I've been away from Band in a Box for a few years now, and my life is starting to come back together, finally. So, here's what I don't understand, and I saw this in 2022 version as well. I have the latest build for 2023 (1004) so I should have everything.

I want to do 'The Bare Necessities' from The Jungle Book. To do this, I want to use a Dixieland style, specifically DIXIMQT.sty. However, in bar 46, I wish to change to JALOPY.sty and then in bar 81, to DIXIMED.sty.
The Substyles are defined in the BIAB file, and they switch correctly in BIAB.

However, when I save the file and then open it in Cakewalk using the VST plug-in, the substyles do not show, nor do they appear to generate the additional substyles.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing something? Is there a way to use the VST Plug-in to generate the parts I'm missing, or do I need to just generate the tracks and pull them over, something I really don't want to do, since I'm also using Utility tracks (something else I don't know a whole lot about.

Thanks in advance, and Merry Christmas to all.

Not sure about all of the but you can use 3 VST Plugs
VST 1 set to DIXIMQT.sty and highlight all bars to 45
VST 2 set to JALOPY.sty and highlight all bars from 46 to 80
VST 3 set to DIXIMED.sty and highlight all bars from 81 on
you can copy/paste chords from one VST to the other.

Each VST Generate > Custom > This Page (Style Tracks) (Selected Region)

Just watch with the current VST Plug the sync goes out by 2 bars when you reload the session in the DAW next time so you may need to re-generate.

"No longer homeless! I'm blessed watching God do what He does best."
Amen

I think, with two monitors, I can open Cakewalk on the second monitor and just drag and drop from the BIAB mixer to Cakewalk, and it'll copy the wave files over. I'm not sure about using three VSTs, to me that seems like extra work, but then again, I guess copying all the wave files over from BIAB mixer to Cakewalk it probably just as 'extra work, too.'

Gary

It's good as you can adjust the level of each style and add multistyle utility tracks.
If you need to go over 255 bars you just use 2 VST Plugs and set the second one to start sync on bar 256.

Yes you might be better just dragging from Biab if it's just a new song you want in an empty DAW session.
Though if you had Reaper it will just inject the Style/Tempo/Time Signature change Biab song directly into Reaper without rendering.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=717532#Post717532

Okay,
So time to review. I spoke with tech support and it got sent up to e-mail support.
I'm not exactly sure what I did, but here's the results so far. I created a new file of 'On Green Dolphin Street' from new. I used two styles, a jazz style and a Bossa Nova style.

1. Saving the song as a .sgu and then opening the file in Cakewalk with the BIAB VST recognizes the part markers, but only as ‘a’ and ‘b’, NOT ‘c’ and ‘d.’ However, and I don’t know what happened, I now can use the bar settings and change the styles to the appropriate style, i.e., the ‘c’ and ‘d’ parts from the original .sgu. However, they have the ‘red lined box’ in the ‘a’ and ‘b’ part markers, but the proper style is there.

2. It does not import style changes from the .sgu, you must put them in once it’s in the DAW, in my case, Cakewalk.

3. I had three choruses in my song. For whatever reason, it did not generate anything after bar 36, which is where the repeat started. The VST was quiet and when I moved the wave files over to Cakewalk, they weren’t there. So, no generation of the song for repeat choruses.
a. Using the ‘K’ shortcut or the Copy and Paste functions did not copy the part markers or the style changes.

So, I CAN get the styles to change now by switching them in the VST Plug-in, but I must go in and change each one manually. There are no 'c' or 'd' indicators and no ability to click through the available styles. To get them, I must open the Bar Settings dialog and manually change the style at that bar.

It does not seem to generate anything for multiple choruses, after the first chorus. I closed Cakewalk and restarted it. The same is true in Reaper. Also, if I decided to copy and paste, the part markers and style changes do not copy or paste.

So, I'm sending another e-mail off to support. I don't know if any of the rest of you are having these problems, but I guess for right now, the best thing for me will be to drag and drop from BIAB into Cakewalk and forego use of the VST. I hope that PG Music can either tell me what I'm doing wrong, or sort this out.

Gary

You can try Edit > Song Form > Unfold
then save that as an unfolded SGU/MGU then open that in the BBPlugin.

While this is true, what if I want to change the number of choruses after I've done the song, and it's already in the Plug-in? This really is the point for that matter, it should have the same functionality, at least on the basic level, as the main program.

Yes it should have the same basics.
The original idea was to be able to add other instruments to a recorded studio session rather than have auto-accompaniment in a DAW.
I said the only way to get all the Biab features of the mother program in the DAW is just have a Biab sync VST that you load in your DAW and it syncs the main Biab app to the DAW playback and you don't have to wait for renders.

If the Plugin is made to play back the wma/wav RT RD files directly it would be quicker to get the tracks playing in the DAW rather than waiting for Biab in the background to render them down to wav, and also this will give the exact same tracks as in Biab if you freeze them and open the SGU in the Plugin.
So if you open a frozen SGU from Biab it will play exactly the same instantly in the DAW playing the exact same sections. Changing, adjust any section or adding more instruments would be instant without having to re-render all new wavs.

Gary,

Unless plugin features have recently changed the plugin does not follow the use of more than one style, sometimes called MultiStyles, in a song file.

In past threads PG Music has confirmed the plugin has a limited limited set of features. The lack of plugin support for MultiStyles has come up in multiple threads.

As an aside, RealBand and the plugin seem to share the same feature set limits.

Jim,
They must be working on it, at least somewhat. I CAN get at least one substyle (is that the same thing as MultiStyle?) to work in the plug in, but I must add it once it's inside the DAW. Once I open the plug-in, go to the bar I want to add the style change to, click Bar Settings, and add it there. So far, I've only got one additional style to work, though.

G

I found a The Bare Necessities.SGU
but I can't see a style JALOPY.sty

Gary,

Yes what you call a sub style PG Music calls a MultiStyle.

I made a longer response in your related +++ Wish list +++ thread.

I'm glad you came up with a solution.

Sorry, it's '_Jalopy', didn't put the underscore.

G

Jim,
To me, the terminology is lacking.

If you right click the bar, it will give you the ability to 'define c/d substyle' and so forth. So, for example, doing 'On Green Dolphin Street', the song has a jazz rhythm, and then switches to a Bossa Nova. There IS a style J_Dolfin.sty, which is MIDI only, and gives you a Jazz Bossa eight bar followed by a more straight ahead jazz for the 'B' part of the style. But, to my knowledge, there is no Real Tracks style for it.

So, I need to make my own. So, song style is Bars 1-8, Bossa, 9-16 Jazz Swing, 17-24 Bossa, 25-32 is Jazz Swing.
For the 1-8, I'll use '_B140_GB.sty' and I'll use the 'a' part. For bars 9-16, I need to switch to jazz, so I'll right click on the bar number 9 and select Define C/D to define the style I want. I select _J140_GB. This is not what I understand a MultiStyle to be. A MultiStyle will have already defined 'C/D,' 'E/F,' and 'G/H' subsections.

Using those two separate style, I am able to open the .sgu/.mgu file in Cakewalk, but there are serious issues with it.
1. I won't bring over the style changes. You can manually select the 'Bar Settings' for the bars you want to change style in and change the style, and that does work.
2. It doesn't do any repeats.
3. You can copy and paste to extend the song to the number of choruses you want, but it doesn't copy the style changes, and then you are limited in the number of bars you can put style changes in. For example, in On Green Dolphin Street, as I said above, in 32 bars, I'll have four changes of style. When I copy and paste, I get down to bar 41, make the style change, but when I get to bar 49, it deletes the change in bar 41, and the same if I try to change bar 57, it deletes the bars above it.

So, lots of issues here.

Gary

Tried that also but must of missed that style.

Gary,

I agree the terminology is confusing.

Each style has a pair of "A" and "B" substyles.

A song project can include up to 13 substyle pairs for a maximum of 26 substyles.

Each subsequent "A" and "B" pair are assigned higher alpha letters. A-B becomes C-D or E-F or G-H and so on up to Y-Z.

When a song project has more than one pair of substyles that become a MultiStyles song project.

There are factory MultiStyles that use substyles from multiple styles but there can also be user defined MultiStyles where you define the substyles. But, both are MultiStyles because more than one pair of substyles are used.

That may not be 100 percent right but that is the way I understand it.

A good example of terminology confusion is how people mix up RealTracks, RealStyles and Styles by using all three when discussing RealTracks and styles. Sometimes it doesn't make any difference in the discussion but sometimes it does.



I assuming you are using the plugin to play the sgu file in Cakewalk.

Your #1 is news to me. I was not aware the plugin will allow you to manually add substyles. That is good and nice to know.

It is important to realize midi and audio used in the plugin are generated in the main Band-in-a-Box (BiaB) program. There is a utility program that acts as an interface between the main program and the plugin. There are many tasks the utility program can not tell the main program to do.

#2. & #3 In my opinion Band-in-a-Box, and therefore the plugin, plays each bar successively. Therefore the utility program will not tell the main program to repeat. Band-in-a-Box uses repeats as a way to reduce the screen size of the chord sheet or printed score. Try unfolding the song to one big chorus.

The good thing with using multiple Plugins you can adjust the levels of the different styles independently, this way will also let you go way over 255 bars by syncing the 2nd Plugin to start sync @ bar 256.
If you get stuck it just gives you an options to work around it, and with audio sends you can put the different style instruments through different FX rather than the changing instrument wav track having the same FX on the whole track.

I think what I'm going to do for now is to use BIAB in the DAW mode. I can open up Cakewalk and select DAW mode for BIAB, and resize it to be near the size of the VST Plug in. That allows me all the features and capabilities I need from BIAB in Cakewalk.

Gary