Hi Forum!
I am new, bought BIAB and Realband on 1st of December (2017 version, Windows 10)
I have two beginner questions:
1) For training, I made a 12 bar blues in Real band in in BIAB. It works... a bit.
What I want is, that after some repetitions of these 12 bars, I get a ONE bar ending on my root chord.
So:
:E...A.E.BAEB:x4
E

I only get a two bar ending... Any way to get one?

2) I am really diapointed about the amount of "styles / instruments" I got with the pro version. It feels like more than the half is some kind of "Jazz". I dont need Jaz. I want rock and blues. If I want a slow blues with about 60bpm with swing feel, there is NOTHING in the library. If I dont care about the speed, I get maybe two possibilities...
Do I oversee something?


... and I tried reading somethings and also find some tr´threads about it. But I still do not understand the reason for having two different programs (RealBand and BIAB). Does this only have historical reasons? Or... WHY?!?

Btw. RealBand crashes constantly... I am already in contact with support...

All the best!

Hi Dongle,

BIAB has LOTS of blues styles in different tempos and feels.

But in reading the package description on the PGMusic main page, it looks like there is not much available with the PRO version that you bought?

I have the UltraPlusPak here, a bit pricey to begin with, but well worth it. Maybe you could contact sales and see if you could update your Pro package?

Have a listen to some of my songs on reverbnation, link in my signature. Lots of blues songs there, all created with BIAB.

Ok, Thanks!
So I just have the wrong package... Not sure, if it really is worth for me to spend such an amount of money... Will think a bit about ist
But good to know, that not finding anything was not my fault


Any idea about that one bar ending?

For the one bar ending, if you do a Cntrl-N you bring up the song settings dialogue. There are options there that allow some control over the ending, if you play around with those combined with setting the last bar of the song, there are many different options for the ending.

Thanks for the great info here Dave!!!!

Hi Dongle,
One method I use to create a one bar ending is to place a held chord on the ending bar. You do this by placing 3 dots after the chord name eg. E...

I see from your post that you have a 12 bar blues of 4 choruses and that you then want to finish with an ending on the E

I would configure the song settings this way:



1. Click Tag exists
2. Fill in the 3 boxes as shown
3. Make sure you remove the tick from "Generate a 2 bar ending..."

On Bar 13 place your E chord followed by three dots.

Regards,

I meant to add that this sounds a bit better if you put a slight tempo reduction on say bar 11 of the last chorus.

You can bring up the bar settings window by clicking on bar 11 and pressing <F5>.



1. Change the chorus to Chorus 4.
2. Insert a tempo change. For example in this case I reduced it by -10%.

I tried this out with a few of the recent Blues/Rock styles and really liked what I heard. If you can afford the UltraPlusPak I highly recommend it.

Regards,

A lot of people end up getting everything, even though a lot of styles are never used. I do a lot of blues and took the plunge in 2015 or 16. Once purchased, the upgrades are not ghastly cost wise. Check out some of the country and jazz styles because often you mix and match and some can be quite bluesy. They do sell individual packs at $29, but again in the long run the full suite is the best (with the various bonus packs). Check out some of the older midi styles too.

Richard, I know this is not in reference to the posters question, but in your dialog page, what is meant by patch changes? Or even the little box that says "show higher bank patches"?
Or how are they used?

Thank you

Hi Props2,
These items only apply to MIDI tracks. The word "Patch" in MIDI parlance means "Instrument", and the General MIDI standard only allows for 128 different patches, numbered 1-128 (some manufacturers start numbering from 0 so they are numbered 0-127). e.g. Patch No. 1 is an Acoustic Piano and Patch No. 28 is a Clean Electric Guitar.

Manufacturers of sound modules, sound cards, synthesizers etc. wanted to provide a lot more than 128 different instruments, e.g. lots of different pianos and guitars but because of the way MIDI works they were restricted to 128 patch numbers.

So within each patch number, subsections called "Banks" were created to refer, for instance, to all the different Acoustic Pianos under the general heading Acoustic Piano. These banks numbers are specific to each manufacturer so it is necessary to load a patch map for the synth. or sound module etc. you are using before you can take advantage of the higher bank patches.

PG Music provides quite a few patch maps here:
http://www.pgmusic.com/support_miscellaneous.htm

If you download one or two and read them in Notepad you may get a better idea of what I'm saying.

Regards,

Richard,

I am going to start a basic, basic basic intro to midi here in a day or so, but I am seeing you as guy who could do a great service to mankind if you were to follow up my basic series on this forum with a "Beginner Intermediate" series or 2.

So many people with Real Tracks that they forget the million and one ways you can use BIAB to generate midi and create stunning arrangements with samples.

It is my favorite world actually.

Thanks David,
I just read your first MIDI lesson. Great start and I'm sure it's going to be a valuable resource for beginners to MIDI.

If I feel that I have anything useful to contribute after you have finished the series I will be happy to do so. I am sure that there are regular contributors to this forum who know lots more than I do who would also be willing to add to the topic.

Like you I am a great believer in the value of MIDI.

Regards,

Hi guys,
Thanks for that great help!!!
I did not expect such a high resonance. Very nice!

However, I have to admit, that I returned BIAB. This has the following reasons:
1) I do not want to spend so much money for the big packs and just use a 100th of it (after ignoring the billions of jazz styles). I was really disappointed, that I can not make a single slow (rock, shuffled) blues with a basic version. A blue IS basic for me
2) For some reason (dont know why), I liked RealBand better than BIAB. But RealBand crashed CONSTANTLY. I had contact with support: I should start in admin mode and rebuild styles. I did this, did not help. Support did not respond anymore, so crashing could not be fixed.
3) I have EZKeys and EZDrums. I can get quite far with these programs. What I was missing is Bass and Strings (cello, violins). I found too few (for ME usable) bass in my (basic) BIAB version and NO strings at all.
4) BIAB is easy to learn - but hard to master I did not want to spend this time for really learning another program. It might be worth it, but I really need to play more guitar

I think I will retry BIAB, as soon as they offer BIAB as a VST(i) which I can plug in to reaper. I think, this program as damn much potential, as long as one likes to spend the money for a big pack and the time to master that program.

All the best to you and again: THANKS for trying to help me!!