Hey Playin, you are absolutely correct, if you're trying to do exact covers of famous tunes Real Tracks/Drums are not the way to go. Remember I pointed out to you they are audio files. Your EZ Drummer works strictly with midi, not audio. There's no way to break down an audio file to single notes or drum hits so you can write out your own part. Also your comment about jazz being somwhow easier to deal with is not correct. All of the famous jazz tunes have the same kind of drum punches/fills and other song specific hooks in them that the pop tunes do. Just listen to Night in Tunisia, Joy Spring, Maiden Voyage or any other classic jazz tune, you'll hear it. Either genre can be faked by simply setting up some groove tracks and start jammin along. Heck, I did 25 or 6 to 4 with a drum machine as a trio a few years ago. The basic rock beat was great but of course no snare hits at the end of each phrase but the guitar player hit those crunch chords and sang the vocal, the sax player and I did the horn lines and the audience danced their butts off. We still conveyed the impression of what the tune was but it certainly was not an exact cover. It's really only us players who care if those exact parts are in there or not, the audience could care less in most cases.
Want to know what we did at the casino last Sunday? We went from doing a rock & roll medly consisting Boot Scootin Boogie, I Saw Her Standing There, some Elvis and a shuffle blues that we played live to suddenly doing a killer midi file of In The Mood. It's a full big band arrangement and our third guy also plays trumpet so he stepped out front and did the lead trunpet lines and solo's and the sax was just playing along. It was great and the crowd loved it. The energy was good so we did another midi of Beat It. Not too many groups will go from Boot Scootin Boogie to In The Mood to Beat It. That kind of versatility is what sells at least around here. I'm not trying to brag here, just making the point if you need an exact cover just play a midi file, why reinvent the wheel? They are readily available but I wouldn't want to play midi's for a whole gig, where's the fun in that?
In your case since you're not doing this for gigs and you don't have a band then Biab really is the best game in town even if it's not perfect. What a lot of us do at home is to set up a good midi file in Real Band of your target song. You can do a lot by replacing most but not all of the drum track with an appropriate Real Drum part but keeping the best song specific parts played by your EZ Drummer. You can also replace the majority of a guitar part with a Real Track but maybe keep some midi guitar hooks. Real Band gives you 48 tracks to play with, you're not restricted to just a few like with with Biab.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 07/22/10 10:57 AM.
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