It would be nice if I could include a walking bass line between 2 chords. I'd like the first chord to sustain ringing, while the walking bass line is moving underneath it. I tried creating this using a comma followed by a slash chord, but that loses the essence of a moving bass line under a stationary ringing sustained chord. The chord is struck each time it appears in the song in BIAB.

The best I've been able to do is create the baseline by entering chromatic chords, alternating between major, minor, and dim chords, etc.

Would doing the song two times work. Once where you have the chords (no slash) then again with the slash. Export the first version (no slash) then export the bass only on the second (but you might find other snippets in the second worth keeping. Then pull the parts into a daw and slice and dice.

Just a thought
Tony

That's certainly something to try. Thank you!

FYI, since posting these 2 questions a few minutes ago, I'm now exploring Notation in BIAB. Entering the notes on the sheet music might be my simplest solution. After I learn how and try it, I'll come back and post my results.

You can have the bass line follow a completely different chord progression by freezing each mixer channel except the bass channel. With the other instrument tracks frozen, modify your chord chart for the bass to follow and regenerate. Only the bass track will regenerate. This method also allows multiple regenerations of the bass (or any other track set up this way) track to get the bass line you want.

An example that will do what is requested in the original post is perhaps in measure 4 in your project is populated with | G... for a hold and you want the bass to continue playing without holding. All instruments hold and ring out as the bass completes a walking progression.

Do this:

Generate your song normally including all instruments.

Freeze all tracks except Channel one - Bass

Modify measure 4 with | G,F,EM,G progression replacing | G...

Regenerate the Bass track and it will play the new chord progression and all the other instruments will play the hold.. .

Charlie this is an excellent tip. You should put this in the tips forum.

<<< Charlie this is an excellent tip. You should put this in the tips forum. >>>

Done.

Yes, great tip, I've done bass runs this way and it's brilliant when it works.
Unfortunately, BIAB can randomly play notes in a different octave, so you may need to regenerate a few times to get it right, if at all.

Vintage

Charlie, thanks!

This method has other possibilities, I take it. So, if I want to change the chords and leave the bass line alone, I do just the reverse? Freeze the bass track and regenerate the new chords and instruments?

I have to get a handle on regenerating tracks to pull this off, but I'll let you know how I do. The popup tip on the regenerating and playing button says that it will even overwrite frozen tracks, so I need to understand better how this all works.

<< This method has other possibilities, I take it. >>

Absolutely. The possibilities are as long as your arm. Yes, you can do the reverse and freeze the bass track and regenerate new chords and instruments.

The fail safe for a track to remain exact and not regenerate is to select the track; Right click to open menu; Select Track Actions; Select Save Track as Performance File. This converts and saves the track as an audio track (WMA or WAV). The track is safe from regeneration and the track will be colored orange and renamed.

This Performance Track can be erased from the same menu.

As Vintage noted, on rare occasions you may not be satisfied with the first or first few generations. The fix possibilities are again, as long as your arm. Fixes not only include regeneration (2020 version now supports multi riffs) but older versions of BIAB offer additional fixes too. Fixes range from replacing the original instrument with another instrument for a few bars, use midi or a live overdub are just a few of the options.

Hope this helps and let us know how things work out for you.

Thanks, Charlie!! All great information. I really appreciate you spending the time to share all that info. No doubt, countless others will be helped by this, too.

This is all correct info but Real Band easily does all this and more. RB is much better suited for this because it can generate all the same Biab tracks and it has 48 tracks to work with. You can do everything discussed here on a track by track basis. Change style, only highlight the bars you want, use multiriff to generate 7 different versions ot any RT at the same time. Since RB is a DAW, you can import midi tracks too. Check it out.

Bob

Thanks for all that info! Unfortunately, Real Band is only available for Windows users, correct? I'm running BIAB on a MacBook Pro laptop. I do have the latest Studio One Professional to help out.

The main reason I'm not doing it all in Studio One is because I'm teaching myself to play piano, so there's no way I'll play the changes anywhere near as good as BIAB. It's a great cheating tool for making professional quality backing tracks; at least that's my expectation. I can lay my guitar solos, etc. over top. Also, the drum tracks are a huge help for me in BIAB. I can read and write music EXCEPT drum tracks. I'm hoping BIAB will be a good tool to help me learn to read and write drum tracks.