Hey, Pilgrim:

Personally, I think my idea for multi-pass style sets seems fairly clever and pregnant with potential. Although I haven’t read any similar Wishlist requests, if I am repeating an idea someone has offered previously, I apologize for the repetition now. However, if my idea is original but its application would not be practical for technical reasons and/or of no use to the typical Band-In-A-Box user, well, I anticipate that some of you who read this will cordially explain why realization of my particular “wish” is unfeasible or undesirable.

In the wee hours of a recent workday morning, I awoke a few hours before the alarm-clock was set to buzz. Instead of immediately drifting back into cozy slumber, I experienced a “waking dream” in which I was using special multi-part style sets in BiaB to easily make audio tracks for really full, lush, and articulate mixes. Cool, huh?

If I wanted a 12-piece band with a horn section, for example, on the first pass of generating instrument tracks to accompany my melody and chord structure, I might load a hypothetical HornDawgs1A style — the first part of a 2-part style set — and then generate the bass, keyboard, drums, guitar, strings, melody, and soloist tracks. For my way of working (Your mileage may vary.), I would then output each of those instrument tracks as its own separate audio (.wav) file for subsequent mixing in RealBand. Before any mixing, however, I would next load hypothetical style HornDawgs1B — the second part of a 2-part style set — to generate the horn section for my song. Where typical BiaB single-pass styles would usually have to limit the horns to a single brass ensemble track in order to also accommodate all the other aforementioned (minus one or two) instruments, this second pass could generate separately, say, trumpet 1, trumpet 2, trombone, sax, and flute. After I output the individual audio tracks for each horn, then I can begin mixing all 12 tracks in RealBand.

And how about orchestral multi-pass style sets? For example, an entire 48-piece chamber orchestra could be recreated by a single 8-part style set, in which individual passes of 6-instruments-at-a-time might include OrchStrings1, OrchStrings2, OrchStrings3, OrchBrass1, OrchBrass2, OrchWoodwinds1, OrchWoodwinds2, and OrchPercussion1 (including keyboard). Oy! Yeah, that would be a lot of stuff to work with — 48 individual instrument tracks, all generated according to one master style! But, hey, this is just an example to suggest to what level a “multi-pass style set” approach could be expanded. (If, of course, passes must be limited to 5-instruments-at-a-time, then a 10-part style set could still handle the project outlined above.)

And that's just two examples. You, no doubt, can easily imagine how this concept could apply to various other kinds of music, some of which may be much closer to your heart and more suited to your own personal tastes and needs.

And blah, de-blah, blah, blah... Well, I finally faded from semi-consciousness that morning and drifted back into slumber, to dream some regular old-fashioned REM-state non-waking dreams.

So, hey, what do ya think of my concept of multi-pass style sets? No changes need to be made to either Band-In-A-Box or RealBand to accommodate this method of significantly increasing the number of instruments available in a style. It's just a matter of some new style sets being written by PG Music and/or after-market vendors, for something more than single-pass output.

Hey, I'm just sayin'....

Be well, be happy. And, oh yeah, pleasant dreams.

Sincerely, Bro. Dave Lister
"There once was a hermit named Dave...."
http://www.brodavelister.com/