Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
I don't believe there's and reason why you should not set up your own metronome on a dedicated MIDI percussion track, perhaps using 3/4 and putting your own beats in the right places, however I think getting BiaB styles to play nicely with that would be tricky at best.
This is a great idea of Gordon's! I would also use MIDI drums and create my own metronome.

When I learnt the song many years ago, I heard the rhythm as alternating 2 beats in one bar against a triplet melody of two groups of three notes (the compound dulple time of 6/8), and three beats in the next bar (the simple triple time of 3/4). Each bar passes in the same amount of time, though, independent of the time signature. To me, this alternating time signature gives the feel of slowing down and speeding up. It is a great rhythmical device of Bernstein's!

The BIAB song file below is a MIDI snare drum playing the alternating 2 and 3 beats on one track. On another track, I have put in a side-stick sound playing six x 1/8th notes. Having these two components on different tracks lets you adjust the volumes between the tracks or mute one of the tracks, if needed.The tempo of the home-made metronome can be adjusted to suit.

The 2-bar count-in is in 3/4 because that is the style type that I based the file on.

Metronome for "America" from West Side Story (Bernstein)

I created this using the Piano roll after loading in the MIDI style METRONM3.STY.

Like Gordon, I can't think of a suitable style that would work well enough to provide a comfortable backing.It would be possible to build a MIDI accompaniment based using copy and paste or (maybe) loops.Using the HiQ sounds in BIAB, this might work okay. The bass guitar would match the snare drum track in my file, and and guitar that plays 1/8th notes would probably fit well enough.

I hope this helps,
--Noel

P.S. If you are interested, I've just played around with a little more and created a simple backing. I used a MIDI bass with a HiQ sound that followed the chords (I entered this manually, saved it and froze the track) and then I added a couple of waltz realtracks (4/4 realtracks based on 1/8th notes also seemed worth trying).

"America" from West Side Story (simple backing)

Last edited by Noel96; 11/01/24 10:44 PM. Reason: Added P.S.
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