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I am continually amazed at the amount of musical knowledge that is built into the BB / RB programs....I haven't seen anything like it or that comes close in doing what it does - for decades now. Maybe AI will finally come close, but AI is not really built "from the bits upward" as this program was designed. PG and his team are truly brilliant. It's one thing to have an "idea" of creating a band in a box - but to actually accomplish it - the extremely deep knowledge of both music and computer programming / hardware is nothing but extraordinary. You look at what it takes to do anything non-trivial with both of these specialties, and then how the BB/RB products consolidate them to make a whole so much bigger. And especially the musical knowledge and rules/patterns coded so deeply into the program. DAWs are also extraordinary - but they don't actually "compose" in the sense that BB does.
Unless there's software I have missed - this was and continues to be the best and only-one of it's class for 2+ decades now. What other software is there to look at in the space BB/RB occupy.
Also - if anyone has any links or articles that address what's in the spirit of this post - please share. For example I worked for a company many years ago where one individual built more or less an entire trading platform - truly a brilliant man, and the company was built around him and his product. Does anyone know if this is the case with Peter, or is he more the brilliant CEO manager who was more conceptual with a clear vision hired the big programming guns ? My guess is that he's the hands-on main creator. Are there any articles about the creation of this amazing program and the heavy hitters involved ?
Last edited by Joe Videtto2; 12/17/24 08:48 AM.
BB/RB 2025
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Very inciteful point thanks for your thoughts.
HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96
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There are a few programs out there that go a little way to what BiaB does, though none are remotely in the same class or remotely as powerful.
JJazzLab is quite good. MIDI only, I believe. Cordsheets only IIRC.
Impro-Visor ditto, but a slightly different intent. It will create improvised solos, one can enter notes in notation.
MMA (Musical MIDI acompaniment). It has no GUI itself and is entirely script driven, though there are a couple of OK-ish GUI front-ends by third parties.
Those do all have the advantage of being free or donation-ware. They do all run on Linux.
I hope PGM won't mind me putting them here ... my version of their own "dare to compare" page.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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Amazing is a good description.
Over 30 years ago I purchased BIAB for MsDos on 5.25" floppy disks. I thought it was amazing back then when the midi sound was less than great.
Over the decades its gotten continually better and expanded the feature set.
Its been a major component of my music composition and performance for 20 years
Last few years I see others nipping at the corners of the niche PG music cut out for itself.
Yet no one has delivered a complete product that replaces BIAB.
Who knows when someone will?
Meantime, many of us have been fortunate to enjoy a long ride with this excellent product.
biab2026(Mac) Latest Build
Mac OS (Latest)
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Logic Pro (latest or pretty close)
Blue and White Sea Star
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Very nice post, Joe.
With over thirty years in the BIAB family I think I have read a few things to share.
Peter Gannon developed BIAB to be able to play along with jazz fakebooks. This explains some design decisions, such as the use of “chorus” in the jazz sense rather than intro, verse, chorus, bridge etc. That’s not right or wrong; it’s just the way it developed.
It is my understanding Peter is still doing the coding for BIAB. At one point maybe ten years ago I recall he said he used a Mac running Windows with one of those emulators.
Peter clearly knows music theory VERY well. He has sometimes made decisions different from what I might have done but he always has the evidence to back up his reasoning. Besides, if you get ten professional musicians in a room discussing music theory, you’ll often get six different answers - it’s a tough subject. And Peter is receptive to changing. For example, I had an issue about cut-time handling of sambas. He asked for proof which I gave and then programmed a way to handle cut time. This also helped the bluegrass players - same issue.
Peter also can talk tech. For example he just requested that anyone who made BIAB run on an SD card let him know the particulars.
I believe Peter plays bass, guitar and maybe piano, based on comments he has made. So we are talking about a musically hands-on programmer, to answer your question.
There are other programmers who work on the ancillary software like RealBand and the plugin. Adar and Jeff Yankhaur come to mind. Others like Tobin are heavily involved in the RealTracks part of the program. Andrew seems to do it all and is most visible in the forum and support areas. It’s a relatively small staff as we understand it.
Peter has a vision and carries it out. While it may not always be completely what some of want, he also comes up with things we never anticipated, like RealTracks, that are game changers.
Finally, despite some phenomenal breakthroughs in music software like unbaking a cake, I’m not aware of anything remotely able to compete with BIAB.
Does that help?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I have been a casual BIAB user since the floppy drive was the thing. For all the things I like and dislike about the software, there is certainly nothing I have seen over the years that does what BIAB does.
There are programs like EZkeys for example that provide a different way to create a piano track but they don't really compete with BIAB.
BIAB is the base source for most of us. We may use Real Tracks or convert everything to midi.
There are so many other ways to use BIAB than creating songs no other program that I have ever seen can do the same thing or even near it.
BIAB is more than just a computer program. There is a group of people who provide help services, sell us things, and come here on this forum to interact with us. On that fact alone you will find it hard to get that kind of involvement from very many companies.
Billy
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I have never found anything quite as complete as BIAB when it comes to putting together complete tracks that sound great. That's why I keep sending my money every December for the past 12+ years!
However, I do really love the EZ lineup from Toontrack. I have their EZ Bass, EZ Keys and EZ Drummer products and find them to be quite capable even compared to BIAB bass, keys and drums. I often create songs in BIAB and then sub out some or all of these parts with their EZ counterparts because they sound great and are editable MIDI. I think what Toontrack is missing is more melodic instruments like guitars, horns, etc.
If Toontrack were to add melodic instruments, build an aggregator GUI and curate their tracks into style sets they would have a very competitive product to BIAB. But, as a good friend of mine likes to say, "IF the dog hadn't stopped to do his business he'd have caught the rabbit!"
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...I believe Peter plays bass, guitar and maybe piano,... Yes, Peter definitely plays piano. I've seen a video of him performing at NAMM.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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One important thing I left out of my PG BB RB love is the amount of musical information not just in the program itself, but the amount of "musical knowledge" in the musical content itself. You have playing and recordings of the best studio musicians in the world - and hundreds of hours (if not thousands ?) of each. And almost all of it is notated and played back on a staff with color coding. And so, so, so many different styles authored by experts in their musical field....just to separate the usefulness of the program from the human-generated musical recordings and accompaniments underneath...all fitting together like a glove.
BB/RB 2025
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<...snip...>
Unless there's software I have missed - this was and continues to be the best and only-one of it's class for 2+ decades now. What other software is there to look at in the space BB/RB occupy.
<...> I don't think anything else comes close. I've been writing aftermarket styles for BiaB since the 1990s. I've also written styles for a couple of other auto-accompaniment apps, and an arranger keyboard. None of these came close to the output of BiaB. PG Music continues to impress me by making relevant improvements to BiaB that make it better and more useful through the years. It's come a long way from the DOS-5 days with 3 instruments, and no user styles, endings, or anything else. Hats off to Peter Gannon and the entire PG Music team. Insights and incites by Notes ♫
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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