PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Using Arranger Keyboard Styles in BIAB

Have a look in Help "StyleMaker - Convert Track To C7 Chord"

I thought BIAB MIDI styles were based on a C7 chord (C E G Bb), not Cmaj7. Pretty sure it's in the documentation (I'm not at my computer, so I can't check).

jford,
You're right the patterns in the stylemaker make must be done with the C7 chord.
The manual is very clear on this point.

BIAB beginners will not waste their time to read and read again the manual...

Yes, everything in the StyleMaker must be entered as if it is a C7 chord. Dominant 7th, not major 7th.

There are also some piano, guitar and bass macros that can add some variety to each pattern. They are somewhat quirky, and it takes some experimentation to get them to work they way I like them to, but it's worth the time and effort.

Many of the arranger keyboards have more than 5 instruments, they have bass and comp parts that should always happen at the same time, and they usually only a couple of drum rolls.

At first, I tried exporting MIDI from the keyboard and importing the patterns into BiaB. They styles turned out to be too bland for my tastes.

BiaB doesn't 'think' about the styles like an arranger keyboard does, so I found it best to start by letting the style inspire me.

I play the drum part first in real-time into a MIDI sequencer and add a lot of drum rolls (drums were my first instrument).

Then the bass, also in real time, pre-planning what kind of variations I need to play and adding some specific patterns that will only appear at certain musical instances. They keyboards generally have very repetitive bass playing. For certain genres that's OK, but most bass players add some variety. I play bass too.

An advantage of playing drums first is that it sets up the groove. Any instruments added by me fall into the same groove.

Then I add whatever comp parts I need, (piano, organ, guitar, brass or whatever) also live into the MIDI sequencer. I use various MIDI controllers (keys, wind, etc.) depending on the part I'm playing.

When I'm done playing parts into the sequencer, I start importing the appropriate patterns into the BiaB StyleMaker app.

After that I test them on a number of different song type situations, and go back and revise if needed until the style comes out the way I want it in both non-busy and busy arrangements and different musical situations typical of the genre of the style I'm creating.

There are limitations to BiaB, so they often don't come out exactly as I hope they would, but as close as the limitations of BiaB will allow.

All the parts added to the sequencer are inspired by the keyboard style, instead of 6 measures repeated over and over again (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 7, 8) I can put up to 400 patterns into the StyleMaker to take advantage of BiaB and its particular strong points.

When done, it sounds very similar to the keyboard style, but isn't a carbon copy. The end result will have more variety where it needs to have variety, and hopefully that will more than make up for the things that the keyboard does that BiaB cannot do.

Insights and incites by Notes