A doina is a Romanian folk style of which there are various forms, vocal and instrumental (see Wikipedia link below), and Aliya's Doina" begins very much like a classic doina other than the opening harp and synth backing - I would have preferred a balalaika ensemble as in a Georghe Ralescu's instrumental, "Nadia's Doina", which can be found on YouTube, including on my channel, as I created a video for it 2 or 3 years ago - but after the panpipe opening it becomes more of a neo- or electro-doina!
Re the video, I for once totally feel that the visuals distract from the music, but there is some humour at the end of it. The character, Aliya, is one of the Four Solar Sisters, daughters of Joe Paz of my trilogy-length sci-fi novel "Quest of the Solar Flower", who only features in the follow-up also trilogy-length book, "Quest of the Solar Sisters", only 1/3 of which has been written, but I now doubt I'll ever finish it.
BiaB samples in order of appearance: Harp: Seeds Acoustic Quartet ~ Sharlene Wallace 1st Synth Pad: Circle Ambient Synth Lap Steel ~ Blair Masters Panpipe: Seek Smooth Panpipe ~ Alejandro Fatur Acoustic Guitar: Seek Smooth Panpipe ~ Quinn Bachand Bass Guitar: Country Rock Guitar Solo, Pop Ba ~ Tobin Frank 2nd Acoustic Guitar: 3 Guitar Country Rock ~ Jason Roller 1st Strings: Snow Gentle World Flow ~ Avery Bright 2nd SynthPad: Whales Lap Steel Synth ~ Blair Masters String Quartet: Runaway Soundtrack Country ~ Matt Nelson Cello: Runaway Soundtrack Country ~ Avery Bright Drums: Country Rock Guitar Solo Pop Ba ~ Brian Fullen 2nd Strings: Scandinavian 1 - World Styles 2 ~ uncredited 3rd SynthPad: Whales Lap Steel Synth ~ Blair Masters Tenor Sax Solo: Pop Ballad w/ Tenor Solo ~ Mark Douthit *Guitar solo: Praise & Worship w/ Power Pop So ~ Dave Cleveland
*The guitar solo was mastered in Soren.
4/4 ~ Key C ~ 90bpm ~ 96 bars ~ 4:34 / 4:28 ESC
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
A beautiful and relaxing song with a good selection of solo instruments. I especially love the sax solos. If it's not too much trouble , I would appreciate it if you could also provide the RealTrack numbers so that they are easier to find. The search for names is not always unique.
Chay, very nice work...really masterful use of the RT's! To my taste, I think you could pare back the pad in some areas and let the soloists shine a bit more. Even with that, I enjoyed my listen, and you opened up a few RT's to me that I've never used. Thanks for posting your fine work!
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Chay, you work magic when working with RTs. The pan flute to sax to guitar then back to the sax was fantastic. Super backing band. As always your mix with spot on.
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Nicely done, Chay. Cool opening, and the shift at 1:30 takes it to the next level. Like your evolving instrument palette and the way the song flows. Am intrigued by the concept of Soren "mastering" the guitar solo...is this an audio leveling function or something more sophisticated? Sounds great!
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Ah yes, another fine composition from the RT Master. Speaking of which that sax track is outstanding.
The mix is room filling in the good way.
Ron already pointed out the shift early on. Very effective indeed.
The vid was very supportive and cool ending for sure.
Thanks for the backstory on the style.
Well done and we enjoyed it,
J&B
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I've never heard Romanian folk music like Doina before, so I can't judge whether this song accurately captures its atmosphere, but it's a very relaxing piece of music. The way the atmosphere changes when the saxophone solo starts, and then changes again with the guitar solo, is brilliant. The chord progression is also cleverly done, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. The video's storyline is also enjoyable.
Chay, This is such a beautiful and powerful piece of music. Excellent textures and mix. You make every instrument stand and have a place. So well done. Bob
Thanks, Bob! I don't think it's as good as my previous 3 posts, but it's had just as good a reception here.
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
Nicely done, Chay, you always do such a great job with these instrumentals, the way you bring in the various instruments. Enjoyed!
Very much appreciated, Dave. I've no new instrumentals in the pipeline, so fingers crossed the next one will have a vocalist,
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
A beautiful and relaxing song with a good selection of solo instruments. I especially love the sax solos. If it's not too much trouble , I would appreciate it if you could also provide the RealTrack numbers so that they are easier to find. The search for names is not always unique.
Thanks, B.D. Regarding the Style numbers: I mostly work through my "Open Favourite Styles" tab, then select lots of singe instruments from that and for example re the Panpipe this is what I see: "_SEEK.sty [Seek Smooth Panpipe]", then it's just that which is listed in the main chord input window, so I only ever see any numbers when I'm searching for new Styles. When I'm adding the stems of selected samples I create a timeline in Word which lists the sample, then db level, channel bias, whether or not I've switched channels - I just type ˄˅ for that - then the exact or close to exact time the sample is introduced, then finally where necessary what time the sample ends. The times aren't the same as the play times as I include the count-in. This system's been invaluable when later having to make changes, plus where I load 3 or 4 samples in Audacity in the same time slot as each other when trying different variations. When posting the sample list in this forum I use that timeline as a guide, now listing Instrument, Style name & session musician. That takes a long time - it's what I call a faff job - so if I had to do searches for the Style numbers too I could only do it through clicking on "Choose Styles Similar to Current". In the case of the Panpipe it appears at the top of the latter window's endless list - it's RT 436 (which I've never even noticed before) - but sometimes the Style I'm looking for in 'similar to' only appears some way down the list and then sometimes it doesn't even appear in the list at all. So in short, I won't be listing the Style numbers in future as it would be a major faff job finding them and adding them to what I already list - and sometimes it would be 'not found'! But I have the reverse problem - which you may even be able to help me with! - in that I now have a very long list of Style numbers which other posters have used just in case I can use them in future, but I've never been able to find a way of searching for those number in BiaB. I've just double checked various menus I've searched before, but in every list I look at there aren't any Style numbers listed, so doing a Search of a particular number is impossible. It's only in the "Choose Styles Similar to Current" window that I see any Style numbers. How do you find Styles via only the number?
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
Chay, very nice work...really masterful use of the RT's! To my taste, I think you could pare back the pad in some areas and let the soloists shine a bit more. Even with that, I enjoyed my listen, and you opened up a few RT's to me that I've never used. Thanks for posting your fine work!
Thanks, Tom! In this instrumental I upped the synthpad volume as ideally I'd have preferred a balalaika ensemble behind the panpipe as in "Nadia's Doina" by Georghe Ralescu which I've done a YT video for (I can't post the link here as in the past the forum admin delete such due it not being BiaB). A balalaika ensemble creates a wall of sound for the panpipe to paint on (so to speak), so as there's nothing in BiaB which does anything like the same job I just chose a synthpad as a weak alternative.
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
Waoband, Relaxing music you've created here! I can agree with Bob Dean about your use of textures in the song!
Appreciated, Pat! Well met, too.
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
Chay, you work magic when working with RTs. The pan flute to sax to guitar then back to the sax was fantastic. Super backing band. As always your mix with spot on.
Thanks, Mario. Did you see my previous post, "Painted Sky"? Over the past couple of months I've found that my posts have gone down the thread slowly then a week or two later someone sees it for the first time at the bottom of the page and suddenly it's back at the top again. While it's always great to have a new view and positive comment, it's also sometimes annoying as the old post takes precedence over the new and I think that's why "Painted Sky" vanished off Page 1 of the forum faster than I've ever seen anything go to Page 2!
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
Nicely done, Chay. Cool opening, and the shift at 1:30 takes it to the next level. Like your evolving instrument palette and the way the song flows. Am intrigued by the concept of Soren "mastering" the guitar solo...is this an audio leveling function or something more sophisticated? Sounds great!
Appreciated, Ron! The full name of Soren is Soren AI Mastering. I bought it s few months ago as it didn't use up much disk space and I need to get into mastering, but it was both disappointing and untimely as a week later they updated it. It's simple as it only has Genre Profiles, Style and Loudness tabs. There are only 4 options under the latter 2 tabs and 9 under Genre. They added a lot more right after I'd bought it so they wanted me to buy it again, but I found that regardless of the setting it just changed the sound of a whole track or stem without improving on it. It has a Use Reference Track function and I found that not much different to the Genres, plus while it has a GM (Gain Match) tab, which would be very useful, it doesn't work! I've found that it does beef up some single instrument files - I used it on the organ solo in "A New Day" - but on most I've tried it doesn't improve on what I've already got, plus when trying single instrument samples I often just get an error message.
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
Engaging, Chay, and the vid was not a distraction. In fact "Sitting On A Rock" is a good thing. Good build to this. I hope Arri hears this one. I bet he knows the Romanian doina. Man, I dig that sax. It demands attention. I'm guessing she finaly found the flower.
Enjoy whatever happens! marty
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@babumusic51 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/marty-straub Band in a Box, Reaper, Cakewalk, Ozone 12, EZDrummer
Ah yes, another fine composition from the RT Master. Speaking of which that sax track is outstanding. The mix is room filling in the good way. Ron already pointed out the shift early on. Very effective indeed. The vid was very supportive and cool ending for sure. Thanks for the backstory on the style. Well done and we enjoyed it, J&B
Thanks J&B! Re the shift, if it's the bit I think you (and Ron) mean, which also comes up in the guitar solo, it's the first time I've ever used micro-chords in BiaB. I used C C5 Cm C5.
Some favourite Waoist Adages: #1: Play on the Way. #13: Ask not for whom the flower blooms, it blooms for you. #58: Bring consciousness to it. #63: On the road to effortlessness, effort must be made. #92: Be Love Now, the rest will come on its own.
Today's the Last Day of the Band-in-a-Box 2026® for Mac Special!
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202 New RealTracks Released with Band-in-a-Box 2026!
With Band-in-a-Box® 2026, we've released 202 incredible new RealTracks (in sets 468-488) in a variety of genres—featuring your most requested styles!
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
Playable RealTracks Set 5
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SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
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MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
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, I would appreciate it if you could also provide the RealTrack numbers so that they are easier to find.
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