Hi,
I'm running into a really frustrating issue with the soloist.

I load up a style which includes a soloist, for example, "_BLSw_GS.STY. Blues w/ Electric Guitar Solo" from RT Set 10.

Then you choose to "Load Song Demo For This Style".

The guitar solo starts immediately and plays non-stop until the song ends.

I would prefer to have my own opportunity to play a solo and have the guitar solo only on chorus 3 and 4.

I cannot figure out how to achieve this. Opening the Soloist Dialog (Shift+F4) seems to hint at this possibility but 1) the actual soloist used in the style is not even pre-selected, 2) even if I search for it and select it, choose custom options and generate a solo, it has no effect anyway.

I gather there is another way, to use bar settings and mute the soloist for the choruses where you don't want it, but to achieve this is very tedious and feels like the wrong and clunky approach.

Please help, with the easiest step-by-step guide to shorten the currently chosen soloist that is included with the style.

Info on the style, if you want to try for yourself.

Memo: All RealTracks! Bass El Blues, Organ B3, Blues ShuffleHard RealDrums, Guitar El Rhythm Blues, and Guitar El Soloist Blues. T=105-140. -Examples: Pride and Joy, Genre "Intensity" Score=75/100
_BLSw_GS.STY. Blues w/ Electric Guitar Solo
All RealTracks. Quintet. *** with Soloist ***Tempo=120 (105-140)
Instruments: El.Bass, Organ, El.Guitar, El.Guitar(solo), Drums
RD: BluesShuffleHard^4-a:Snare, HiHat , b:Busy Snare, Ride :PG Artist 4
RT420: Bass, Electric, Blues Sw 120 , Dow Tomlin
RT425: Organ, B3, Background Blues Sw 120 , Chris Nole
RT421: Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Blues Sw 120 , Jack Pearson
RT422: Guitar, Electric, Soloist Blues Sw 120 , Jack Pearson

Use F5 to tell the blues guitar when to play and when not to play.

Thanks!
But that is the tedious approach of having to mute and unmute the track. Also it tends to cut off the solo in the middle of a phrase and sounds terrible.
Surely there is a better way, if you only want 16 bars of solo?

Well for the past 20 years F5 has been your only option and has kept the masses happy. But, you may be in luck. As of recently there two new ways by either using multistyles which insert silent RTs or by using Audio Editor. I would be glad to explain how to do that, but both are way too confusing for me.

Thanks again.
Muting and unmuting during a solo is not acceptable solution for me. The phrases are interrupted.

It's all very confusing. This style already contains a soloist track when you load it, yet apparently there is no option to configure it.

The only availabe option is to select and generate *another* soloist, then two of them play at the same time, over the entire song, which is even worse.

Hi Konaboy, first always post what version of Biab you're using and your system details like Dan just did. Assuming it's 2023, there is a new method for this and that is to highlight just the region you want the soloist (or any other track) to generate or re-generate on the chord grid and it will only generate those bars WITH a proper lead in and out of the solo so it sounds natural. You want 16 bars in the middle of the 2nd chorus only highlight that. Go to your Help Index, type in Generate Bars and hit Display. Tutorial 35 explains it.

Bob

Hi Bob,
Good point, I'm on 2023.
Your suggestion sounds promising, but I have just typed in 12 bar blues, with 5 choruses, and for example want solo on chorus 3 and 4. Can't see how to achieve this by selecting a region, when only 12 bars are displayed.

so I kinda figured out an ugly workaround that gets the desired result.

1) Mute the offending soloist track in the style
2) Shift+f4 to open the Select Soloist dialog
3) Search for the soloist that you muted in step 1)
4) Choose Custom options to set the chorus start and # bars

There you go, now you have 2 soloists, but the obnoxious one that refused to stop playing is now banished to the parking lot.

You know, PG music provides rather voluminous documentation which describes in detail how all this stuff works....

of course I studied the relevant sections. but they don't tell you that.

Originally Posted By: konaboy

Hi Bob,
Good point, I'm on 2023.
Your suggestion sounds promising, but I have just typed in 12 bar blues, with 5 choruses, and for example want solo on chorus 3 and 4. Can't see how to achieve this by selecting a region, when only 12 bars are displayed.

To have your soloist only play chorus 3 and 4:

. Select the Soloist Track
. Open the Audio Edit Window
. Note the Chorus bars are notated with each bar of a chorus includes the Chorus in parentheses ie: bar 3(3) is bar three of the third chorus.
. Highlight and silence the Choruses you want to be silence. In your example, highlight and silence Chorus 1, 2, and 5 as I've done in the image attached.

Another option for this would be the new volume automation facility in the audio editor. That allows one to fade-in/fade-out the track where you'd like, including allowing for pick-up and the like.

thanks for all the suggestions.
it seems the easiest for me, is to simply mute the soloist track that comes with the style, and create a new soloist on a new track using the same realtrack.
there seems to be no good way to change behaviour of the style soloist, but when generating the new one, you can have some control.

For this kind of things, it's a good idea to work with one linear chorus instead of a multiple-chorus project, this way you can simply select the bars you want and generate material for those bars.

You can convert your multi chorus into a single chorus project using the unfold command (edit menu)

I thought the whole idea of Alt+F8 was to get what you want where.
In the Audio Edit you should be able to delete the whole track then select some bars or beats and generate what you want where.

That's the way I always work on projects. Gives me a LOT more flexibility and customization for the project you work on. Good call out, Cerio.

Hi Konaboy,

I don't try and do what you want in BIAB - I do all the soloist editing in my DAW.

I render all the tracks about 7 times and then insert all tracks for a song (typically around 30-40) into my DAW (Reaper).

Then I manually edit the volume of each track to suit the song. This is much preferable to trying to do this in BIAB because you have total control.

This is most important in the soloist tracks where you often want the soloist playing early or late on each phrase especially on fills between vocal phrases.

Yes it's time consuming but produces a professional result.

Best Regards
Nigel

Yes, the only downside is the 256 bar limit. If you unfold any 64 bar jazz standard, for example, the new project will be limited to 4 choruses.

oh my gosh! the whole exporting to daw and/or editing audio files just to silence the soloist on the first chorus seems incredibly complicated and unnecessary. sends shudders down my spine! Vital functions like this should be a readily available in the UI (and working as expected).

very interesting to read the different approaches to work around this though, thank you all.

I don't think that exporting to an external DAW is the only way to achieve this.

Besides <F5>, the BiaB Audio Edit window allows this to be achieved through the volume automation settings, surely?

Originally Posted By: konaboy

Thanks again.
Muting and unmuting during a solo is not acceptable solution for me. The phrases are interrupted.

It's all very confusing. This style already contains a soloist track when you load it, yet apparently there is no option to configure it.

The only availabe option is to select and generate *another* soloist, then two of them play at the same time, over the entire song, which is even worse.

Regarding interrupted phrases when using the (F5)Bar Settings to mute/return to normal search the RealTracks Picker to see if your version of BIAB contains RT 1152:Silence.

RT 1152 is a special RealTrack unique to the BIAB main program for muting the original Legacy tracks so the BIAB algorithm is aware to mute the desired track sections as it is selecting RealTrack data. Using RT 1152 across the bars to be muted, causes BIAB to treat these bars as a different instrument and will play silence. This prevents abrupt endings and beginnings of phrases.

Access this feature using the RealTrack Picker Dialog. There are 8 settings to program instrument changes and each of the Legacy tracks has 10 slots for instrument changes. Any RealTrack, in any combination, can be used in these slots. For instance using different RealTrack instruments for each slot and for each track results in 70 instruments in a single 32 bar Chorus. A result of 35 changes is possible using only 2 instruments.

RT 1152 can also be manually set anywhere using Bar Settings Dialog and the RealTrack Button.

I've attached a screenshot of the 8 settings and another screenshot showing a 3 chorus song with the middle chorus muted using RT 1152.

Charlie, that's a great power-tip, thank you!

Maybe the easy way is too easy ?

yeah, thanks! I need to try that. I can imagine it might quickly gets cumbersome if you are often adjusting the chords, instrumentation, key signature, tempo though. You lose all the auto re-generation benefits.

You can use volume automation that will stay through regeneration if you are not adding or removing bars. It can be fine tuned to beats not like F5 on bars.

clever thinking there, smart solution, thanks!