PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist Consolidated & Tabbed track picker idea drawing for RT / RD / Loops / Midi

It would be so much easier to have one picker. It is so frustrating to have to go to different pickers that work differently and not coming back to be able to make an easy audit of a selection.

I am not an experienced user I am more of a beginner so there might be several misunderstandings or parts might already be in the software. I mostly use Band in a Box and the style picker to try and find a style as base for a backing track which I then use for practice playing against and then as a recording background.

Below some of my thoughts around my experience of searching in the pickers.

I would like to be able to do an effective search to find a style with music characteristics: rhythm, drums, bass, other instruments, playing style etc that:
- I like when I hear it, or
- are close to what I hear in my inner ear/my mind, or
- closely match a piece of music that I like, or
- to pick a specific style that I already know I want.

It needs to have two features:
- an effective search feature “the way to communicate to the software” to try and find what I am looking for.
- an efficient audit feature in the way that I can listen to and audit the selection of a search result (several styles) against the chord table.

The mechanisms for the search feature today seem to be some simple filters: “filter string”, category, time signature, feel, tempo, type, other, and a search by song title spread out over different pickers that all different.
- they are of some help but often inefficient. I still spend too much time trying to find what I am looking for (and
hardly ever find what I’m looking for.
- there are some basic search mechanisms that I think are missing:
-- option to exclude something or combination of things, (an exclude option is normally given by a minus sign in a search
string in the conventional way).
-- hierarchy sorting of columns (option to narrow down column sorting by hierarchy i.e. allowing sorting of one column then
continue sorting another column within the previous sorting result and continue the same with more columns. Today the first
column sorting order are lost when sorting the next column.
-- option to select what column the filter sting should apply to, now it seems to span over all the text in all columns.

Might also be useful to try and find other ways to communicate with the software (not sure if it is technically possible or practical): e.g. another dimension of the search mechanism to find the closest match to a piece of music, midi, audio or rhythm tapping.
- tap in the basic rhythm for the drums into the search
- drop a segment of a midi file into the search
- drop a segment of audio that is converted into midi into the search

Have just been playing around a bit with EZDrummer2 and EZBass. Toontrack has provided those search options for their software (audio drop only for EZBass). Not sure yet how well it works or not. But I like the idea it looks very interesting (could as well have the option to write in a few bars on music notation (but on the other hand it is quite easy to make a midi of it in advance).

Would like to see a more efficient way to communicate to the software the “essence” of the “feel/characteristics” of the song I am looking for from several dimensions, and several different ways to communicate this to the search.

The mechanisms for the audit feature today seem to be:
- today one has to 1) select a style from the style picker 2) then play it against the chord sheet, 3) stop, 4) may be go back to the mixer and fix something then repeat 1,2,3 then 5) search and select another style 5) play and repeat the whole procedure etc. Very time consuming.
- in the realdrum picker one cannot audit the matching styles against the chord table, only play a demo. I don’t even come back to the style picker with the search result so I can make an audit against the chord table from there. I have to make a screen dump and print out the “matching styles” and then go back to the style picker and look them up individually and then audit them against the chord table. Also the search result for a style with a specific realdrum in the filter string in the style picker seems to be different (less) from the matching styles in the realdrum picker.
- today one has to go back and forth between views to make a change in the mix. Much more user friendly if one could access the mixer in the picker e.g. to mute off some instruments etc.

Would find it very useful with:

- option to make a selection (markup) of styles freely from the list as individual styles or chunk of styles, and then have them play automatically against the chord table with option to specify the number of bars to play, or just a simple click to step to the next in the selection to play (like a play list in a music media player). Also need to have the mixer available in the picker view so one can make changes without going back to the chord view (eg to mute an instrument).