Hi Mal,

That is exactly what I did. I put up the chords for "All The Things You Are" in Ab and tested 3 different tempos for a couple of midi styles, and the Normal, Simple and Very Simple RealTracks for three tempos.

For instance at 210 bpm, I used midi styles J!~NAT2 which is a kind of swing style and J~OLEO. Then for RealTracks I ran _JAZZBOP with Normal, Simple & Very Simple. I printed out the resulting bass lines for each and compared them.

As far as the midi styles were concerned, both styles produced reasonably logical bass lines but there were far too many eighth notes in the J~OLEO style and also large octave and fifth jumps - especially between beat 1 and 2. Every bar, without exception, started on the root note of the chord, even if the chord went for two bars.

The RealTracks were also quite logical and I thought were better at linking one bar to the next. Six bars out of 32 did not start with a root note but they used a better linking note in the chord to the previous bar. They were thirds or fifths of the chord.

On the whole, I thought the lines were better in the RealTracks than the midi.

It took me almost a whole day to run the tests and I don't think my conclusions are wrong.

Mind you, I won't be using anything else but Simple and Very Simple because there are still far too many enhancements that break up the walking rhythm in the bass track that comes with the style, which is what I have called Normal.

I could give you an even larger breakdown of my findings but the above it about the general conclusion I reached.

I've still got all the printouts to prove to myself I am right.

Grah Jive Talk
"Don't worry baby, they'll swing their arses off."