time to process re-linking my domain to the site. Oh well…
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
Another contender for “Standard of the future”: Metheny’s Last Train Home. I thought of it as a typical Metheny Group Song, lots of Synclavier going on. But Gilad Hekselman made a really cool rendition of it, making it sound almost like a standard tune.
You can download a mgu file of this tune for free on my blog. If you want to play it, go ahead.
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've just put your finger on it - looser drum parts and much tighter bass parts at the same time as the whole vibe being more sparse.
You have created great styles for swing time - that is done. The ECM and Scandi/Nordic material and artists I am inspired by are rarely playing 'swing time' and have a more pop or folk 'even' feel but swing massively in their phrasing especially in drums/percussion and acoustic bass. And they leave plenty of space - that's the signature of their sound - this is not 'foot tapping' music.
The challenge for me is to get a realistic 6/8 feel that could be possible by making a user style where two bars of 3/4 = 6/8 by pairing bars and using the bar settings to define - bar1 = count 1,2,3 and bar2 = count 4,5,6 etc.
I create trio backings - drum and bass + chords in order to play melody part scored or improvised - for fun, not to entertain others. And I do not use real tracks - strictly MIDI at this stage - before I export anything that sounds half decent to Garageband.
My challange is how to get the count to go smoothly from first to second bar so there does not feel like a break - bass and drum notes not able to sound across the gap etc, etc.
BIAB keeps getting upgrades and improvements - I started in the early years and keep coming back every few months - it now has good sound samples and a massive body of styles and other AI content that always teaches me something new about the musical process - I'm sticking with it.
That’s right. They don’t swing like in the old days. It was and still is a rhythmic revolution. It’s not the eighth note swing we know, but has a straight rhythm infused with subtle 16th and 32nd note triplets.
Making these styles has helped me understand the striking similarities between the Nordic sound, Jack DeJohnette and the Miles Davis quintet of the sixties.
Transcribing Jon Christensen and Michael DiPasqua on Garbarek‘s albums was surprisingly close to transcribing Dejohnette’s drumming on Bill Connors’ Of Mist and Melting.
Arild Andersen has expressed his admiration for Miles’ band in his albums with Masqualero. Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen have often referred in interviews to the Charles Lloyd Quartet and Elvin Jones’ playing in Coltrane’s band.
Jarrett picked up on Charles Lloyd’s integration of pop and folk tunes and rhythm. And the dynamic Nordic scene of the seventies has developed that even further, resulting in a few unforgettably beautiful melodies.
Jan Garbarek’s Entering (Places), Bill Connors’ Melting, Kenny Wheeler’s tunes, Jarrett’s Country or Innocence…
So much beautiful music. Maybe we could share some info, just to make the Biab experience better. PM me or continue this thread on all things ECM.
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 don't know if this helps with isolating styles, but in BIAB's style picker, the styles (Realdrums and Realtracks) that are labelled as sw16 are based on 16th note triplets. I haven't come across styles using 1/32 note triplets. (Not that I'm aware of, at least.)
When I use the filter in Stylepicker to only show Jazz, sw16... a number of styles are listed. These might be useful starting places for you.
That is an important observation, Noel. Swings differently, sounds more “pop” or rock.
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
Seems to me there's a lot of ECM type options in the smooth and new age and world styles if you tweak or hybridise them. Especially those with a more World Music, Mystical or Classical feel rather than pop, funk etc. (eg. ANSWERS is almost an Oregon style)). The RALPH1 Christensen drummer can be used for example against the ETERNAL organ arpeggio for a John Surman/DeJohnette approximation. Useful in odd time signatures with holds and motifs in the new add on maybe. the SIRIUS style has a 'Last Train Home' vibe.
In the fusion styles there's obviously METH 80/81 and the fast even 8th jazz styles But you can do hybrids like the CROSWIND bass and piano parts along with the METH 80/81 DeJohnette drummer.
Outside BIAB there's OddGrooves ECM midi drum edition which might have some loop-able sections and fills within a rather sloppy presentation. Not too bad but not perfect by any means.
Session Band audio loops outside of the app in a windows based DAW can be used for ECM or mid 60's post bop purposes.
XLN addictive drums has a Jazz brushes set which boasts a free-jazz preset which isn't perfect but has enough of a 'metre-less' feel to it to be useable.
Elsewhere on the net there's a transcription or direct-to-midi Abercrombie/Johnson/Erskine performance of a standard with a Scandinavian pianist which is useful source of a subtle modern jazz waltz style.
@Alan, there are some great styles, like the ones you mentioned.
Btw, the midi that you refer to was my big inspiration for making styles that offer more than the factory styles. John Abercrombie, for sure. I’ve included the midi, because it’s so fabulous.
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
@Dzjang, thanks for that reminder of one of the great jazz groups of the 80's and early 90's. a trio of great dynamic range.
Some more ECM songs done as BIAB files would be good to have. I did two songs for the archive, Kenny Wheeler's 'Ma Belle Helene'. And one more which turned out to be a post bop version of John Taylor's Azimuth tune 'Eulogy' (I called it 17/8 at the time after it's rhythmic cycle as I transcribed it from a radio broadcast tape without knowing the band! ) Other than that I've also got Towner's 'Distant Hills' but that's about it really.
The only other's I've seen are 'Prism' and 'Icarus'. So many by Jarrett, Towner and Wheeler can now be done as there are transcription aplenty out there but alas so little time.
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There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
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We've packed Band-in-a-Box® 2026 with major new features, enhancements, and an incredible lineup of new content! The program now sports a sleek, modern GUI redesign across the entire interface, including updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, a new dark mode option, and more. The brand-new side toolbar provides quicker access to key windows, while the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, creating a flexible, clutter-free workspace. We have an amazing new “AI-Notes” feature. This transcribes polyphonic audio into MIDI so you can view it in notation or play it back as MIDI. You can process an entire track (all pitched instruments and drums) or focus on individual parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
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Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: The Newly Designed Piano Roll Window
In this video, we explore the updated Piano Roll, complete with a modernized look and exciting new features. You’ll see new filtering options that make it easy to focus on specific note groups, smoother and more intuitive note entry and editing, and enhanced options for zooming, looping, and more.
Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: AI Stems & Notes - split polyphonic audio into instruments and transcribe
This video demonstrates how to use the new AI-Notes feature together with the AI-Stems splitter, allowing you to select an audio file and have it separated into individual stems while transcribing each one to its own MIDI track. AI-Notes converts polyphonic audio—either full mixes or individual instruments—into MIDI that you can view in notation or play back instantly.
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