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Small Town Boy (What Am I Doing Here?) I can relate to these lyrics (not mine) about the duality of the big city. Spent most of my life working in big cities, but still consider myself a small town boy... Haven't used a LOT of soul styles, though most of them sound really good to me. I just don't normally compose organically in soul styles. Not this time though. Every instrument in this song is from the 2026 _SWOLLEN.STY soul RealStyle. The song is a bit longer and more simple in construction than most of ours, so I I'm selectively resting instruments in each section for dynamic effect. And for the bridge I'm switching the pair of guitars to held notes for variety. Am also using harmonies and BGVs to keep the arrangement from lying TOO flat. Not sure I succeeded in sustaining interest, but I didn't want to pump the song up TOO much dynamically. It's just not that kind of song... When we release the single we'll probably cut the 3rd verse/chorus to be more radio friendly. Ha! THANKS in advance for any listens and comments! R.W. Davis: lyrics Me: music, arrangement, vocals, mix, master AI: not employed Style is _SWOLLEN.STY (Swollen Americana Soul Groove) RealTracks in style: 4855:Bass, Acoustic, SoulJazzGroovinFunk Ev 100 RealTracks in style: 2906:Piano, ElectricVintage, Rhythm BluesyPopMike Ev 100 RealTracks in style: 4233:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Soul70sRelaxed Ev 100 RealTracks in style: 3716:Guitar, Baritone Acoustic, Rhythm AmericanaFolkStrum Ev 110 RealDrums in style:Americana16GroovinBrushFred^1-a,b:Brushes,Toms SMALL TOWN BOY (What Am I Doing Here?) The sidewalk is crowded All the girls are pretty What am I doing here In new New York City? Time Square is glistening The lights are all too bright What am I doing here? The big city at night You know, I’ll always be a small town boy That this metropolis tries to destroy The life they offer is hard to enjoy Chasing their shiny things like a decoy Running out in traffic, oh boy The Rockettes are dancing And they’re sold out tonight What am I doing here? I must not be too bright Broadway is gearing up For a well-reviewed show What am I doing here? I just don’t want to go You know, I’ll always be a small town boy That this metropolis tries to destroy The life they offer is hard to enjoy Chasing their shiny things like a decoy Running out in traffic, oh boy The taxis are yellow No one waits for the light What am I doing here? I better grab a bite The food on the corner Is expensive at best What am I doing here? You never would have guessed You know, I’ll always be a small town boy That this metropolis tries to destroy The life they offer is hard to enjoy Chasing their shiny things like a decoy Running out in traffic, oh boy Like a dog who catches a car What do I do now? It doesn't matter anyhow It doesn't matter anyhow Everything I see seems a little highbrow You know, I’ll always be a small town boy Running out in traffic…
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Scott, Love this! The story, lyrics, vocals - everything just works so well. And an awesome mix to wrap it all up! Bob
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Views 31
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When I go to scan for VST3 plugins, I see the progress bar increase some (say to 20%), and then BIAB just closes on its own. I relaunch BIAB and select scan VST3 again and it seems to pickup where it left off. It continues for another 20-30%, then shuts down again. I keep repeating until it finally finishes and I have my list of VST3 plugins. This happens on two different computers (one Windows 10 and one Windows 11).
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David, Billy showed off his "local" LLM setup sometime ago. It was sort of in the back of my brain. A few days ago I've read on it, downloaded and briefly tested. While it is slower to respond, it produced viable answers, even on intricate questions. There are many free models. Some tailored for "reasoning" some for "coding". I am taking care of a friend, who needs a lot of attention, so not much time to play with these toys right now, but I definitely want to experiment with this FX plugin. I've been re-doing my vocal synth program. Now that I've got the equivalent of a DSP expert on hand, I've been able to get past a number of hurdles. I find that it works well when closely guided. I'm using the free version of Gemini, with occasional assists from the free Pro version when it can't track down a serious bug. I'll probably have to get a subscription, because I keep running into the issue of it having a limited number of tokens and so constantly losing context. It can do common coding things quite well. For example, I'd been planning to use a spectral morphing algorithm of my own design to handle missing phoneme transitions - something that would require tagging phonemes to identify formants. Gemini suggested I use Line Spectral Frequencies instead - an algorithm that's been around since 1974 and used in phone transmission. It relied on LPC filters - something I'd never been able to implement correctly. Gemini free was able to crank out the functions I needed, but Gemini Pro was needed to debug it, where it immediately identified that Gemini free was trying to something nonsensical. Between the two programs I eventually got it working. That's something I wouldn't be able to do on my own. On the other hand, Gemini free is constantly hallucinating away key parts of the program and introducing regressions. By the time it's solved one problem, it's entirely forgotten what the rest of the program does. Sounds like I may need to get a hold of Billy. 
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Views 142
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Nicely done, Chay. Sounds like a Rock Opera anthem. Super guitar solos. Great mixing throughout. Like how you've mixed the lead and harmony vocals FX chain, that's a cool effect.
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Views 30
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Exceptional, Vic! Perfectly sparse acoustic arrangement, and your vocals fit the song like a glove. Super mix, too. I like the long-ish opening, wouldn't change a note. Funny, the lyrics ARE sad but as I listened I processed them through the lens of someone who has seen a lot of sadness in his lifetime, and dutifully files the heartbreak away as just one of many sad things that happened. Your world weary vocals probably aided this interpretation. Anyway...so for me it was achingly wistful, but not too sad.
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Views 63
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I didn't find the lyrics un- or in-cohesive at all, Andrew (*oddly neither uncohesive or incohesive are words!), plus it's great hearing positive vibes. I listened to the BRITPOP and I thought it had a way better rhythm section. Thanks Chay! I love the _BRITPOP.STY style, having used it twice before on these songs ‘While my coffee goes cold’ and ‘In paradise when you smile’ , but I did mimic the style in the chorus of this song. Thanks for listening! Andrew
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Views 191
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I really liked this song, the video gives it more impact I think but now I'm confused? Thought you were male but seeing your video I think your female! lol I'm so interested how you made the vocals and the videos they are great. Hey Paul, thanks for your kind comment. I really appreciate it ![[Linked Image]](https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/images/icons/default/thumbs_up.gif) Just to clear up any misunderstanding: I’m male, look like a male, think like a male, and I’m the only member of a girl group. Yeah, I know - that's weird The female vocals were created using either Synthesizer V and/or an AI, the rest is BIAB and my own noodling. Most parts of the video were created using AI. Here are some more details about how the video was made.
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Views 3,526
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Good, old-school Southern rock - that’s right up my alley. Your vocals are great, and those ol' fingers still do the job perfectly. Enjoyed my listen
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Views 72
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Ugh! We tried to watch it but about halfway through we bailed. The overall production felt kinda lame, like a college arts class project. They wasted time at the beginning with a boring rehashing of the same old, tired Beatles mythology, "He broke up the band" "No, he broke up the band" Who cares about that any longer? Then they explored how bad Paul's early solo work was. And I guess the point was he got better later with Wings? As for Paul's music, I lost interest after McCartney, his first solo effort. To me, very little of Paul's post-Beatles work was noteworthy. Erase his Beatles legacy and not much of what he did after 1970 would likely have charted. Same criticism applies to John and George (Ringo was never a singer anyone wanted to hear even with The Beatles!) If you are a Beatles fan and want to see something fun, watch Peter Jackson's Get Back. That was an enjoyable documentary. 2
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Views 990
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As long as you enable Rosetta 2, you are fine. You are allowed a second installation on another Mac you own as long as you don’t run both at the same time. The Neo is far more powerful than the Macs that many of us are using (ok, I run a Studio M2 Ultra but my laptop is a 2012 MacBook Pro).
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Views 18
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I agree that it’s a spoof but the political message is rather brilliantly disguised in my opinion. I suspect that the actual intent is to have the members of the political movement they are actually criticizing nodding along in agreement.
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Views 87
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When we left the bluegrass world after decades BiaB enabled us to work with genres we had long listened to but never performed or recorded, i.e., Americana and Blues Rock. The BiaB journey has allowed us to license 28 songs and get many thousands of streams on various platforms. For us the fun factor is knowing that many folks other than family and friends like what we are doing. That is worth a lot to us. And of equal importance that journey has made us long lasting real friends. And while we have zero desire to depart from that journey we have no disrespect of those who enter the AI music world. FWIW, we both retired from healthcare careers and I will mention that AI seems to be performing much better for musicians than for folks in need of mental or physical healthcare. To date the results of that are scary and I have followed it. Bud aka old curmudgeon.
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Views 492
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<...snip...> Spammers have wrecked that. Now some mail just gets lost/dumped. Very little gets returned as undelivered because spammers spoof the various From and Sender fields, that causes even more 'backscatter' than the amount of spam. <...> The spambots also create random e-mail receiver messages. If one gets returned, it is logged as a legitimate e-mail address and can be sold to other spammers. The same thing can happen if you click “unsubscribe” to some spam messages. So when my web host nukes a spam, they don't respond, but hold it in quarantine for about 30 days. Which is noble, but it takes a lot of time to sift through hundreds per day just to see if a false positive got in there. That's why I ask “if you didn't get a response, try again”. The Internet gives us a wonderful world at our fingertips, but there are some downsides that we just have to put up with. And with AI, spams and malware is getting more difficult to detect.
Replies 42
Views 1,909
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Scott, Such a beautiful version. I really enjoyed that. Bob Thanks, Bob. You sounded real good there Scott and you were dressed just fine Okay:) Thanks. Very nice sound! Good for you mate. Extra points for the entire production quality. Thank you. That little Zoom recorder has X-Y mics built in, which makes it very handy indeed..
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Views 107
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Hey, I had no idea you could noodle like THAT, Mario. Awesome. As others have already pointed out, the guitar is the main instrument, so it needs to be louder. And while you're at it, clean up the guitar's low end a bit. And make the mix a little brighter overall. There's a lot of hidden potential here Thanx so much for those tips Brian. As you know playing and mixing a song like this is not like any other song that I have done. Thus my mixing skills are not up to par. I appreciate your comments and suggestions.
Replies 25
Views 661
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Hi. Lovely song with very good performances. (In terms of the mix, I want to tuck the piano and maybe the vocal in a little bit, but please take that with a grain of salt.) Thank you Scott. I edited Rescue Me and added a bit of glue so I think the vocals sit alittle better in the mix. I didn't touch the piano but maybe that sits better to now? Thank you for your feedback. It all helps improve our mixes. The moves you made worked well. I'm always reluctant to suggest a tweak, I'm certainly no pro. Thanks for being receptive:)
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Views 458
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Actually, it's a pretty cool and extremely catchy tune. Minimalist, like the band Trio in the '80s. You might not like this, but it's my new favorite song of yours 
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Views 250
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A truly beautiful and soothing jazz song, Christian. 100% on the instrumentation and arrangement!
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A beautiful song. I like the arrangement changes, which keep it interesting. I think the calmer, slower mood of the intro conveys the romantic feeling better than the faster rest of the song. But it's still a beautiful song that definitely deserves a vocal part
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Views 280
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Chay I really understand about the lack of inspiration and how it paralyzes musical output. I can let things just sit for months at a time waiting for the muse to come around again and then get stressed about wasting time. Everything you post is always done extremely well and this is no exception! The track sounds wonderful. I encourage you to stay after it because there aren't a whole lot of people who have your production skill level! Take care, TB Thanks, Torrey! Re "production skill", none of my posts have ever been mastered as I don't have enough room on my PC for anything new - I need a new PC or drive with 4 times the memory my current one has - but one of the things I most enjoy about creating music after having gotten a new chord structure is the sampling, arranging and mixing. It's not just satisfying, it's fulfilling.
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Views 829
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Now there a new marketing angle...live entertainment at the grocery store! Might make me feel that that $11 a pound hamburger isn't all that bad. Maybe not...... Jeff
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Views 60
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Torrey, Thank you. That's very kind and appreciated by both of us. Bob
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Views 546
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The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart. Great line. Infact the entirety of the lyrics have a mighty fine message. Too many people learn this the hard way. Good song
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Views 246
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Thanks Ray, Hans, Brno, Marty, Laurent and Chay for checking out the song. Really appreciate your comments
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Views 358
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
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Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac® users: Build 904 now available!
If you're already using Band-in-a-Box® 2025 for Mac®, make sure to grab the latest update! Build 904 is now available for download and includes the newest additions and enhancements from our team.
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® users: Build 1237 is now available!
Already a Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows user? Stay up to date and download the build 1237 to get all the latest additions and enhancements.
PowerTracks Pro 2026 for Windows is Here!
PowerTracks 2026 is here—bringing powerful new enhancements designed to make your production workflow faster, smoother, and more intuitive than ever.
The enhanced Mixer now shows Track Type and Instrument icons for instant track recognition, while a new grid option simplifies editing views. Non-floating windows adopt a modern title bar style, replacing the legacy blue bar.
The Master Volume is now applied at the end of the audio chain for consistent levels and full-signal master effects.
Tablature now includes a “Save bends when saving XML” option for improved compatibility with PG Music tools. Plus, you can instantly match all track heights with a simple Ctrl-release after resizing, and Add2 chords from MGU/SGU files are now fully supported... and more!
Get started today—first-time packages start at just $49.
Already using PowerTracks Pro Audio? Upgrade for as little as $29 and enjoy the latest improvements!
Order now!
Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows Special Offers End Tomorrow (January 15th, 2026) at 11:59 PM PST!
Time really is running out! Save up to 50% on Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® upgrades and receive a FREE Bonus PAK—only when you order by 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, January 15, 2026!
We've added many major new features and new content in a redesigned Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®!
Version 2026 introduces a modernized GUI redesign across the program, with updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, and a new Dark Mode option. There’s also a new side toolbar for quicker access to commonly used windows, and the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, making it easier to customize your workspace.
Another exciting new addition is the new AI-Notes feature, which can transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI. You can view the results in notation or play them back as MIDI, and choose whether to process an entire track or focus on specific parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
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Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® Special Offers Extended Until January 15, 2026!
Good news! You still have time to upgrade to the latest version of Band-in-a-Box® for Windows® and save. Our Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® special now runs through January 15, 2025!
We've packed Band-in-a-Box® 2026 with major new features, enhancements, and an incredible lineup of new content! The program now sports a sleek, modern GUI redesign across the entire interface, including updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, a new dark mode option, and more. The brand-new side toolbar provides quicker access to key windows, while the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, creating a flexible, clutter-free workspace. We have an amazing new “AI-Notes” feature. This transcribes polyphonic audio into MIDI so you can view it in notation or play it back as MIDI. You can process an entire track (all pitched instruments and drums) or focus on individual parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
There are over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
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Upgrade to Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® today! Check out the Band-in-a-Box® packages page for all the purchase options available.
Happy New Year!
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Wishing you and yours a very happy 2026—Happy New Year from all of us at PG Music!
Season's Greetings!
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy holiday season—thanks for being part of our community!
The office will be closed for Christmas Day, but we will be back on Boxing Day (Dec 26th) at 6:00am PST.
Team PG
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