Being a huge Jarrett and Kenny Wheeler fan I transcribed some melodies and chords and put them in band in a box. Searching for the right style has been frustrating. So last year I tried to make up my own styles, again a very frustrating experience with all of the biab quirks an’all. But, I hung in there and discovered a thing or two in the end. Finally I’ve gotten it more or less down.
The keys are in the contrast between a looser drum feel and a tighter (not walking) bass, I think. Read: Jack Dejohnette and Dave Holland!
Anyone intrested in discussing the process of making those styles, or exchanging tips, join in.
Two tips to start with: Converting internet available midi files to styles doesn’t seem to work chromatic approach notes, over the bar lines or anticipations don’t work. The fact that when you really play, you think horizontally, disregarding existing changes, adding substitute changes, well... the computer doesn’t think that way. So.
Make your own midi files and QUANTIZE them Make your own, make em simple, not too complex cause it might sound good playing it, but as a style in a song? “Quantizing” sounds like making the timing sterile, but it’s necessary. You can’t input tiny subtleties well: slight latencies in the software or your hardware. Otherwise, a quantized beat is not necessarily lifeless. I discovered it transcribing a Jarrett solo and playing the notation back. Without 16th note triplets or anything, it still sounded killer!
So, is this applicable to creating midi styles only? First thing I thought as I browsed through the styles was how limited they were, unless I was attached to jazz primarily, and a few other styles. While I have, much to my surprise, used some of those jazz styles, I still wish/wonder if the users could create their own, swappable, or even purchasable styles. Real, or midi. Sounds like you've found your way through to midi. Way to go!
While listening to the sample songs remember the site is using the base level midi sound patches built-into Windows. Midi can sound only as good as the midi patches in use.
++++ Look HERE ++++ under the Advanced heading at the bottom for two video tutorials on creating styles.
Jim is right when he says the patches or plugins matter a great deal.
But more importantly, I think, since the more sophisticated midi supertracks, the stylemaker has become more sophisticated too. More velocity-sensitive and it allows better triplet “management”
Nevertheless, Jim is right when it comes to choosing the right plugins. And it takes some searching since the GM standard is rare among the “better” vst’s. For the moment I primarily use Native instruments’ Vintage drums or 50’s drums and I only use brushes: you have to adjust the mapping and search for the right sound. And for bass I use Fluffy’s simple bass or one of the freebies (Chad’s double bass or xperimenta’s pizzicato bass, these are great, but take some tweaking). Sadly GM ready vsts like roland’s or non gm ready softs like sampletank 3 have very poor sounding double bass or brushes.
But the above setup works great.
By the way, exchanging these styles is easy. But, When they show up in style picker, the info is not there, you should make a Ls-file which I won’t bother myself with. So, yeah, you just copy the style to mail or forum and the receiver should paste it in the bb-directory. And it can be used.
I have made some more modern swing and bop styles, you know: less boring, every once in a while the drums accent the beat or the afterbeat... and bass is more dynamic. Walking bass can be very boring if everything has more or less the same velocity.
Just one quirk that I can’t seem to figurre out: there is an “intro” part to styles, but I can’t edit it in stylemaker, since it doesn’t show up.
This is an interesting topic. I would very much like if there were more such styles.
Not a keyboard player myself I cannot easy construct them.
I would like there to be vibes of Bobo Stenson Trio, Tord Gustavsen, Marcin Wasilewski Trio, Alboran trio, Tomasz Stanko quartet, Avishai Cohen, John Abercrombie, Anouar Brahem...
Like above I believe they cannot be to complex or to specific just capture different vibes not just certain songs. Preferably with a lot of choices. Midi I think.
More than two years on and countless hours of “programming”, correcting and tweaking, I just think I’m onto something here. It can be done. Check my website and listen to some of the examples. Hope you like it.
For lovers of modern jazz, I have mgu files included in the blog. The mgu files are free and feature modern jazz tunes (the styles are not included, but you don’t have to have the Jazzstylezz styles to enjoy the songs)
Some melodies are elaborate, some are not perfect, but certainly usable. They are not meant to substitute realbooks, fake books or the great Norton fakedisks, but offer you a connection to some of todays’ modern jazz.
Tempo de Amor, Herbie Hancock and Ceu What’s New (in 5/4) Dolphin Dance, Herbie Hancock 3/4 in the afternoon, Kenny Wheeler From Gagarin’s Point of View, Esbjorn Svensson, EST Broken Wing, Richie Beirach as played by Chet Baker FeFe Naa Efe, Laurent De Wilde’s arrangement of the Fela Kuti song It’s Easy to Remember, Scofield and Corea-style improvisation Lover Man Mission: to be where I am, Jan Garbarek Tagreta, Arild Andersen, as played by Bill Frisell Bernie’s tune Hermitage, Pat Metheny
I'm on your Soundcloud page and been going through the songs. You have created a very cool laid back style. I think Caravan is a masterpiece, I've never heard it done like that before. I do it in an uptempo funky hip hop sort of thing which is fun to play but I really dig what you did with it. If and when I ever get to do a another restaurant gig I'm going to try it like you did. Very nice.
I also like taking standards that every band in the world burn on and doing them very slow if I'm doing a solo piano gig or maybe a duo. One tune that is good for that is Night in Tunisia. Have you ever tried that in this slow, open style? If not give that a shot I would like to hear what you do with it.
I like what you're doing and putting Mr PC in seven was very cool too.
Pat Metheny turned 66 two days ago. He recorded the tune Travels and the whole double live album called, well, ... Travels... in 82, when he was only 28 years old. What a musician.
So, the whole argument that I can’t play as well as Pat Metheny, because he’s 14 years older than me, is a bit lame,
Pre-ECM, but, who can ignore Coltrane’s major influence on ECM style jazz? Wise One, John Coltrane
If you visit the blog on jazzstylezz.com, you can download a free mgu-file of all the tunes, including this one. Ps: I commented on the bad biab-video sync. This proved incorrect, sorry for this.
Dzjang and other fans of Django, you likely will enjoy +++ THIS +++ John Jorgenson interview. John Jorgenson played Django in a movie and is a world renown session and touring guitarist in his own right.
@Jim: John Jorgenson is something else, isn’t he? The ease with which he switches from rock to country to jazz and back again is mindblowing. I don’t know enough about country to really assess his skills, but in the jazz realm his playing is top notch. Curious as to what you think of players like Bill Frisell who have turned to country and rock. He has a band with a slide guitar player mixing jazz and country. I think he is a fan of country, but does he play it well, I wouldn’t know. Respect! @Matt: Thanks. For the most part I rarely consider alterations (like: Cm11 for Cm7), since I don’t use piano or guitar accompaniment on Biab. But horn players and some guitarists do. So you are very right to point this out. It’s essential to get the piano or guitar part play intresting things. I mostly think Realbook: get the basic chords down and leave the analysis to the player. But with a midi software, that doesn’t work. On the other hand, for the bass part, it’s all the same. The midi system in Band in a Box doesn’t know these chords in the bass department and ignores every alteration, sadly. (Even a b9 or b13)
More important for me though is your first suggestion: bar 14. Your use of the bass note makes for a very nice transition to the E chord (b2 substitution, I think we should call it or tritone sub for some).
I dig the suggestion to go for Eb on the C min chord, though I think what Bob Berg is trying to stress is the Phrygian character of the I chord (Cminor) in the interlude as a contrast to the “normal” minor I chord. But, Eb would add some nice bass movement. For me it’s more like Dblydian with C in the bass. Thanks for the intresting suggestions.
Payment pending. Wix takes some time to process re-linking my domain to the site. Oh well…
Another contender for “Standard of the future”: Metheny’s Last Train Home. I thought of it as a typical Metheny Group Song, lots of Synclavier going on. But Gilad Hekselman made a really cool rendition of it, making it sound almost like a standard tune.
You can download a mgu file of this tune for free on my blog. If you want to play it, go ahead.
You've just put your finger on it - looser drum parts and much tighter bass parts at the same time as the whole vibe being more sparse.
You have created great styles for swing time - that is done. The ECM and Scandi/Nordic material and artists I am inspired by are rarely playing 'swing time' and have a more pop or folk 'even' feel but swing massively in their phrasing especially in drums/percussion and acoustic bass. And they leave plenty of space - that's the signature of their sound - this is not 'foot tapping' music.
The challenge for me is to get a realistic 6/8 feel that could be possible by making a user style where two bars of 3/4 = 6/8 by pairing bars and using the bar settings to define - bar1 = count 1,2,3 and bar2 = count 4,5,6 etc.
I create trio backings - drum and bass + chords in order to play melody part scored or improvised - for fun, not to entertain others. And I do not use real tracks - strictly MIDI at this stage - before I export anything that sounds half decent to Garageband.
My challange is how to get the count to go smoothly from first to second bar so there does not feel like a break - bass and drum notes not able to sound across the gap etc, etc.
BIAB keeps getting upgrades and improvements - I started in the early years and keep coming back every few months - it now has good sound samples and a massive body of styles and other AI content that always teaches me something new about the musical process - I'm sticking with it.
That’s right. They don’t swing like in the old days. It was and still is a rhythmic revolution. It’s not the eighth note swing we know, but has a straight rhythm infused with subtle 16th and 32nd note triplets.
Making these styles has helped me understand the striking similarities between the Nordic sound, Jack DeJohnette and the Miles Davis quintet of the sixties.
Transcribing Jon Christensen and Michael DiPasqua on Garbarek‘s albums was surprisingly close to transcribing Dejohnette’s drumming on Bill Connors’ Of Mist and Melting.
Arild Andersen has expressed his admiration for Miles’ band in his albums with Masqualero. Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen have often referred in interviews to the Charles Lloyd Quartet and Elvin Jones’ playing in Coltrane’s band.
Jarrett picked up on Charles Lloyd’s integration of pop and folk tunes and rhythm. And the dynamic Nordic scene of the seventies has developed that even further, resulting in a few unforgettably beautiful melodies.
Jan Garbarek’s Entering (Places), Bill Connors’ Melting, Kenny Wheeler’s tunes, Jarrett’s Country or Innocence…
So much beautiful music. Maybe we could share some info, just to make the Biab experience better. PM me or continue this thread on all things ECM.
I don't know if this helps with isolating styles, but in BIAB's style picker, the styles (Realdrums and Realtracks) that are labelled as sw16 are based on 16th note triplets. I haven't come across styles using 1/32 note triplets. (Not that I'm aware of, at least.)
When I use the filter in Stylepicker to only show Jazz, sw16... a number of styles are listed. These might be useful starting places for you.
Seems to me there's a lot of ECM type options in the smooth and new age and world styles if you tweak or hybridise them. Especially those with a more World Music, Mystical or Classical feel rather than pop, funk etc. (eg. ANSWERS is almost an Oregon style)). The RALPH1 Christensen drummer can be used for example against the ETERNAL organ arpeggio for a John Surman/DeJohnette approximation. Useful in odd time signatures with holds and motifs in the new add on maybe. the SIRIUS style has a 'Last Train Home' vibe.
In the fusion styles there's obviously METH 80/81 and the fast even 8th jazz styles But you can do hybrids like the CROSWIND bass and piano parts along with the METH 80/81 DeJohnette drummer.
Outside BIAB there's OddGrooves ECM midi drum edition which might have some loop-able sections and fills within a rather sloppy presentation. Not too bad but not perfect by any means.
Session Band audio loops outside of the app in a windows based DAW can be used for ECM or mid 60's post bop purposes.
XLN addictive drums has a Jazz brushes set which boasts a free-jazz preset which isn't perfect but has enough of a 'metre-less' feel to it to be useable.
Elsewhere on the net there's a transcription or direct-to-midi Abercrombie/Johnson/Erskine performance of a standard with a Scandinavian pianist which is useful source of a subtle modern jazz waltz style.
@Alan, there are some great styles, like the ones you mentioned.
Btw, the midi that you refer to was my big inspiration for making styles that offer more than the factory styles. John Abercrombie, for sure. I’ve included the midi, because it’s so fabulous.
@Dzjang, thanks for that reminder of one of the great jazz groups of the 80's and early 90's. a trio of great dynamic range.
Some more ECM songs done as BIAB files would be good to have. I did two songs for the archive, Kenny Wheeler's 'Ma Belle Helene'. And one more which turned out to be a post bop version of John Taylor's Azimuth tune 'Eulogy' (I called it 17/8 at the time after it's rhythmic cycle as I transcribed it from a radio broadcast tape without knowing the band! ) Other than that I've also got Towner's 'Distant Hills' but that's about it really.
The only other's I've seen are 'Prism' and 'Icarus'. So many by Jarrett, Towner and Wheeler can now be done as there are transcription aplenty out there but alas so little time.
