PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic BiaB White Paper (May 2024)

You and me both brother!

And after 6 ficken years my energy and enthusiasm has dropped 60% while the Plugin has gone nowhere
but other developers have advanced with great software/iPad and Plugins and RealTracks Live Arranger keyboards and modules, because they listened.
But PG...
"They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will"

Everyone seems to have a DAW that they like and use.
ALL the Reaper examples are because I CAN open an SGU directly in Reaper I CAN'T DO THAT WITH ANY OTHER DAW ON THE PLANET EARTH !
The whole idea of the PLUGIN is get the generate code out of the old delphi into JUCE C++ while cleaning up all the old limitations that hold it back, into ANY WIN, LIN, MAC DAW, iPad or Android.
This will give the same as I demo in that nasty horrible Reaper in your favorite DAW.

Wake up guys, other developers are writing it on the wall.

Nowadays I dunno which is more tiresome...yearly BIAB updates that never quite get finished or the incessant droning about Reaper and C++ and old guard and on and on and on. If I were PGM I'd have probably closed this forum, cleared the decks and required everyone interested to sign up again with new guidelines for conversations! I guess that's why I don't have a forum!

FWIW, I think the BIAB White Paper idea is a good one and the contributors have done something positive with it.

Forget Reaper Derangement Syndrome you will now have Logic Derangement Syndrome
look out guys it's gonna getcha !
I'm gonna start posting lots of Logic.

I like this concept! Additions like this to BiaB would be fantastic.

These might come in handy Mario:
https://help.apple.com/pdf/logicpro/en_US/logic-pro-user-guide.pdf

A quick comparison of music tools that have chord tracks. I only show this to promote a normalization of terms and paradigms.

Although you may not have thought of it this way, but BIAB was the first tool to have a Chord track where musicians followed it. Now there's more competition in that space.

Session players Is a good name for a musician playing a particular instrument.
I've always thought that BIAB should use that analogy more predominantly. It has recorded over 100 real musicians playing in thousands of instrument styles/phrases. It would help the company and new users to think of it that way as opposed to made-up terms such as real tracks, real drums or super midi tracks.

Logic pro is the first in the industry to have machine learning session players where in contrast BIAB has recorded live session players for two decades.

Rather than having a never-ending database of tens of thousands of styles to weed through, let the customers think more about the instruments that they want to use track by track to create their style.

BIAB styles are a good starting point for people looking for a traditional sound.
However, I see the industry, thus customers, focusing more on Instruments and Session players for their next track.

This would cause a pivot in the Hierarchy with more emphasis on the Instrument and style of playing it (swing/shuffle / tempo / note duration, syncopation, pushes, emphases, in pocket/ahead of pocket) but could greatly improve the process of creating music if done clean and proper.

Food for thought...

More LDS:

The Logic Chord track
In a Logic Pro project, you can access the Chord track in the global tracks. You can add chords to the Chord track and have all the Session Players in the project follow them, playing in sync with each other. You can add chord progressions to the Chord track, and create chord groups that you can copy or loop to reuse the same sequence of chords in different parts of the project.



Region chords
Session Player regions can contain region chords. You can add and edit region chords, and you can choose a chord progression for a Session Player region.

When a Session Player region contains region chords, it follows those region chords rather than the chords on the Chord track. You can also have a Session Player region follow the Chord track instead of its region chords. You can copy and paste chords between regions, paste chords from the Chord track to a region, and paste region chords to the Chord track.

I suspect that this is actually not correct. Have you ever tried opening an SGU song in RealBand?

Yes, been there, done that:
Import Frozen SGU Tracks Utility Audio Tracks Missing
Improved DAW integration

+1

Logic’s session players are pretty amazing. Would love to have some of those features in BIAB.

Too many BIAB styles. Overwhelming. The ability to significantly modify the players instead is a nice approach.

Logic’s session musicians sound like real players, NOT midi musicians. Arm them with high quality sound modules (ToonTrack, NI, etc) and you have something that sounds very much like BIAB real tracks. That is worth checking out.

If and when AAPL delivers a set of basic styles and a better chord entry interface it will have a serious contender to BIAB. Its not there yet,imo.

I have spent so much time here trying hard to improve things while other software now seems to be way ahead in the game.

What I have been saying is that there are too many "different" instruments.
Rather than listing something as a "Clean Electric Guitar"
it should be "Fender Electric Guitar" "Telecaster Electric Guitar"
they should all be recorded "DI" on the same instrument, same levels
forget recording with FX this gives too many that won't match a change in pattern
so, all these guitars below can be put on the same track as changes in style/pattern that will be seamless as they will all be using the same FX, even changing from rhythm to soloist
Then some intelligence matching can be used to find the substyle/variation for that instrument.

I even made up a UserTrack for this very reason
Multi Variations UserTracks Feedback ????? [Resolved]
but things are very slow around here to catch on.

MC, the reason some resist you is because not everyone uses or likes or needs Reaper, and showing how to do things in Reaper just frustrates those who do not care about reaper. Do whatever you feel like doing post what you want, but you have to admit at least to yourself when you post 20 straight posts on a new thread and NOONE responds it is a clue as to what others think. We don't dismiss your contribution. They are helpful at times. But at your own words you are exhausted from it. So, for your own sake take a break. You say BiaB is way behind the game, but most of us see that it is still light years ahead, and the others are just now starting to catch up. Some new ideas like Logic 11 is cool but it only does so much and will require growth of it's own. Some of your suggestions have played a part in the process, but you are not the ultimate authority on the subject. Every last one of us have played a part, and every last one of us use BiaB, our favorite DAW, pet Apps, useful Plugins in a different way for different reasons. PGM has to take into consideration their entire customer base, and not just those who want to do what you suggest. If i have never said it, thanks for caring about this so much during the years, but please relax and let life happen. PGM will do what they feel is best. Customers can use it as it develops for what they wish or not as needed.

This is an exercise in clean hierarchies with the data they already have.
They improve this some in 2024 but skimped on categories/families/type/technique
With more serious work on their hierarchies and filtering the correct session player with the correct instrument could be found in a matter of seconds.

Top Categories:
- Strings
- Woodwinds
- Brass
- Percussion
- Keyboards

Organize the instrument into category/families
Strings:
- Autoharp
- Banjo
- Bass
- Bazuki
- Cello
- Dulcimer
- Fiddle
- Guitar
- Harp
- Mandolin
- Pedal Steel
- Ukulele
- Violin
- Viola

Woodwinds:
- Clarinet
- Flute
- Harmonica
- Saxophone

Brass:
- Horn Section
- Trombone
- Trumpet
- Tuba

Keyboards:
- Accordion
- Organ
- Piano
- Synth

Percussion:
- Vibes


Vocals:
- Vocal
Drums

Then organized by subcategory
- Guitar
- Acoustics
- Electric

Then organized by subcategory type
- Acoustic
- Nylon
- Steel
Then organized by Technique:
- Strumming
- Fingerpick
- Hammer
- Mute
- Rythm
- Solo

Then Organize by Tempo, Feel, Note duration

EXAMPLE:
CAT-----INSTR----TYPE------TECHNIQ----FEEL---DUR----TEMPO-
Strings > Guitar > Acoustic > Strumming > Swing > 16th > 120 >
Audition and select from a list of 10.

Cleaning up and improving filtering/drill down would greatly simplifying the process of getting the right Session player/instrument.
As mentioned earlier "auto filling the hierarchy list: for a given "band style" would also dramatically improve the time to creating music.

I use Reaper as my DAW, and love it. So I suspect that I don't have RDS.

It works 1000 times better for you and your use cases. But perhaps there are other reasons that people don't want to use BiaB in Reaper.

Personally, I prefer to use tools for what they do best. So I'd rather put backing tracks together in BiaB, synth vocal tracks in SynthesizerV, and editing in Reaper.

My very limited experience with using embedded tools within DAWs hasn't changed my mind. I've found BiaB and SynthV as VSTis are just not as pleasant (or reliable) to work with as with the desktop versions.

I hear your frustration.

But saying people who aren't jumping on your ideas are akin to triggered snowflake libs isn't going to engender them to your position.

There are other, simpler explanations to why people might not be jumping on your solution:

• It's not officially supported, and they prefer to use tools that offer support.
• It requires using Reaper, and they don't use Reaper.
• They don't see working as Reaper as an improvement over working in BiaB.
• They don't see the current situation as needing the solution you propose.

Different users have different needs, and none of these possibilities require assuming that anyone is "deranged", lacks "rational thought", or has "hurt feelings".

And... a reference to cancel culture. Again, you're resorting to name calling.

I've been here a while. I'm not sure there are many people who are "too afraid to speak up", and I've not heard anyone complain about being "cancelled".

I suggest that real issue isn't anything you've named, but that you haven't tried to understand people who aren't you.

Sure, you've got a great solution that solves many of the problems that are important to you. But there's a cost to going to that solution, and there are rational reasons why someone might not want to adopt that solution.

To convince people to go to your solution, you'll need to do more than show that it's as good, or even better than their current solution. You'll need to show that it's significantly better in order to get people to adopt that.

And I don't think you've been able to convince people, mostly because you don't understand why they aren't adopting your solution.

Going back to the UJAM thread - I honestly don't know why you're so excited about the UJAM guitars. To my ear, they're only OK. The naming of the various styles means I won't have a clue what it'll sound like until I try it. And the UI is fine for what it does, but not especially better or worse than the one in NI Session Guitarist or many of the other VI guitars I've got.

It's not enough to build a better mousetrap when people are satisfied with "good enough".

You're going to make enemies of people who would be your allies if you continue to belittle and insult them, instead of understanding their reluctance, and bridging that gap.

jpettit,
Nice breakdown.
However I would prefer a simpler family hierarchy tree that ends in "Type"
(CAT-----INSTR----TYPE: List)
(Strings > Guitar > Acoustic: List )

and then use/apply separate filters that are not a part of the tree: feel, tempo(range), etc., but so that they "remember" (respect) prior selection. I believe it's called "nested" sorting.

one more +1 for David.

"It requires using Reaper, and they don't use Reaper."
"You're going to make enemies of people who would be your allies if you continue to belittle and insult them, instead of understanding their reluctance, and bridging that gap."

Exactly.

P.S. I started a thread in a wishlist about adding a Reaper thread for musocity. It was somewhat a long shot, but Peter Gannon replied that he is open to idea of DAW threads. I think this might be a multifaceted solution, as most people who use BIAB use DAWs. For one, musocity will find his audience, instead of forcing unrelated Reaper ideas in the threads where only a small percentage of people use Reaper. His ideas are sometimes very creative, but that will not make me switch a DAW of choice and likely other people feel similar.