It's been a while since I'd done anything with BiaB, so I figured I'd put together a short instrumental. One of these days I'll do a vocal song - I promise! But not today.

Leisurely Rendezvous

I'm cheating all the way here, with BiaB doing all the heavy lifting. The backing track is _PAT_JFG Easy Folk Rock with the New Age Pan Flute - Peru auto generating the melody until I found something I liked. I edited the melody a bit to add variety, but not that much - mostly changing directions of the melodic line so it didn't spend as much time in the lower register, or pitching phrases up/down a third for variety. The melody editor can still be a bit frustrating at times, but is very nice.

The melody could stand a bit more trimming - some of the held notes at the end of phrases don't really need to be there. But there's a time to stop messing with something and consider it done.

I rendered a number of additional RealTracks, as well as MIDI strings from other styles. I wish there were a way of picking MIDI parts the way you can pick RealTracks. I also went through and created a version of the song with only held chords, and rendered a number of RealTracks with that as well - guitar strums, electric pianos, and so on.

All this got exported into Reaper, where I bounced the melody line between various instruments using Garritan Personal Orchestra to render them. There was a nice "echo" line that came from staggering the melody line, with some editing in Reaper's MIDI editor to make the lines fit nicely.

After I got it sort of working, I worked on cutting it down to size and trying to get some sort of build and cadence at the end - mostly via MIDI editing and volume envelopes. The ending is a bit more cluttered that I'd like, but it's just a demo.

I even cheated with the title, using BiaB's title-generator until it sparked an idea to something I liked.

That's a lot of work for music that's "automatically generated".

Anyway, hopefully you'll find it a pleasant diversion.

David,

So nice to see you posting your work. I really enjoyed this - great pacing and feel. Loved the tone of the flute. Nice job.

Bob

That's a very nice piece David. I enjoyed it.


John

Thanks for the feedback!

I really like the Garritan flute - it's one of my favorite sounds in the collection. The strings work nicely as well, although I keep hoping for RealTrack strings show up Real Soon Now...

Very nice. Great instrumentation and arranging.

Very peaceful, two thumbs up.

I like this David. Nice kind of Yanni feel with the flute.

Thanks, Mario and Josie.

Nice, what a lovely feel this has. It should be one one of those relaxation CD's...

Fitzy

Hi David,

I like it! The sound is very restful and I just sat back, closed my eyes and enjoyed the journey. The Garritan flute sound is excellent. I thought it was you playing at first

All the best,
Noel

I like the way the flute echoes itself later in the song. Reuse of a pattern with harmony goes a long way toward making a song sound less automated and more arranged.

I agree with the other comments, its a very restful happy song... reminded me a lot of the mood generated by many of the Carpenters songs. (thats a good thing... I liked the Carpenters)

I especially like hearing the steps you went through to create the song. Its easy to run out of ideas if you don't have access to other peoples' brain-joggers.

Thanks for posting! Keep up the good work!

Sadly, my flute playing doesn't sound anything close to that - I'm very much a beginner.

I'm currently trying to re-pad my flute, and I'm not going to hold my breath that it'll come out of the process as a usable instrument. It's an old Bundy student flute that I can't afford to have repaired properly, given that refurbishing it would cost at least as a new, better instrument.

I should also mention that BiaB's humanize feature is quite nice for instrumentals, but working with GPO is problematic, because GPO uses the Modulation wheel for volume control. The first thing that BiaB does is set the Mod wheel to zero, which sets the instrument volume to zero, which makes using GPO from within BiaB a bit of a pain - Yet another reason for exporting to Reaper. (The GPO piano also sounds great and mixes very nicely with "real" pianos).

Which reminds me - one bit of instrumentation that I liked on the song that didn't make the final cut was to give the melody to the piano for a couple of bars, because it gave a break from the woodwinds. No clever harmony, just a simple change in timbre.

As for the "echo" part, I keep rediscovering that "less is more", usually by trying to write some clever counterpoint that sounds labored, and then find out how much better my song is when I edit it out. Simple ideas expressed clearly - I need to make that my mantra.

David,

Good job here! I am glad you posted some of your work. I'm sure you have in the past but I don't recall. This is very enjoyable. Like it's been said, nice and peaceful and restful. Keep posting!

Steve

dcuny,

You hit the mood for me this evening in your melody. True, it may be BiAB that tows the weight, there is still the chord arrangements as well as the time going through the selected melodies and instrumentalists to achieve the sound and mood you are going for that should not be discounted.

It is one of the things I love about BIAB is that it is like working with a real band. Sometimes you have an idea in your head and you gotta have them work it out a few times before you get the niche of the thought across. BIAB has been that for me. Being a guitarist that loves to play with assorted horns and woodwinds, this tool has made that possible.

Keep up the great work! If you have anymore, add them to the page. I would like to hear more. Check out the music I did with BIAB over the past couple of years. You may find the same thing you are doing happening there as well.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1026586

P.S. I also like the integration of manipulating MIDI tracks. I do the same when I want a slight tweak to what was scribed. Sometimes, we need to think outside of the box!

Talk to ya!
RickeG