Band in a Box is the meat and potato of music production, no doubt. However, even the best steak, needs pepper, vinegar, mustard and garlic, to spice things up. The spice here is the external segments of MIDI & Audio.

The question is, how to deal with MIDIs & Audios in a professional way?

First thing first, let's be clear, we are talking about using BiaB only, with no DAWs involved. The whole purpose is to use BiaB to gen/regen green tracks back and forth many times throughout the production process, without locking things into a rendered audio then import to DAW.

Second, all MIDIs in this discussion are referring to single instrument MIDI (not the multi combined one), to make things simple. For example, a monophonic MIDI file contains a single track of solo guitar notes, with no other instruments present in the file.

Here're a few advanced questions need some expert input.


Question #1 - Accurately Insert
Say, I have a half bar drum fill MIDI, needs to be accurately inserted to beat 3 of bar 4. What is the best practice to accurately drag/drop/snap this MIDI to the grid in the piano roll of BiaB?

Question #2 - Switch Between Append/Overwrite
Say, I have several different 4 bar drum MIDI loops. I first drag one loop to bar 1, listen to it, if I don't like it, I want to drag another loop to bar 1 to overwrite/replace it. If I like it, I want to drag a new loop to bar 5 while keep bar 1 to bar 4 unchanged. How can I switch between overwriting and appending to existing MIDI in the piano roll?

Question #3 - Import CC Events
Say, I have a piano MIDI riff with CC64 sustain pedal event. Or a guitar solo MIDI with Pitch Bend event. How can I insert the MIDI event to the desired position in the piano roll in the meanwhile keep MIDI notes and event synced after importing?

Question #4 - Position Accuracy
Say, I have an 8 bar bassline audio in WAV / MP3 format, needs to be inserted and accurately aligned to the beginning of bar 32 grid. In the Audio Edit / Waveform window, what is the most accurate way of achieving this?

Question #5 - Single Mixer Track
Say, I have a one bar reverse cymbal sound effect in WAV / MP3 format, needs to be inserted to bar 4, bar 8, bar 12, bar 16... etc. How can I have the same audio duplicated and inserted to different locations of the song, but also being routed to a single mixer track, so I can control the volume with one slider. What if I have several different cymbal audio files, can they still be inserted to different locations but being connected to the same mixer track?


That's all the questions. I believe it is a crime to use BiaB as an amateur karaoke generation tool. That's discrimination and bigotry.

BiaB deserves its honor and respect as a Grammy nominated technology milestone in the human history of music.

A Canadian music producer, singer songwriter, composer, and professional guitarist.