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Another short experiment: August ExitMostly, it's just an attempt to mix and match various piano styles together. That, and an excuse to use the Mark Knopfler-esqe guitar soloist: RealTracks in song: - 519:Bass, Electric, Pop HalfNotes Ev 120
- 888:Piano, Acoustic, Solo-Accompaniment PopBronx Ev 120
- 811:Piano, Acoustic, Solo-Acc PopVancouver Ev 100
- 891:Piano, Acoustic, Solo-Accompaniment PopLiverpool Ev 065
- 511:Guitar, Electric, Soloist Dire Ev 140
RealDrums: NashBrushBalDbKEv16^1-SdSBr,SrKc Auto-generated by BIAB Melodist using the "Phil_Col" style, with the guitar solo cobbled together from the takes I liked the best. It had originally been longer, but parts there were a number of repeats that didn't add anything, so I just kept chopping out sections until it didn't seem excessively long. Now it seems a bit too short. Time-stretched and mixed in Reaper (haven't got 2011 yet), with GPO4 instruments on the MIDI string parts, also generated by BIAB. Given that it was originally intended to show off the piano, I suspect the piano is actually a bit low in the mix. I was pretty pleased with how well the various piano styles could be mixed together. Feedback (other than "stop auto-generating songs in BIAB and calling them your own"  ) welcome.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Journeyman
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Journeyman
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nice mix dc.. shows what can be done if you just take the time to work out things in biab Frankie
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Quote:
Time-stretched and mixed in Reaper (haven't got 2011 yet), with GPO4 instruments on the MIDI string parts, also generated by BIAB
What was the tempo in biab originally? You mean to say you're just time stretching the 2 mix to make it faster or slower, or the whole multitrack project in reaper? This track is nice, but it sounds heavily spliced together- no human feel and breathing going on. When I bring over my keeper tracks into reaper, I do a ton of editing as well. My keeper real-tracks are really just what I consider to be clean and for the most part, a good performance- but not perfect. I get what I want with editing in reaper, as opposed to endless regenerating in biab/rb. There are lots of edits I do to tighten up timing, but that is a tricky process of choosing your battles. You don't want to squeeze the life out of it. After all, the charm of real tracks is a less than perfect human feel. This track feels quantized heavily, how ever it got like that. All seems fine except for that. At least for me, anyway. Nice sounding experiment. I did one of my own early on too, running biab and real tracks through their paces. It was fun!
Dan
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Hi, Dan. Thanks for the feedback! Quote:
What was the tempo in biab originally?
All the parts were rendered out at their "optimal" speed - for example, "PopLiverpool Ev 065" was rendered as a .WAV file at 65BPM, and then stretched out to 120 BPM using elastique in Reaper. BiaB 2011 makes this unnecessary, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to upgrade.
Quote:
This track is nice, but it sounds heavily spliced together- no human feel and breathing going on.
I see what you mean - there aren't any pauses anywhere. I'd had a 8 bar phrase where I dropped the guitar out and it helped a bit, but it was even more effective to drop that section entirely.
But I'll watch for that in the future. It's easy to get carried away with the solos!
I initially planned on doing a call/response between a solo guitar and flute, but it didn't match the feel. I'd also intended to use a different soloist, but I'm a sucker for Mark Knopfler-style licks.
Quote:
I get what I want with editing in reaper, as opposed to endless regenerating in biab/rb.
I usually render about four or five solo tracks out, and then solo the tracks in Reaper, picking the bits that I like and seem to flow together well. But it's asking a lot of the RealTrack soloist to try to carry an entire song!
Quote:
This track feels quantized heavily, how ever it got like that.
I suspect the constant tick of the bass and drum is mostly responsible. I cut and pasted bits together, but didn't alter the rhythm of the phrases. But - as you noted - I filled up all the space in the process.
Actually, there's one spot where I fiddled with it so it would flow better, but it's actually less quantized and more free-flowing at that point.
Thanks again for your input! 
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Journeyman
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Quote:
All the parts were rendered out at their "optimal" speed - for example, "PopLiverpool Ev 065" was rendered as a .WAV file at 65BPM, and then stretched out to 120 BPM using elastique in Reaper. BiaB 2011 makes this unnecessary, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to upgrade.
Same here about the upgrade. I've never tried stretching anything RT's in reaper. I'll have to give that a go.
When I say it sounds quantized, I'm not refering to arrangement choices. I mean it sounds perfectly on the ones- very stiff perfect time. It may very well have something to do with the stretching you did in reaper. I notice it most in the beginning measures. Interestingly, I think this track might work better at a slower tempo too.
Quote:
but I'm a sucker for Mark Knopfler-style licks.
Me too. I tried like hell to work some of those licks into a current track I'm working on, but they just don't cut it. It's just not appropriate for the style song I'm working on. But it was a close call though! LOL! It was either making me happy, or the song happy. Gotta go with the song, as always.
I don't know if you were around when I did my experimental thing with lots of different instruments mixed and matched into a song. I was really happy with how everything worked together. I used GPO on mine as well, although I just used it for a generic string pad of sorts. If you're interested, I'll post it in this thread for a listen- for nothing but it being the same kind of track for the same kind of purpose. It was that track that made me realize how much power I just put in my hands getting this software. Gotta love it! In fact like you, I'm finding biab and reaper to be an awesome combo.
Dan
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Hi, Dan. Post the link - I'm always interested in hearing what can be done. As for hearing things "on ones", I suspect it has to do with decisions to use particular phrases over others. I probably selected bits that sounded like they led the phrase strongly, and the cumulative effect is that it's always hitting the downbeat. I agree it sounds better at a slower tempo: August Exit (Slow Mix)I brought the tempo down about 85% of what it was before. Initially I just changed the playback tempo, but decided that would probably cause too many artifacts, so I glued the tracks back together and stretched them out. I fixed a couple small glitches where I'd overlapped some stuff, as well as the "click" at the end of the drum track. I also fiddled with all the instrument levels, and changed the buss compressor. The guitar is getting very close to having a "warble", but I'm not sure if it's a time stretch artifact, or something added by the player. There's probably some cumulative damage from having repeatedly stretched the samples.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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David, the slow mix is excellent - great job!
Bob
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Quote:
David, the slow mix is excellent - great job!
Thanks. I'm still not able to get mixes to sound the way I want, but I think getting closer. I really need to spend more time listening and learning how to balance things with EQ, instead of sliding the volume knob.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Hi David. Here's that link to my track- http://www.songramp.com/mod/mps/listenrm.php?Download=56745I weaved in quite a few different guitars and saxes- pianos too. It was fun. Done in reaper as well- like you. I'll take a listen to your slower version later tonight. I have more to comment on about artifacts I notice I get too at times, but I have to run. Take care for now. Dan
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I listened to the track last night. I love the opening - it's got a late '70s feel to it, and I almost expected Lenny Zakatek to start on a vocal part. Don't spend too much time analyzing the slower mix - most of the adjustments were quick and dirty. I need to start listening through headphones once I'm happy with the sound through my speakers. The drums are much too subdued, and they sound like they're in a different room. The song is starting to sound like it's been a few times too many through a tape duplication machine. And in a real sense, it has. I could regenerate the parts in BiaB and get more presence from them. But the guitar is running just a touch too slow, and the strings are starting to go. There are a couple places where the piano glitches that I didn't catch on prior listening. That's because I neglected the all important rule: solo your tracks, and listen for junk. Digital is so much easier to work with than tape. All this technology is really amazing.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Yep, it sits nice at that tempo. I hear you on the junk in the tracks too. Something like a click or pop or whatever always gets by me until I pick up on it after repeated listens. And then I wonder why I didn't catch it until the 15th playback. Strange. I also get artifacts depending on the instrument and tempo too. A pain for sure. I never really considered using reaper to TS a track. I may try that for stubborn ones. But with 2011, all bets are off in the areas. It may be greatly improved. Somewhere along the way I'll buy in. Anyway, all good Dave. Keep hammerin away man.
Dan
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Hello David,
Adjusting track volumes using eq is a great way to get a better blend and space for instruments. I am also learning the art of doing this. I have noticed that after a general volume adjust to get a quick mix, I then depend on eq to get everything to sit well in the mix. I then do my panning to give a home to each track. While I still have a lot to learn, this made one of the biggest advances in getting better mixes.
Marty
Music is what feelings sound like.
Band In A Box (current) Sonar Producer X2, Windows 7, 16 Gigs Ram, Quad Core, AMD Processor, Alesis MK2 Monitors, Roland Quad Capture Audio Interface,
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I really liked this!,, can you tell me about the "time stretched" comment... What exactly did you do, and why?
Windows 11, Intel Core i5-8600T 2.3Ghz, 16 gig ram, BIAB 2025 MegaPak, SampleTank 4, Keystation49 Kybd, Neewer NW-800 mic
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When I use BIAB to generate a solo, I tend to do it the "wrong" way - by exporting a bunch of as .WAV files, and then slicing and dicing in my DAW. You can do the same thing in RealBand, but I'm just more comfortable messing with .WAV files. Plus, I can pull bits and pieces from unrelated parts of the song, or reuse parts. But once I'd done that, there's no way to get things back into BIAB, so I'm not sure I'd recommend that. Plus, I was using an older version of BIAB which didn't have the nice Elastique algorithm that BIAB now uses. So the short of it was to changed the tempo, I stretched the .WAV tracks in my DAW, which did have the Elastique algorithm. Obviously, using RealBand to do this sort of thing is probably a better route. But old habits die hard.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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I've been spending my evening listening to User Showcase songs in a rented room on a laptop using earbuds. Most of the mixes don't sound good at all on the earbuds, but this one actually sounded pretty clear.
The ones that DON'T sound clear on the earbuds tend to sound "boomy" <- (is that even a WORD??) and distorted, so I assume they're leaving in a lot of low end that probably sounds good on their studio monitors, but doesn't translate well to some other systems.
Is there a point at the low end where you just eliminate all frequencies below that?
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I know that it's a cardinal rule of mixing to do a high pass/low cut on the parts, but I don't always do that (although I really should). Although I'd like to take credit for things I'm doing in the mix, I suspect the main thing you're hearing is the BuzzRizer free plugin I'm using. It's a multiband compressor, which means you can apply different compression settings to different frequencies. I'm using the "Classic 3" setting. Bombardier is also quite nice, but not free. You can download a fully-functional evaluation copy if you'd like to try it out. It also adds a lot of clarity to the final mix. Toontrack EZmix also has a nice "Master" preset that you might want to try. It's also non-free, but you can download a time-limited demo (15 minutes per session). I'm sure there are lots of other nice tools that are available, but those are the ones I know about. That said, I'm pretty careful when setting up a mix that not too much is going on at a time. I automate the faders a lot, bringing instruments in and out of the mix and try to make sure there's only one instrument that's got the primary focus. I also try to keep the instruments as low as possible, so there's not a lot of fighting in the mix.
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Dcuny, to my ears this was really good. I like your guitar work on this one. Also great choice in backing tracks.
My only complaint is that it is to short!
Love is grand.
Divorce is twenty grand!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Actually, it's all BiaB, but thanks anyway. One of the reasons for micro-editing is that although BiaB will make really good choices, I can splice together a line until it's just right. I agree that it's too short, but (as I mentioned in the beginning) it was really just an experiment to see how much I could mix and match various piano styles together in in piece. (I thought they worked quite well) Plus, it's fun having that faux Mark Knopfler guitar! Slightly off topic, I really wish there were more flute RealTracks in BiaB, but I've also found that I can splice GPO flute (rendered as a .wav) together with bits from the BiaB flute soloist, and get a pretty seamless performance. A little bit of "humanization" goes a long ways to creating a convincing performance. There are a lot of bluesy phrases for the flute, and some held notes go a bit flat. But I can still splice together a usable performance in a DAW, and then add some pitch correction. Thanks!
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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nice instrumental. I lean towards the faster one a little for some reason. Good use of multiple pianos and the Knopfler-style guitar.
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David,
I like your playing.
Later,
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