PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows How to transpose frozen tracks in BIAB 2023?

<< But I'm sure it's my fault. Would you be so nice to nudge me into the right direction? Once you have an APT, how do you go back to its original RT status? Because that is the whole point: once you have a APT, or a transposed APT, is there a way to revert it to its original RT status? >>

It's not really a fault but just inexperience with a little known but very powerful option. So, how do you turn your steak back into a side of beef as MoultiPass asks? Here's the way to revert an APF to its original RT status:

RT click on the track to reveal the drop down menu
From the drop down menu, select and click Track Actions\Kill Audio and OK out of the window
The APF and orange color will disappear and the original RT will display
Click generate/play button to generate a new RealTrack -- The track is blank at this point so, play will not generate a new track. Generate/Play button (F4) is required.

Originally Posted by DrDan

Good discussion topic. I only wish this was better understood by all, including me.
Here is what GPT says.

Almost good information but look closely and the Chat GPT is referring to Artist Performance Tracks that are prerecorded tracks by professionals for PG Music - Not a user created Artist Performance File. They are not the same.

They are the same but different. They are created exactly the same but serve different purposes to BIAB projects. Artist Performance Files are utilized in projects more as a UserTrack. They were introduced in 2011 along with the Record Audio feature. At that time, Legacy Tracks could not contain audio. The APF was how audio files could be converted so that any Legacy Track (except drums if I recall) could contain audio. This freed up the Legacy Tracks to be used to record new Midi or RealTracks and provide SGU files with more than just the 7 available tracks and single audio track. The Audio Track, while the only track for recording audio into BIAB, the recorded audio could be converted to an Artist Performance File and moved to another available Legacy Track resulting the one audio track could be used multiple times in a project.

The BIAB Mixer functions as a MultiTrack Recorder and back in the old times, audio engineers/mixer/ producers would use a 2nd recorder to bounce tracks to so that more tracks could be recorded than the main recorder had. For instance, a four track like the Beatles used in their early records, while recorded on a 4 track recorder, engineers used a 2nd recorder to mix and bounce the original 4 tracks to a track on another recorder and free up channels by erasing the audio from those tracks and recording new material. The Artist Performance File served the same function in the BIAB Mixer.

As I noted Artist Performance Files are not considered Artist Performance Tracks but a form of UserTracks. Here's what PG Staff say about Artist Performance Files in the UserTrack Forum:
<< -----
7. Artist Performance Files.

These are audio files, that you put on a track, that can also have the MIDI transcription of it. People hear the audio, and see the MIDI in notation/guitar tab etc. For example, if you are a great bluegrass fiddle player, you could put your songs in this format. People can listen to your real playing, see the notes on screen, slow them down etc. - all inside Band-in-a-Box where they can do other things like solo/mute other tracks, mix them etc. >>

Artist Performance Files are audio files saved as either WAV or M4a files and are associated with the BIAB SGU file of the same name. When a Track from the BIAB Mixer is converted into an Artist Performance File, the converted file is automatically saved in the same folder as the SGU file and the converted file has the same name as the SGU file and will open whenever the SGU file is opened.

As I said Biab can be made to do this without creating any wav files, the transpose amount is just set to the source wav/wma file section in the frozen SGU:

Transpose Frozen Tracks

Thank you Charlie
I tried your suggestion. I have a feeling right now that this area of BIAB is buggy, and that should be addressed. The reason I'm saying this is that I tried going from frozen to APT with another song (not the one that gave me problems yesterday) and I got the same problem that I reported in my previous posts (no transformation of a frozen RT into an APT, rendering notification stuck in the middle of the screen). That makes it 2 songs out of 3. I think PGM should be looking at this (the process of transforming a frozen track into a APT, it seems buggy to me).

So, I tried again with a brand new song, built from scratch, just to test what you suggested. It worked as you said. Yay.
But ... there's a but.
Now, I really don't want be annoying, at this point I'm insisting on this feature (or lack thereof) just as a way to suggest a potential improvement for PGM, nothing else. It's not a crucial feature, at all. I'm not bothered by this, at all. I'm just trying to help out for future developments.
Once you go back from APT to RT you have to regenerate, as you rightly said, because once you "kill" the audio, the track is empty. Well, that defies the purpose of it all (or, actually, half the purpose). What I have in mind is not just going back to a RT status (which is half of the story), but going back to the specific combination of riffs / audio segments that constituted my frozen track. Now, again, this may look like reconstituting the beef from a steak, but for the reasons I explained above, I don't think it is necessarily so. I think BIAB has all the information to do, potentially, just that. I'll explain again what the advantage of this would be, maybe for those who didn't follow this thread or never thought of this possibility.

1. Let's say you have a RT that you carefully, painstakingly "designed" by using the partial regeneration feature, or the multi-riff feature (truly wonderful features, by the way). You designed the perfect solo part with all the phrases that you like. Now you freeze it of course, cause you don't want to nullify all your work by accidentally regenerate
2. Days later, or months later, you realize that you need to transpose it, because your singer needs a little help. Or maybe you want to change the tempo a little bit. Whatever. You can't do that with a frozen track. What you need to do is to transform your frozen RT into an APT and that allows you transpose as much as you want, just like Charlie described. That's all fine and well (provided that you don't encounter bugs, like I did).
3. This is half of the story. The other half is ... let's say that, at this point, you want to change just a couple of bars of your beautiful solo, without losing every other part of it. You can't. You can go back to RT status, like Charlie suggested, but now you have to regenerate the whole track. Your well designed solo is all gone, if you go back to RT status. Yes, you can rebuild it piece by piece, like you did the first time, but it's pretty annoying to redo everything that you already did in the past. Not the end of the world, obviously, but pretty annoying. Maybe you don't remember all the beautiful phrases that you originally found (obviously there's workarounds: you could use two tracks for the same solo: one with old phrases that you want to keep, while muting the phrases you want to change, and one with only the new phrases, generated from the same RT, loaded in this second track ... it works obviously, but it's not very elegant, and it can become cumbersome when you want to change more and more things over time)

In summary: either you have the flexibility to change parts of your frozen track (but you can't transpose it or change tempo etc) or you have the flexibility to transpose and change tempo if you go from frozen to APT (but you lose the ability to change parts of the performance: at that point, either you change everything or you change nothing). This seems the current state of affairs to me. And, it seems to me, that this limits somehow the wonderful flexibility that the multi-riff and partial regeneration features potentially provide.
Again: this is not too important. I'm not claiming that it is. There are many more important issues or potential improvements to be made, for sure. It is just another suggestion for PGM. Hope it helps.
Thank you again Charlie.

You are not being annoying Mr. Thomas. I applaud you sticking with it and curiosity to know more. You're correct through points 1 and 2.

Briefly about point 3, it's possible to retain an Artist Performance File audio, restore it as a RealTrack for editing and not lose any material. Meaning a APF can revert back to a RealTrack without regenerating new material and losing that well designed solo. BIAB provides the flexibility to change parts of the performance and retain what you want to save.

The attached screenshots show the WAV form as it appears in each step of converting and restoring the track from a RT to a APF and restored back to a RT.
I've reached the maximum attachments with this post so I will add a screen shot of the original and restored track side by side in a separate post.

Screen Shot of the original RT and the restored RT after conversion to an APF and back to a RT.

Charlie thanks again. But I'm afraid I miss one step. How do you get from the empty track (after the "kill audio" procedure) to the end result, the restored track, identical to the original one? Thanks

Press the Play button.

Ok Charlie. Thanks again. But it doesn't work me. I'm more than one way. I'm just giving up. It's not so important, and 2024 is at our door so ... we'll see if there's improvement in this department. What I found (in my case):
1. it works exactly as you say only if you don't touch the APT. If you transpose it, for example, and go back to the original RT as you suggested, the original composition (the original riffs) is lost. You have to regenerate. But, if you can't touch the APT, what's the point of going from unfrozen to APT? I don't see the point, really. I'll just stick with the frozen track. But that's not all ...
2. Sometimes, when I go from frozen to APT (without touching anything, no transposing, nothing) the volume of the track is drastically decreased. So much so that even when setting the APT volume to maximum is not loud enough. Very odd.
3. Sometimes, when I go from frozen to APT, the whole track is moved ahead of some significant time (like more than a bar), so that the APT track is completely misaligned with everything else. Very, very odd.
Again, I'm not wasting any more of my time or anybody's time on this. As I said, it's not important. It might be useful that PGM takes notice that the APT transformation seems to be a buggy, buggy feature. At least in my case, in my system, with my songs. Your experience may be different, I don't know. I'll just live with frozen tracks (which seem to work fine) and, if I need to transpose something, I'll just use an external DAW or an audio edit app.
Thank you for all your help, anyway.

Drag it to WAV then drag in an empty track then transpose:
EDIT: this is just an easy way than messing around converting to APTs.

Thanks for sticking with the process as long as you have. Regarding your points; In point 1, the first six words up to your bold 'only' reflects my experience with Artist Performance Files. I've used Artist Performance Files since 2014-15 era and never experienced the issues from all of point one after the bold only - through the entirety of points 2 and 3. I can't speculate to why you get results different from mine. I don't believe it's buggy for no other reason that as much as I use the feature, I would have run into the same errors you have and I haven't. My demonstrations prepared for you were all quick and easy one take renders no different than all other times I've done it in the past. Musocity's copy/paste method also works and I believe a better option than exporting to a DAW.

Charlie
I have no reason to doubt what you're saying. I'm sure that the APT is a very solid feature. Still, I did experience those bugs that I mentioned. Most likely there's something wrong with my system or my installation, who knows. Good thing I'm not going to use APTs, as it seems that they do not allow to do what I was looking for. Anyway, I just upgraded to BIAB 2024. Maybe the fresh install will fix some things for me. And I'm excited about the new features. Life is good, in December :-)

No problem sir. I'm sorry we couldn't get it to work for you. Don't know why as the program can work like you want it to but seems to have a mind of its own. Maybe PG Staff will see this and prepare a patch to get it working the same for everyone. Enjoy 2024 and the new features.

How to transpose frozen tracks in BIAB 2024

Select Edit Riffs, select all riffs to transpose:

I've put in a feature request to add this, on account of how popular this particular forum thread is.

HOWEVER

Please keep in mind that transposing a frozen track would require more pitch-shifting up or down, and pitch shifting more than a semitone or two tends to sound weird and glitchy. This is the nature of the beast, as literally every pitch shifting engine that exists will break down at a point.

If you use Avoid Transpositions in the song settings this will give a better range rather than adding to something that already has +2 semitones.

Correct, however it'll also give you less variation in the riffs BB can use to generate your song with - bit of a double edged sword.