Hello, I have never heard a song anywhere that had a melody created by the melodist, so since 2022 I have created over 1400 AABA MGU`s with a few simple RT styles.
I still have the following problems with Release 1010 under Win 11 pro: 1. "Melodist Jukebox" stops after the first song.
2. Rt styles are not loaded. Midi styles only.(manual reload helps)
3. Melodist Edit Femster "5" will not be accepted in the tempo indications. (e.g.: 105 becomes 104)
4. Change Melodist File does not open the list of soloists but the last opened one.
5. Melodist does not create usable melodies or chord progressions outside of AABA song form. (e.g.: 12 bar blues, verses with odd bars....) I was hoping that the parameter for changing the instrument might do something, but it didn't. And yes, I tried to regenerate individual parts manually.
6. None of the 217 melodists seem able to deliver a musical melody out of the box. Disabling the "change the melodist" function results in the melodies sounding less interesting, but helps to connect the offered melody fragments more quickly to usable melodies.Then you can try to reactivate them to get more interesting suggestions. Here it could be helpful if BiaB would recognize which part I am working on and only make further suggestions that make sense melodically. E.g.: I have an 8 bar chord progression, but I want to change the beginning (bar 1), then BiaB should only offer me changes that are suitable for starting the melody. For example, an 8 bar chord progression could be structured like this: Bars 1-2 = theme ; Bars 3-4 = theme variation (energy increase) with half cadence ending; Bars 5-6 = new theme; Bars 7-8 Topic ends with full cadence.
7. Super minimalist documentation. The manual says less about the functions than the popup help for the individual settings.
8. The reharmonist regularly chops up great tunes with terrible chord progressions. It seems he doesn't like to reharminate the melodist with himself.
9. It would be nice if there was a checkbox for using the Vocal Wizard function within the Melodist window.
The songs I have made contain around 700 really great ideas that are worth working on. Unfortunately, it is necessary to correct a lot manually. Some of the melodies occasionally get "ghost notes" that need to be erased. Very often the melodies have to be transposed, but the function for this is hidden deep in the menus. Right click with mouse after selecting the area to be transposed would be great, Hotkey for "Melody transpose in range" great.
I think that's enough points to test for now. What are your experiences?
Some examples i did made with the Melodist and "HalionSonic Noisy Tenor Sax" and "_Strong.STY" :
................................ 6. None of the 217 melodists seem able to deliver a musical melody out of the box.
......................................
FWIW - I have never hear a "musical melody out of the box" from any software program. Maybe there is some out there but I have never heard one write a good complete song yet. YMMV
IMHO it takes a human to write musical melodies. I should add that I have heard some non-musical melodies from humans also.
The melodist, as well as other music generating programs, are good a producing a section or two of notes that one can build melodies. That is how I use both the melodist and soloist.
I think my wife has started to show the first signs of dementia. She said she can't remember what she ever saw in me!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
................................ 6. None of the 217 melodists seem able to deliver a musical melody out of the box.
......................................
FWIW - I have never hear a "musical melody out of the box" from any software program. Maybe there is some out there but I have never heard one write a good complete song yet. YMMV
IMHO it takes a human to write musical melodies. I should add that I have heard some non-musical melodies from humans also.
The melodist, as well as other music generating programs, are good a producing a section or two of notes that one can build melodies. That is how I use both the melodist and soloist.
have you listened to some of my examples? They`re all biaB melodist songs. I love your great footnotes.
have you listened to some of my examples? They`re all biaB melodist songs.
I listened to several of the examples. In my view there is a mechanical feel to the melody and it is either predictable, or completely non-predictable. Certainly not convincing melodies (in my view).
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
hey "Audiotrack" thanks for listening. Does your criticism mean that you were able to achieve better results with the melodist? It is well considered that the examples are pure selections and not further editing of the melody parts by a human being. This means that only the melodist worked here and what went best was spared from regeneration. A comparison to human-written melodies may not be relevant (maybe not yet) I'm looking for tips and tricks to improve the results. Preferably something you can hear, of course.
Hello, I have never heard a song anywhere that had a melody created by the melodist ...
I could be completely wrong, but I've always assumed many of the PG Music demo songs were created that way. Some of the demo songs even contain very recognizable chord progressions from standards, since that is not copyrightable, with unique melodies they add. The combination IS copyrightable, and they have done so.
But I don't think we know for certain where all those melodies came from.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Hello, I have never heard a song anywhere that had a melody created by the melodist ...
I could be completely wrong, but I've always assumed many of the PG Music demo songs were created that way. Some of the demo songs even contain very recognizable chord progressions from standards, since that is not copyrightable, with unique melodies they add. The combination IS copyrightable, and they have done so.
But I don't think we know for certain where all those melodies came from.
Hi Matt, I don't have melodies for most of the demo songs. I think you have the artist performance demos in mind? Have you ever played with the melodist?
My hope was to start something like a competition here. It would be great to hear from you BiaB professionals what you can get out of the Melodist. Maybe we can use it to uncover program errors and share ways to better deal with BiaB. Just hearing "good song examples" would help me to recognize the limitations of the melodist. I have created about 700 songs with the Melodist and was surprised how high the variability of a single melodist can be. However, I am not able to predict whether further changing my results would not bring an improvement. A few sample songs would be a kind of benchmark.
So you're all invited to measure your Melodist songs against mine. For those who don't have the xpro4 pak and therefore can't use the _Strong.sty, _Popmhrt.sty is an alternative.
Please become active and surprise me with facts and share your experiences with me.
hey "Audiotrack" thanks for listening. Does your criticism mean that you were able to achieve better results with the melodist?
To be absolutely honest, I have never used the melodist (nor soloist). I only ever write my own. Incidentally, I wasn't criticizing your work, just commenting on the mechanical feel of the melodist, but I guess you know that already
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
@audiotrack, as a musician I love criticism! Preferably constructive criticism.
I'm trying to encourage a more interactive exchange of experiences here. Maybe I can motivate one or the other to participate? I think it would be great if that worked.
So everything is OK, more criticism please! That's about 20 Melodist creations, all of which were created within about 1 hour. You can probably get better results with a little more work. However, the most meaningful are the results without further manual processing! I think the effort of about 30 minutes for 2-3 AABA-form songs is manageable?
Hello Rob, Thank you for your feedback and Prosit.
Did I understand you correctly? So you use the Melodist to provide your chord progression with a suitable melody?
How satisfied are you with the performance of the program? I'm having trouble with the melodists getting a good result on forms other than AABA. Do you have a suggestion for me please?
It is never perfect. It requires some work. Looking at the melody in connection with the lyrics. Adding missing notes. Subtracting extra notes.
I look at it this way. If I had to create a melody from scratch i would spend hours adding and moving notes around. Matching them up to the lyrical needs. At the minimum the melodist gives me a starting place. Sometimes I need to try different melodist and settings.
I think some we (myself definitely included) expect to much from software. I do carpentry work and I never expect my tool box to hang a door. They are just tools I am the craftsman.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96
My experience reinforces exactly what Rob reported above.
The BIAB Melodist worked well for me, at first. But, the songs actual melody may be better consider "inspired by the BIAB Melodist" rather than written by the BIAB Melodist.
Once I heard a couple different options I settled on this Melody and began working on how to integrate my lyrics into the music. The BIAB melody, as written, is shown below and is used in the opening 8 bars of the song. After that my vocals take over the melody. The issue I had was not so much the notes themselves but rather the timeing. As you see in the picture the BIAB melody is way behind the beat. As a result when I tried to add drums and bass and sing, the off timing of the melody caused a problem. I needed to do a lot of adjustment in the midi editor.
Bottom line. I used the Melodist only as an ispiration for the melody. After that I had to created the adjustments I needed. But I was happy with the results overall.
Thank you Rob and MusicStudent for your contributions.
I apologize for my problem in expressing myself more clearly. You've already arrived at the step of producing songs. I would like to stay with the step of finding ideas.
The melodist can create chord progressions and melodies together for an RT style.
My examples above are the result with the "_Strong.STY". The sax plays a vocal part just without lyrics.
These are not complete songs! The format is more like: Intro; Verse; Chorus; 1/2 Verse; Ending
However, it is important to note that these are results in which neither the melody nor the chords have been edited! These are results produced by the melodist.
The aim was to get ideas for interesting combinations of chord progressions and melodies. That's what you can hear above. From these ideas I choose the best ones and only then do I create the song.
With this topic I would like to get and share tips for improving and understanding how the Melodist works. Maybe you think a little differently about the examples above? Please let me know.
Hi I use it sometimes for a starting point for songs and a melody when the creative well is dry!!!! not for lyrics, but phrases however if you change chords which I do. the melody creator will not make music sense and maybe the reason is, it's not following a standard progression, I am very limited in music theory perhaps there's a pool of instructions it follows. I'm sure!!! however realtracks did work in later versions.. creating chord progressions with reatracks. why not improve it!! just saying there's a lot of talented people on PG team so the medalist and chord builder I use together great working tools thanks to PG my 2 cents
AMD (TM) 5950 4.9 GHz 16Core Processor 64 bit 32 bits of ram windows 10 pro 64 bit os. sound card Antelope ZenQ guitars Ibanez 2202a 1968 les Paul Custom and Cavin ae 185 Guitar boss Gt-100,GT1000 pedal Yamaha HS8 studio monitors
Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows Special Offers End Tomorrow (January 15th, 2026) at 11:59 PM PST!
Time really is running out! Save up to 50% on Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® upgrades and receive a FREE Bonus PAK—only when you order by 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, January 15, 2026!
We've added many major new features and new content in a redesigned Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®!
Version 2026 introduces a modernized GUI redesign across the program, with updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, and a new Dark Mode option. There’s also a new side toolbar for quicker access to commonly used windows, and the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, making it easier to customize your workspace.
Another exciting new addition is the new AI-Notes feature, which can transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI. You can view the results in notation or play them back as MIDI, and choose whether to process an entire track or focus on specific parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
Upgrade your Band-in-a-Box for Windows to save up to 50% on most Band-in-a-Box® 2026 upgrade packages!
Plus, when you order your Band-in-a-Box® 2026 upgrade during our special, you'll receive a Free Bonus PAK of exciting new add-ons.
If you need any help deciding which package is the best option for you, just let us know. We are here to help!
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® Special Offers Extended Until January 15, 2026!
Good news! You still have time to upgrade to the latest version of Band-in-a-Box® for Windows® and save. Our Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® special now runs through January 15, 2025!
We've packed Band-in-a-Box® 2026 with major new features, enhancements, and an incredible lineup of new content! The program now sports a sleek, modern GUI redesign across the entire interface, including updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, a new dark mode option, and more. The brand-new side toolbar provides quicker access to key windows, while the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, creating a flexible, clutter-free workspace. We have an amazing new “AI-Notes” feature. This transcribes polyphonic audio into MIDI so you can view it in notation or play it back as MIDI. You can process an entire track (all pitched instruments and drums) or focus on individual parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
There are over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
When you order purchase Band-in-a-Box® 2026 before 11:59 PM PST on January 15th, you'll also receive a Free Bonus PAK packed with exciting new add-ons.
Upgrade to Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® today! Check out the Band-in-a-Box® packages page for all the purchase options available.
Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: The Newly Designed Piano Roll Window
In this video, we explore the updated Piano Roll, complete with a modernized look and exciting new features. You’ll see new filtering options that make it easy to focus on specific note groups, smoother and more intuitive note entry and editing, and enhanced options for zooming, looping, and more.
Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: AI Stems & Notes - split polyphonic audio into instruments and transcribe
This video demonstrates how to use the new AI-Notes feature together with the AI-Stems splitter, allowing you to select an audio file and have it separated into individual stems while transcribing each one to its own MIDI track. AI-Notes converts polyphonic audio—either full mixes or individual instruments—into MIDI that you can view in notation or play back instantly.
Bonus PAK and 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®
With your version 2026 for Windows Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition or PlusPAK purchase, we'll include a Bonus PAK full of great new Add-ons for FREE! Or upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for only $49 to receive even more NEW Add-ons including 20 additional RealTracks!
These PAKs are loaded with additional add-ons to supercharge your Band-in-a-Box®!
This Free Bonus PAK includes:
The 2026 RealCombos Booster PAK:
-For Pro customers, this includes 27 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For MegaPAK customers, this includes 25 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For UltraPAK customers, this includes 12 new RealStyles.
MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
Playable RealTracks Set 5
RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
Android Band-in-a-Box® App (included)
Looking for more great add-ons, then upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49 and you'll get:
20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums with 20 RealStyle.
FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
One of our representatives will be happy to help you over the phone. Our hours of operation are from
6:00AM to 6:00PM PST (GMT -8) Monday thru Friday, and 8:00AM to 4:00PM PST Saturday. We are closed Sunday. You can also send us your questions via email.
One of our representatives will be happy to help you on our Live Chat or by email. Our hours of operation are from
6:00AM to 6:00PM PST (GMT -8) Monday thru Friday; 8:00AM to 4:00PM PST (GMT -8) Saturday; Closed Sunday.
Dansk
Deutsch - Windows
Español
Français - Windows
Italiano - Windows
Nederlands
Polski
Português
Svenskt
русский
Japanese
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Korean