Originally Posted By: Lazarus
I've been updating BIAB for many years out of habit. I know how sophisticated some of the features are and I have thousands of styles. But I rarely use BIAB for songwriting and, when I do, I generally lose creative focus and get disappointed, in the endless search for a useable style. I spend more time now in things like EZ Keys and various UJAM drum and string programs. BIAB should be better than these because it can provide integrated styles but it is neglecting the contemporary pop and AC genres.

Don't get me wrong. I know there are very good styles and very good players on the Realtracks but, even when using the search filters, I find myself wading through Euro ooompah music and old time stuff that is no use for writing modern pop songs. There are a billion excellent jazz, country, blues and worship styles but what passes for 'Modern Pop' is a bit limited and lame. If I type in song title chart hits from the past couple of years, they are not recognised. I'm not going to wade through a thousand loops listed in alphabetical order.

This is not just a personal grumble. I think PG is missing out on a new demographic for which the program's functions are ideally suited (if they were modified in the ways I will suggest).

I recently did a course on Writing to Tracks (toplining). The backing tracks provided by companies in this business are well arranged and contemporary-sounding but you are stuck with their chord progressions which are often limited and dull dull dull! The GREAT thing about Band In A Box is that you can use whatever chords you want and the arrangement adapts to them brilliantly. If BIAB catered to this backing tracks for toplining and contemporary songwriting genre, you could corner the market and reach lots of customers under the age of 40.

Here's what I suggest you do:

1. Get someone on your staff to monitor the pop and AC charts and develop new styles based on the current hits and - most important of all - update these styles throughout the year so that a title search of current popular song will take you to styles that would be a satisfying match to that song. And then, if you make the top style the prototype style, any others linked to it are genuinely similar (no oompah or Celtic music cluttering up the list!)

2. These modern styles should have sub styles for different song sections. BIAB should make it easy to come up with a backing track for toplining, including making it easy to substitute alternative realtracks and loops that are genuinely compatible with this style.

3. Check out the sites providing tracks for toplining, like Jetracks.com, and get some of these people to help design your new pop styles.

4. Have a separate styles category for current pop chart styles. Let BIAB users know that this will be updated frequently during the year with styles for new songs that are being released. This would be better than MIDI files because the BIAB features enable you to make a fresh song. If you have to wait until the next annual update, you're going to be at least a couple of years out of date.

5. Make some video tutorials aimed at younger pop songwriters, so they don't fall asleep during all the time currently spent on introducing even more jazz styles in your current new features videos!

Please appreciate that I am trying to be constructive. I've been updating BIAB every year since it used to arrive on floppy discs. I want to love BIAB and I want a user-friendly workflow where I don't get lost in a million styles and loops that don't match what I'm looking for.

No offence intended to anyone reading this... BIAB is great for older people who want backing tracks for playing jazz guitar (or for writing non-commercial songs in old time styles). It seems to be pitched at them but it could be so much more than that. In my opinion, the 'new features' get less impressive each year. BIAB seems to be running out of steam and it's targeted at an old demographic, which is fine as far as it goes. But your program's features could offer so much to contemporary songwriters if you chose to do what it takes to appeal to them.

If I am missing something and anyone reading this is using BIAB to write contemporary pop, I would be delighted to be proved wrong and learn how they do it.

Lazarus,

You make excellent points in your well thought-out post. Every year we get more jazz...more country...more rock...and a strange assortment of oompah, polka and klezmer thrown in for good measure.

I have raised this issue in the past and been told you can most certainly create modern music with BIAB but I have never been convinced. Suggesting things like loops or other software might be helpful if the question was "how do I create modern music *without* BIAB" but of course that was not the question!

If I want a bluegrass song all I need to do is enter chords and press play. BAM, I have a really awesome complete start to a bluegrass song. Same for rock and for jazz. But not so much for more modern styles of music.

And maybe modern music is too hard to create in a program like BIAB. I know I have a hard time even describing it. But that is mainly because I am one of the old guard who still focuses a lot on rock and country stlyes, which BIAB does beautifully!

I agree with your points that, if they could figure out this puzzle, they could expand their market hugely! And if they do not I agree it is only a matter of time before they start to slide as the old guard dies off.

As someone mentioned, I suggested an exclude feature in the wishlist but I have no idea if PGM will implement that. I suggested the search allow me to simply turn off jazz and oompah permanently unless and until I somehow need them down the road! They severely clutter my search results.

And while I am commiserating/grumbling let me state again, as I have done before here, the feature that allows you to find songs similar to a certain song borders on useless. Supposedly it returns a list of styles similar to the song I requested yet I rarely find that to be the case. I just entered All Together Now, a silly Beatles song and the first suggestion was Rockabilly Jive which, to my ears is not remotely similar! The next suggestion is Skiffle jazz style. Strike two! There is a Tropical style, a Gypsy style and a bunch of Memphis Swing styles. A total of 66 styles are presented in this search. None of which seem similar to All Together Now.

Maybe classifying and describing genres is just too hard (unless it is jazz, country or rock!)