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.
It takes courage for a man to admit his wife was wrong.
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 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, 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 Professional & Windows 11, Sonar Platinum, Cakewalk by Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M Monitors, 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?
I usually use the melodist in the following manner.
1. Create a chord sheet to my liking.
2. Add my lyrics (bar based.) (Pop open a beer)
3. Test a few melodist I think will sound decent. (Drink second beer)
4. Open the piano roll and move a few notes around to adjust the melody more to what I hear in my head. (Have my second beer, no wait third)
5. Shorten, lengthen, add, and delete notes till they fit my lyrics better (Hate it and start over.) (bink another dreer)
6. Rinse and repeat till I get something I like.
7. Take a nap I suddenly feel tired
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2025, Realband, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 9 32c , Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app.
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 2025, Realband, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 9 32c , Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app.
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
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We've just released XPro Styles PAK 10 for Mac & Windows Band-in-a-Box version 2025 (and higher) with 100 brand new RealStyles, plus 28 RealTracks and RealDrums!
Few things are certain in life: death, taxes, and a brand spankin’ new XPro Styles PAK! In this, the 10th edition of our XPro Styles PAK series, we’ve got 100 styles coming your way! We have the classic 25 styles each from the rock & pop, jazz, and country genres, and rounding out this volume's wildcard slot is 25 styles in the Praise & Worship genre! A wide spanning genre, you can find everything from rock, folk, country, and more underneath its umbrella. The included 28 RealTracks and RealDrums can be used with any Band-in-a-Box® 2026 (and higher) package.
Here’s just a small sampling of what you can look forward to in XPro Styles PAK 10: Soft indie folk worship songs, bumpin’ country boogies, gospel praise breaks, hard rockin’ pop, funky disco grooves, smooth Latin jazz pop, bossa nova fusion, western swing, alternative hip-hop, cool country funk, and much more!
Special offers until December 31st, 2025!
All the XPro Styles PAKs 1 - 10 are on sale for only $29 ea (Reg. $49 ea), or get them all in the XPro Styles PAK Bundle for only $149 (reg. $299)! Order now!
XPro Styles PAKs require Band-in-a-Box® 2025 or higher and are compatible with ANY package, including the Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, and Audiophile Edition.
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Xtra Styles PAK 21 for Mac & Windows Band-in-a-Box version 2025 (and higher) is here with 200 brand new RealStyles!
We're excited to bring you our latest Xtra Styles PAK installment—the all new Xtra Styles PAK 21 for Band-in-a-Box version 2025 (and higher)!
Rejoice, one and all, for Xtra Styles PAK 21 for Band-in-a-Box® is here! We’re serving up 200 brand spankin’ new styles to delight your musical taste buds! The first three courses are the classics you’ve come to know and love, including offerings from the rock & pop, jazz, and country genres, but, not to be outdone, this year’s fourth course is bro country! A wide ranging genre, you can find everything from hip-hop, uptempo outlaw country, hard hitting rock, funk, and even electronica, all with that familiar bro country flair. The dinner bell has been rung, pickup up Xtra Styles PAK 21 today!
In this PAK you’ll discover: Energetic folk rock, raucous train beats, fast country boogies, acid jazz grooves, laid-back funky jams, a bevy of breezy jazz waltzes, calm electro funk, indie synth pop, industrial synth metal, and more bro country than could possibly fit in the back of a pickup truck!
Special offers until December 31st, 2025!
All the Xtra Styles PAKs 1 - 21 are on special for only $29 each (reg $49), or get all 21 PAKs for $199 (reg $399)! Order now!
Note: The Xtra Styles require the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition of Band-in-a-Box®. (Xtra Styles PAK 21 requires the 2025 or higher UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition. They will not work with the Pro or MegaPAK version because they need the RealTracks from the UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, or Audiophile Edition.
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