I've discovered that if the Natural Arrangement is active on the track of your chosen soloist (RT, not midi!), the result is much more limited and repetitive in terms of what you actually get played.
So be sure to manually turn that OFF for your soloist(s) in your Track Settings.

How do you do this.?

Menu for the track (right-click on the track's button), found under the Track Settings submenu.

Icelander,

Excellent tip Sir.

Is there a global setting rather than doing it track by track for every song/project ? If so, where is it set globally ? We can't find it or rather it is not obvious to us.

Thanks.

Inside Preferences 1 panel, bottom left.

Eddie,

This would make a great tip in the Tip & Tricks section of the forum. The basic idea, turn off natural arrangement when using solo RealTracks, is a good idea for both the Windows and Mac versions of Band-in-a-Box. Here is how to set arrangement options in the 2017 Windows version:

To set arrangement in Windows 2017 for a specific track right click on the track radio button > Track Settings > Set Natural Arrangement and select an option. To set arrangement option for all tracks use the option in Song Settings. To set the natural arrangement globally, click Preferences > Arrange.

I really considered this to be more of a "friendly advice" or a suggestion than a 'certified' Tip with a capital T, you know - and perhaps a gentle nod to the staff along the way about this limiting side-effect of a new feature (which I'm sure wasn't intentional).
Having said that, feel free to make something 'more' of it as you please

I'm not sure just what the "natural arrangement" does anyway.

Does it compromise the chords so that when I put in a complex chord it simplifies it? If so, what's the sense of putting in a Bb7#5#9 or something like that?

Or does it improve voice leading? That would be a good thing.

Or something else?

I generally leave it off anyway. The little yellow box appears and I ignore it.

Perhaps I should do some experimenting.

Insights and incites by Notes

Notes Norton,

Good post!

My interpretation : By turning off Natural Arrangement chords then complex chords will supposedly be played.

Band in a Box ( Windows or Mac ) is a extremely sophisticated artificial intelligence based music making programme. The musical sounds of those complex chords is rather different when compared to the sound of those same chord or chords when played by an acoustical instrument as compared to a computer generated sound. I have tried it by playing those complex chords on a piano and there is a significant difference. Mind you the speaker system used does play an important role.

My conclusion is that it is somewhat a waste of time typing in those complex and obscure chord structures. Although on the other hand great for making use of all my musical theory knowledge acquired from my early years of study and graduation in The Royal Conservatory Certificate Program.

I think that if you have a powerful computer ( loads and loads of RAM ) than you can turn the natural arrangement OFF and your computer would be able to generate those complex chords in addition to all the other stuff it has to generate in milliseconds .

Just my thoughts.

I know that in complex chords, a pianist might choose to only play a few of the notes, but often they are the extensions letting the bass play the root and other notes understood. But this should be done with the idea of what supports the melody and which tones add interest to the chord movement.

I wonder if BiaB is 'smart' enough to choose which tones support the chord movement (since it doesn't know the melody I'm going to play, that one is out of the picture).

Insights and incites by Notes

Actually, if you've entered your melody into the song via midi (which you should, see my tip on that from a few years back), then the program absolutely does "know" what the melody is - and it does matter to the choices it then makes in terms of what particular rendition of any given chord it uses, even with the Realtracks! It's one of the core reasons the program needs to pre-render everything that is Realtrack.

Except I play the melody on my sax, guitar, flute, wind synth, or keyboard synth live while BiaB is playing the background. I don't want BiaB to have all the fun, so I save the melody for myself.

When BiaB started it was nothing more than a great auto-accompaniment program. As the years went on and more features added, it has become a lot more than than that, but it's still what I use it for most.

I can load a song in, pick up my sax (or whatever) play the melody and then practice or investigate different improvisation ideas I might have. The sax, flute, and wind synth are monophonic, so without the auto-accompaniment going on, I can't hear the chords in my head well enough to know if I'm making and relieving tensions.

For me BiaB is the best practice tool I know of.

Insights and incites by Notes

Which is perfectly understandable! And you can still of course be the "main man" and just turn the volume off for the Melody channel (in the case of live performance), and/or record your audio on top of the previously entered midi melody (in non-live cases), which will automatically suppress the midi without removing it = In both cases the midi data is still there, for the benefit of both the program and yourself (in terms of results)

Thanks!

Notes

Welcome to it, mate. In fact, it's been your train of thoughts throughout this whole thread here that lead us to this latest point (which thanks to you I've remembered again), which in turn has served as just the nudge I needed to make a "proper" post about it in the designated Tips forum.
So..right back at ya and much obliged

Jim Fogle, Icelander, I realize this is an older thread but I hope that you will see it. When I generate RT solos, it's in RealBand, and not BIAB. For general arranging within BIAB (when solos are not involved), what is the better setting, Natural Arrangements or not? It would seem that from other threads, that allowing Natural Arrangements is considered an excellent choice for improved performance in BIAB. Would the Natural Arrangements choice that we make in BIAB, affect the RT solos in RealBand? Thank you!

Unfortunately RealBand does not exist for my platform (Mac), so I'm afraid I cannot answer this particular question.

Thank you Icelander! Hoping Jim Fogle will weigh in. I like using RB to generate tracks, but have moved onto a better DAW for production.

Warren,

As far as I can tell, the natural arrangement selection appears to be confined to Band-in-a-Box.

Some settings stored in a Band-in-a-Box song file are not recognized by RealBand. But what song file settings RealBand uses and which file settings are ignored is not documented.

I don't think the question, "Does the natural arrangement setting in Band-in-a-Box affect RealTrack generation in RealBand?" can be answered in an absolute sense. But you might be able to get a better sense by experimenting with short and simple song files where the only difference between the song files is the natural arrangement settings.

Thanks Jim. Given that Natural Arrangement has long been chosen in my BIAB preferences, and the rich and varied solos I've generated in RealBand, I'd think that BIAB's Natural Arrangement does not in any way limit the RealBand soloist and MultiRiff features. Just wanted to check, though!