PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist Module for handling MIDI stems from Midi styles > Midi User tracks. Look Ma, I can finally USE them

Proposition is to use stems of existing MIDI styles as tracks.
Existing method is working, but workflow is simply absurd.

I propose a non-modal module (meaning you can do other things in arrangement similar to new Partial Regen)
In that module you will have curated list of MIDI stems derived from PG midi styles and others*, that you can audition in the context of existing arrangement (chord sheet), using selectable internal synth, which could use PG branded HQ sounds or directly through Default or selected plugin on a particular track. Placing desired stem to any empty track. Since it could be non modal, you can continue audition other stems and placing them on other tracks, without closing out of that module.

A good start would be pianos and other keys as they can be easily re-voiced to many other instruments. Later list of these stems could be expanded to other instruments found in MIDI styles.

A user should be able to save pulled stem as a User track (not rendered audio!) to be used with any other composition.

It seems at one point PG team started tackling the idea, coming up with "Presets" in Custom Midi dialog, but that is still very raw, with those abra cadabra names and string search madness, no preview and other unintuitive workflow issues.

The existing PG MIDI content is huge (I am not talking about Super Midi). So what I am proposing is not something from science fiction. The idea is to be able to use existing content with ease. As of now, it feels that MIDI content is simply lost for most people.


Here is a video demoing existing workflow for using / extracting stems. Sorry a bit raw, I am not a content maker


And here is a basic idea sketch for the module:

Have a look here and see if you get any ideas:
http://musicdevelopments.com/fyler.html




File contents preview

Not just metadata but MIDI files, audio waveforms and image thumbnails can be displayed with zooming. One-click playback of MIDI and audio files. Drag any MIDI tracks directly to your DAW.

Musocity... looks nice. Ideas, sure. I would rather see condensed simpler filtered picker similar to ones found in Halion, Synthmaster and many others.

#1 Task: The work must be done to sift through the jungle of PGmusic MIDI styles to find better stems.
A good start, in my opinion would be extract 300-400 usable piano and related stems from styles, rename, index them etc.
The good news, this doesn't require much knowledge in programming, just a pair of good ears, so even a PGmusic intern can do this kind of work.

My main issue is this. Most of us own the content, it is there! But almost no one uses it, simply because the workflow is absolutely awkward.

Okay that's all coming back to me now.

If I take bb\Data\CustomMIDIPResets.txt and add the rest of the instruments from all the other midi .STY to it then make it into a proper csv that can be sorted in the floating picker/browser.
It would preview the the midi by using it's patch with the default synth and playing back the midi contained in the .STY as a 4 Bar Preview.
So if it's what you want it would then generate up that instrument in the chosen track.

The first instrument in the CustomMIDIPResets.txt is

Synth, Alternative Rock A-B Ev 170 Any$altrock1$strings$103

Memo: Alternative rock even 8ths feel. 5 instruments: acoustic guitar, bass, drums & high synth at A. Add distorted electric guitar at B. T=150-190 -Examples: How You Remind Me, Semicharmed Life, Genre "Intensity" Score=70/100
ALTROCK1.STY. Alternative Rock 1 Style
All MIDI. Quintet. Tempo=170 (150-190)
Instruments: M-Finger Electric Bass, M-Distorted Rock Guit, M-Acoustic Guitar, M-Echo Sweep
M9 Room Drum Kit
M34: Finger Electric Bass
M31: Distorted Rock Guitar
M26: Acoustic Guitar
M103: Echo Sweep

I'm thinking it would be easier to batch extract the instruments from the midi STY to the CustomMIDIPResets.txt but maybe these have been manually named ? You wouldn't want to go through them all manually.

Trombone, Simple Root Ev 100 Any$Brass_44$guitar$58

Memo: This Style will emulate a brass quintet playing in 4/4 time. T=50-200 -Examples: Fanfares, Rule Britannia,, Genre "Intensity" Score=10/100
BRASS_44.STY. Simple Brass Quintet 4/4 Style
All MIDI. Duo. Tempo=120 (60-180)
Instruments: M-Trumpet, M-Trombone
M57: Trumpet
M58: Trombone

There are tools that preview instruments in Yamaha prs sty styles, I can't remember if JJazzLab will do that and import the separate tracks from different styles.

I just had a look a the keyboard styles in JJazzLab and it's much the same, it has the style name and basic instrument names, they don't use 8 character names anymore for the keyboard styles.
Modern Pop Ballad.T173.prs
Mod Orch Ballad.T173.STY
Big Band Shuffle.T157.STY

After going all through this how it works now with the Custom Midi Dialog, it just needs all to be in one floating picker that you browse the styles and each style will display the contained tracks that you can select and preview without going in and out of jail dialogs, if it's what you like it will generate that instrument into the chosen track and allow you to choose another track and another style instrument without going in/out of jails. A floating compact trimmed down version of the current style picker that just shows midi styles.

Musocity, your last paragraph is a rephrasing of what I requested. The mock drawing I included is a drawing of a picker. A "floating" module/ picker. I was too lazy to fill it with example content.

The extraction of midi stems in bulk, that part In will leave to PGmusic. Maybe they already have them separated. The work is to curate the list. There are many junky styles, with just simple chord slaps. But there are others which are great. I would prefer a much smaller list of stems that are good-great, rather than thousands of things that you will need a showel to go through.

See attached screenshot.

My question is, when select a yellow MIDI for a track, what is the difference between "Select MIDI Instrument (Patch)" and "Select Custom MIDI for this track"?

They both seem to do the same thing: Assign a yellow MIDI to your track.

Another question is: If you don't like part of the yellow MIDI, can you do a partial regen?

Unfortunately, Alt+F8 and MultiRiff features only work on green RealTracks, not yellow MIDI tracks.

Musicvanillin,
I cheer your strive to learn, however your post belongs in a non-wish section since it is unrelated to the wish.
You will most likely get your answers in the Windows section of the forum. Kindly, try to keep focused discussion topics within that subject. Thank you.

Rustyspoon,

I can copy and paste my questions to the Windows forum, but the two questions I asked are based on after watching the YouTube video you shared in this thread.

I don't think many people in the Windows forum have watched your video.

Could you at least share some thoughts on my questions? If you don't want post it here, you can private message me.

I want to know why in the video, you choose "Select Custom MIDI Style", not "Select MIDI Patch". Any benefits?

"Select patch" as name implies selecting a patch-SOUND. As I understand that is for selecting GM based sounds when you already have things happening in Piano roll.

Custom Midi- selects (pulls) a MIDI segment/performance stem from PG MIDI style catalog.

Custom MIDI style? I just learned something. I don’t recall that in the documentation. I wonder if it has always been there, since the 1990s.

Rustyspoon,

I have watched 3 of your videos in the past, one for Alt+F8 non modal, one for exporting MIDI from BiaB, one for this custom select MIDI suggestion. Very informative and demonstrative videos. Short but helpful!

I hope PG Music could consider hiring you to make more short tips & tricks videos like this in the future.

It would be beneficial to everyone in the forum.

That’s a great suggestion. And I love vendor videos that are short and cover only one topic (as long as the collection of videos is well indexed).

Same here.

"I hope PG Music could consider hiring you to make more short tips & tricks videos like this in the future."
Ha ha. that's funny. I do agree that indexed video manual should be in place. At least to cover basics.

But boys, c'mon. So far it is this and that... Do you see the what I am talking about? PG MIDI content is Ali Baba's cave. We have it - We need to be able to use it. I don't believe my request is a rocket science. Do you see the potential?

> A good start, in my opinion would be extract 300-400 usable piano and related stems from styles, rename, index them etc.

The custom MIDI feature uses any track from another style. For example, if might use the Freddie guitar comping track from a a jazfred.sty. That midi track plays actual guitar voicings, and they change in the style of the famous 4-in-the-bar comping style used by big band guitarists.

To use, it you need to choose jazfred.sty, and select the guitar track.

You have requested “extracting stems from styles”. There isn’t a single MIDI loop that would represent the guitar track generated by Freddie.sty. The patterns aren’t just mapped to chord tones - there are methods that play differently over different chords, different parts of the form etc.

If you extracted a few bars and just did a mapping to chord tones, it wouldn’t sound like the guitar part in the Freddie style, and wouldn’t even be playing real guitar voicings. It would sound robotic and have lost its musicality.
‘Would you want us to replace a MIDI supertrack with a single MIDI loop that you could map to chord tones? That would also sound bad. And nothing as good as the actual midi supertrack. And the same reasoning applies to the midi tracks from midi styles.

Likely what is needed is the existing method (custom midi tracks) to be enhanced with better auditioning to choose what track/style you want. And maybe a way to generate part of a track as a one time action.

I could be wrong I will see what Rusty says but I think he wants the whole style track (stem) but an easier way to preview and choose them.
I originally thought he was talking about creating midi sections like EZKeys to drag in.

Peter,
thank you for replying! Probably I was not clear enough of the proposal. Kindly find couple of minutes to watch:

OK. This thread was supposed to be a fun read of Misha saying "Open Sesame" to the MIDI treasures hidden in BiaB. But now it's getting a bit technical here.

Can someone please help me understand what Peter Gannon was saying in his last post? There's some quite juicy stuff going on there I'm still trying to grasp.


In BiaB, there are two methods of inserting yellow MIDI to a track. One way is to insert MIDI super track, then in the dialog box select a yellow MIDI, not a blue MIDI. The other way is the method of discussed in this thread, select custom MIDI style, then select a stem from that style.

So, did Peter mean, each method mentioned above is accessing to different yellow MIDI database? For yellow MIDI, BiaB has two different database collections?

Did Peter also mean, some yellow MIDI doesn't change based on chords?


Did Peter mean, currently in BiaB, you can not partial regen a yellow/blue MIDI track?

If you like the MIDI track but want to regen only a few bars and keep the rest, you can't do that?

Misha, try this.

1. Open a blank SGU.

2. Load a yellow MIDI style.

3. Solo each MIDI track and audition.

4. Find the MIDI track you like, then use "Copy/Move Track" command, move that MIDI track to a utility track. Or export that MIDI track.

5. Select style again, this time select a RealStyle of your choice.

6. Once the new style is loaded, the yellow MIDI should still be there on the utility track.

Let me know if it works.

MusicVillain...
I am not asking for workarounds. I am sorry, I believe you are missing the whole point of proposal.

Have ever tried arrangers or backing modules and assembled your custom styles?
You have a pool of loops/stems and are able to audition just those separated parts out of the style they initially belonged to and re-assemble your own style. The pool of separated from styles instrumental lines, that is what the request is for.