Here's my annual request for Afro-Cuban jazz Realstyles in 6/8.

A RealTracks version of African would be a great start.

+1
Keep trying...

+1

Matt,

What instrument RealTracks are needed to construct a proper 6/8 Afro-Cuban jazz style? Are certain tempo ranges more common or does the genre encompass all tempos?

PS: Your pm mailbox is full.

+ 1

+1 indeed!

Jim: drums, congas, piano, bass. If possible, add claves and bongos. Next option would be vibes and then trumpet.

I would start with a nice 12/8 counted in 4/4 (as per Peter Gannon's description of how he thinks of it) at, say, 118 bpm.

I'll check my message box, thanks.

+1

Hi Matt, I was wondering if you could post one or two youtube clips of what you had in mind for this style. My apologies if you already have posted some links elsewhere, I know you've made this request a few times. As I understand it, you'd like to see an all-RealTracks version of the older midi style <AFRICAN.STY>, correct? The song memo for that style in the stylepicker shows "Isn't She Lovely", but I'm guessing that not exactly what you had in mind.

Hi Tobin! Oh, my. Thanks for your interest!

Yes, a great start would be to convert AFRICAN.STY to all RealTracks. That alone would be terrific. When RealTracks and RealDrums came out, that was the first thing I looked for.

I actually think 'Isn't She Lovely' is a great song. True, what I want eventually is something more edgy. My suggestion is to convert AFRICAN.STY to get the bass and drum groove working, and then I can play with some comping instruments to make other recommendations. Crashing Latin jazz Nuyorican piano would be nice.

I will look for some recordings that have good examples of this sound. I'm in a major project now, so give me time.

I tried.to reproduce this sound using existing RealTracks. I failed quickly because of the 6/8 requirement. I also produced a nice groove in 4/4 that I wanted to spend time with. In other words, I got distracted in short order.

The biggest weakness with AFRICAN.STY now is the drums. They are far too tame for jazz.

Hi Matt,

How is this one? This is the AFRICAN.sty demo, I've muted the melody, but left the MIDI guitar and keys from that style, but replaced the bass & drums with RealTracks fretless electric & RealDrums. Is this on the right track?

http://pgrt.pgmusic.com/pgrt/RealTracksFiles/misc/AFRICAN_sty_option_RD_RTBass.M4A

...oh, and for the record, I also think "Isn't She Lovely" is an excellent song, and certainly wasn't trying to imply anything different

Tobin, thank you. That's a nice improvement!

Please don't think I'm not interested; I'm just in the middle of some music projects. I will find some audio samples. But you should go ahead and offer this as an improved choice for AFRICAN.STY.

And, I'll study what you did when I see the style. It might give me more ideas.

Glad you liked it! And yeah, certainly no hurry for audio samples.

The drums are the new "Nanigo", which is an afro-cuban 6:8 groove. There are kit-only, percussion-only and kit+percussion options for that new RD style, and it's very much along the lines of that <AFRICAN.sty> groove, though again, as you said, at some point if you put in real-world examples of how you'd like it to sound, that could potentially be something we could add.

The bass in that sample is 2938: Bass, Fretless Electric Slow12-8Rene Sw 065. The tempo of the demo was 140bpm, so that bass had to stretch up a lot! But, basses are one of the best instruments for tempo stretching, and I think the end result here was really good.

So, on a short-term basis, one thing we could do easily is have the actual AFRICAN.sty swap in "Nanigo68WesPerc^" instead of it's current swap, "CountryShuffle". Hopefully we'll be able to get that in in a patch sometime in the near future. On a long term basis, we may be able to create new RealStyles like the one above, or possibly add new RealTracks.

That’s very helpful; now I can reproduce it and try some ideas.

I recommend you NOT make an improved version of AFRICAN.STY that would overlay the existing one, if that’s what you were considering. That could really cause problems for those out there who use only MIDI. Instead I hope you will make a new style with a very similar name, index it appropriately, and perhaps anyone using it will see it as a new alternative.

Hi Matt,

Right, I was suggesting a brand new style. But, with MIDI styles, we have a separate file which can automatically swap in a RealDrums style IF the user has their preferences set to automatically do so. These we routinely DO update, since it doesn't affect the style itself, and that's what we can do with this. So, it won't affect the MIDI drums in the style at all, but IF a user decides to have BB automatically swap in a RealDrums, it would pick this new better option.

Nice!

Tobin, try this combination.

Bass 2938
Piano 1772
Drums Nanigo 68 Wes Basic Simple (not Perc)
Guitar 2606

Tempo 130

This is a lot of fun, experimenting. This must be how you derive the Xtra Styles?

- Matt

I'm still having trouble finding RealTracks and RealDrums that are suited to 6/8. Putting 68 or 6/8 in the Filter doesn't seem to do much. What's the secret please?

Hi Matt,

The secret would probably be to include 12:8 styles in your search. There may be many styles that we designated as 12:8 that could also be considered just two bars of 6:8. And as you likely know, you can now view those style in notation in 6:8, where 1 bar of 12:8 is split into 2 bars of 12:8.

Using a filter of Genre:Jazz & Timesig:12:8, it's giving me 45 hits, and sampling through those 45, I'm hearing lots that could be considered either 12:8 or 6:8. For example, _PASSAGE, _MISSYOU, _GARGOYL.

That being said, right now you can filter EITHER by 12:8 OR 6:8, but it might be a good idea to make a new option "12:8 or 6:8".

Great, I did not know to use a colon. I’ll try it.

Hi Matt,

Sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you were talking about the stylepicker, but it looks like you were talking about the RealTracks picker & the RealDrums picker. There aren't specific filters in those for 12:8 or 6:8, so the best options in both would be to filter to show swing 8ths styles, since both 6:8 & 12:8 are treated as triplet-based, or "swing 8ths" in Band-in-a-Box.

Oh. Ok. Having a filter choice for this would seem to be a good improvement.

Hi Matt,

I also wanted to point out that of course a lot of our jazz waltz RealDrums are very close in groove to 6:8. For example, Here is a short clip of RealTracks bass and drums, waltz at 210:
http://pgrt.pgmusic.com/pgrt/RealTracksFiles/misc/Jazz68_70bpm__waltz210_sample.mp3

...but it definitely could very much be thought of as 6:8. So, in addition to possibly making new 6:8 RealDrums (and/or RealTracks), we could also take some of our waltzes and make dedicated 6:8/12:8 versions of them which would then appear as such in notation.

+1

I've searched for quite a while and haven't found anything approaching a 12/8 Afro-Caribbean style. It's quite a significant genre not currently covered by BiaB so it would be good to have that included in future!

Please post a youtube link of what you had in mind

Basic rhythm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjvvnUF4ALs

The most well-known piece in this style in the jazz idiom is Afro-Blue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3aVdx4J1vU

Another example with a more modern fusion sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRHAswEXVBQ