Now that does look like something I want to get to know. But you seem to imply that I can use the plugin actually in RealBand. Or am I misunderstanding.
Also, with such a vast range of features, which is there nothing in the manual?
If you use RealBand you are limited to 48 tracks, if you use the BBPlugin in your DAW you can have as many RT/RD/Midi/SMT/Loops/UserTracks as you like simply by adding another instance of the BBPlugin. You can use the BBPlugin in RealBand to give more tracks BUT the whole idea is to get out of RealBand into your DAW you love.
The pics above are the manual, it has not got all these menus like Biab RealBand, what you see that's is all there is to it. File > open SGU > Generate button up the top, solo mute any tracks. If you have tracks in Ableton when you hit play the BBPlugin tracks will play along in sync. Once the track/s you like are dragged into Ableton you can mute the track or un sync the BBPlugin or generate up another style.
I went at the task of loading 2 copies of the plugin on their respective tracks and this was successful. I loaded the song on to the first copy and all OK. When I try this with the second copy (the one in which I will change the style) then it takes forever and doesn't finish. I tried installing the plugin on one track, loading the song and then duplicating the track. This was OK but song wasn't there, when I tried to looadit it, again, took forever with no success.
So I decided to try this with Reaper and got the same result.
So I can find a good use for this certainly, but it's back to RealBand for the other stuff like style variations within a song.
Hi Andrew, This works perfectly with regard to how it used to work. I don't put the extension on and it does save it as an SEQ WITH the extension appended. No errors; with the SEQ saved on the same drive as the RealBand folder the RBBackup folder in the RealBand folder gets all the backups sequentially to the limit allowed and the oldest file flushed to Recycle. Saving on another drive does the same but the backups are stored on a local RBBackup folder at the root of that drive.
I now go back to my original song and load the SGU file as created by BB. Generate all the tracks and then click Save. I navigate to the folder where I saved that previous successful file. I don't enter an extension so I am asked for Melody and Soloist details and I click OK and it saves as an SGU, despite the fact that the dialog says saving as type SEQ.
I go back and save again, but this time I append the SEQ extension and it works just fine.
Back to RealBand and one more save, this also works fine
Another save and I get the error and the TMP will not overwrite the SEQ.
The first SEQ save didn't backup the SEQ because there was nothing to back up
The second save made a backup in RBBackup and replaced the SEQ file with the TMP
The third save tried to backup the old SEQ but for some reason couldn't and so would not replace the SEQ file with the temp.
So what is the difference between these two types?
If I'm understanding correctly, you do not experience the saving problem when you load the demo song I suggested. Can you please attach or link to an .SGU or .MGU file that you have the problem with? There may be some specific characteristic of it that is exposing this problem. You can attach it using the "File Manager".
Hi Andrew, That is indeed the case. The file that you told me to load did not cause any problems whatsoever, but this files (any quite a few others) does.
I went at the task of loading 2 copies of the plugin on their respective tracks....
There is an issue with the current version not closing bbw4 in the background. So until that is fixed, here is a solution: if you have www.autohotkey.com already installed just run the .ahk script if not you can use the compiled exe, just go to tab 2. You can also go to you Task Manager > Details tab and end task the bbw4_64.exe Just close bbw4 after or before you select an action then it will free it up for the other instance. I have reported this so hopefully there should be a fix soon.
Make sure you save regularly so if you forget to close and in stalls you can go back.
* remove the .mp4 from BB Quick Menu & Mixer-64.zip.mp4 and unzip
Thanks pipleline. The plugin looks good and I've decided to tackle it. One thing though, In RealBand, when a RealTrack has a RealChart I can get RealBand to generate some midi for the RealTrack also. Although this midi is not meant specifically to drive an instrument, it does often contain some useful stuff that can be used in DAW tracks. I'm not sure that the plugin can make use of the 'Chart' data in this way. Is that the case?
Hi Andrew, That is indeed the case. The file that you told me to load did not cause any problems whatsoever, but this files (any quite a few others) does.
Thank you for the sample file, and there is an easy fix.
The problem is that your filename has .SGU in it. While a period is valid in Windows filenames, I would suggest using a different character like _ or - as a separator, and reserve the period for the file extension.
If you save that file as is, RealBand assumes you want to save it as an .SGU (Band-in-a-Box song file), and that's why you get the dialog that allows you to choose your Melody, Soloist, and Audio tracks. And indeed, the song IS saved as an .SGU file. So just remove the .
Actually this solves the entire problem. This debacle all started when I tried to organise my songs the way I normally organise my files in Windows, by prepending the filename or folder with a number. Of course I got used to the fact that Windows ignores any period other than the final one when it looks at a filename. So if I have '3.Mysong.SGU' then Windows simply ignores that first period (or any other period included in the name).
Realband is not that agnostic to the period though. After loading '3.MySong.SGU' and generating tracks; when I come to save this as an SEQ (without specifying the extension) then RealBand already assumes the file name will be '3.MySong'. Because of the period it assumes that the extension is .MySong and saves it as an SEQ with no file extension. When I come to save this a second time I'm told that there is an unknown file extension and won't save it until I put an extension on it.
But one particularly puzzling issue occurred when, for some reason I ended up with a SGU filename that looked like this '3.MySong.SGU (includes midi).SGU'. I'm not sure how I ended up with a filename like that, but I did.
It was Andrew at PG Music who spotted this issue and steered me toward understanding the problem. When I loaded a song with this particular file name and then attempted to save it as an SEQ (without extension) the RealBand assumed I was saving 3.MySong.SGU and prompted me to include Soloist and Melody details.
The biggest problem was that RealBand would not save my SEQ after a first save. I'm sure the developers will be able to explain this easily. After my first save as an SEQ, on the subsequent save RealBand gave me an error message saying that it could not save a second time because it couldn't convert the newly generated TMP file into an SEQ.
The forum gave some good responses that were mainly related to permissions for the folder. But the first save was OK. I also tried running from a FAT32 USB drive where RB created its own RBBackup folder. The behaviour was exactly the same. But I noticed that when there was an error with the SEQ that there was also a TMP file with the same name as the previously saved SEQ file. I reasoned that this must be the TMP file that RB can't convert to an SEQ. So I deleted the SEQ renamed the TMP to SEQ and voila - it was OK.
It was Andrew from PG Music who pointed me to perhaps an issue with the backup system. I noticed there was always just one backup of a song, even though my Preferences allowed for 5. If I deleted this file and saved the SEQ file then all worked OK, but of course on the next save it failed again. My workaround for this was to set the maximum backups to 1 so that the existing backup file was moved to the recycle bin on each SEQ save. This worked fine. That was when it hit me, it was not just the .SGU, it was ANY '.' in the filename other than the extension that was getting RB's knickers in a twist. So I came in this morning and attacked all the file names and removed all '.'s except for the extensions. Now all RBs save behaviour is working is working as promulgated in the manual.
Talking of the manual, well I'm sure there will be umpteen references not to use '.' in filenames and I note that PG Music don't do this on their files.
So, when it comes down to it it's probably my fault anyway.
But nice to be able to move on.
Thanks everybody for the help and particularly Andrew at PG Music.
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