Hi,

While going through the various styles in the Style Picker this evening in BIAB 2022 UltraPak+ for Windows, I came across a style called BM_CWLTZ, which is a Country Waltz style. The demo sounds great, but when I select it, the RealDrums track plays a normal Swing pattern, and not the waltz one as heard in the demo. The other tracks appear to play correctly. I've tried changing the time signature to 3/4 by typing "3/4" in the Chord Sheet at bar 1, but that hasn't helped. Is there something I need to do to get the drums in this style to play correctly, or is it a bug?

Thanks.

Yours Sincerely,
Kelly John Sapergia

I'm presuming that you sense the drums are not playing a 3/4 time signature, but 4/4 or something else?

I tried and unfortunately could not repeat your issue. The drums very definitely played in 3/4 time. Does your drum setup look like this? :

Hi Kelly, we are also unable to reproduce a 4/4 sounding drum with this Style. Please check to see if the drum track is frozen. If it is, then if you had a 4/4 drum loaded before selecting this Style, then it would not change. You would also want to make sure you have the latest build update downloaded and installed from here: https://www.pgmusic.com/support_windowsupdates.htm

Hi Chantelle,

Sorry, but as I'm a totally blind user of the program, I'm afraid the attachment didn't help. I tried loading the demo song from the Style Picker window, but the drums are still not playing right. At first, they seemed to play in 3/4 time, but then went back to the 4/4 swing pattern. The drums are not frozen. If you want, I can record a brief audio file demonstrating what it's doing. I'm using build 914 of version 2022.

Hope this helps.

Yours Sincerely,
Kelly John Sapergia

I get exactly the same problem with that style. It's actually a lot more weird than that. If the drummer is playing 3/4 time then it's a really strange one where the downbeat sometimes lands on the first beat of the bar and the upbeat sometimes lands on the first beat of the bar. In actual fact, it plays in 4/4 most of the time but occasionally throws in a 3 beat bar and then starts again. For me, it does this...
|123|412|341|234|123|*123|412|341|234|123|412|341|etc (continues now in 4/4 without any self-correction until it goes to the next verse and then the pattern is the same again).
This is just using a blank song sheet (C chord in bar 1) of default 32 bars.

Well AudioTrack and Chantelle appear to be showing drums from a different style and not what is iin BM_CWLTZ.STY. This is what happens when the drummer doesn't keep the band together.

On a quick listen, dr_t describes best what I am hearing .

I just would like to clarify, the picture I had previously posted is just one that I generally use to illustrate where the freeze buttons are in the mixer window. So it was not taken specifically from the BM_CWLTZ Style. I get the same drum track as AudioTrack when I load the Style. Freeze buttons are the snowflake buttons in the mixer window: https://youtu.be/yTccQDqgiPA

Are you using build 914 or the pre-release 917? You can check under Help | About Band-in-a-Box, it is the number in brackets after the version year.

Here you can see what the OP, dt_t and I are hearing in this specific 3/4 drum track from my pre-release 917.

That's interesting Dan.

When I load that style, this is definitely what I get. I double-checked again this morning, including loading the demo song:

I bet at some point you got the fix and others did not. It is 3 beats / measure but the problem is the emphasis of the beats, One time it is on the third bead, then on the first beat then later on the second beat. No way to know just where the true downbeat starts.

I agree about where the emphasis on the beat occurs. It seems like they took a 4/4 and divided up into groups of 3/4

I've just had a play with this style.

Here are my thoughts....

1) The time signature is set to 3/4.

2) The Realtracks are all 3/4 Realtracks.

3) The Realdrums chosen is a 4/4.

What I hear is a 4/4 instrument, in this case drums, being generated as 3/4. I've played around with this a few times in the past and it creates some very interesting effects.

The strength of 4/4's four beats = strong, weak, medium, weak. My experience is that when BIAB generates a 4/4 pattern in 3/4 time, the process involves various ways of truncating the "strong, weak, medium, weak" pattern. I've always taken this to be because BIAB's RealInstruments are snippets of recordings and not just individual beats.

This means that some possible 3/4 truncations of beats and their strengths are...

strong, weak medium

weak, medium, weak,

medium, weak, strong,

weak, strong, weak

The really interesting thing is that when these truncations are placed side by side, some avant guarde rhythmic patterns occur.

examples...

strong, weak, medium | weak, strong, weak | medium, weak strong | etc...

Normally waltz beat-strengths are Strong-weak-weak, so the above patterns confuse the ear.

This is what I hear when I solo the drums.

Now, these 4/4 drums might be intentional with the style or they might be in error and a 3/4 pattern should have been chosen.

Because I tend to focus on the instruments when I listen to music, I hear this style as 3/4 with an interesting cross-over type of drum background.

If someone who listens to this focuses on the drums, however, I imagine they would hear a mish-mash of uncomfortable rhythms.

Regards,
Noel

Hi Noel

Yes, I totally agree with your summations. I'm also certain it's a 4/4 rhythm being played at a 3/4 time signature.

I checked the style on my install and I am not seeing what AudioTrack or Noel are seeing. The drum style that loaded in mine is 3/4 Nashville Waltz and the audio wave form verifies that. I hear the downbeat on beat 1 on all 3 choruses. Just to be sure, I generated the drum track 10 times and it never got out of 3/4 time.

For those who are seeing something different, I might suggest you re-download the RealDrums and re-install it so see if that changes.

There are two similar styles: BM_CWLTZ and _BM_CWLT

The first one has NashvilleSw8 as the RD. The second one has NashvilleWaltzSw as the RD.

Surprisingly, the first one doesn't have an underscore at the beginning if the name as all these other PGMusic RealStyles do.

Except for the drum and piano track, they both have the same instruments for the other tracks (bass, guitar, strings tracks). The first has a fiddle on the piano track, the second has a mandolin on the piano track.

It makes me think they just selected the wrong drum track for the first one.

The real confusing thing here is that going back through all of the entries in this thread, when some people load the BM_CWLTZ style they get Swing Drums and when others load the exact same style, they get Waltz drums

It's not one-off. Multiple users are seeing the two different drum patterns.

When I play BM_CWLTZ or _BM_CWLTZ I get the correct 3/4 drum track.

This is very weird.

Those who are getting 4/4 time should go in and re download the real-drums package from their account and reinstall it and see if it makes any difference.

Not the 1st time I have had to re download an old package in which I found a small abnormality, and in that case, the re-download fixed my problem.

I believe this is in RealDrums 7 set.

RealDrums Set 7: Nashville Swing

Good advice, and I followed it an reinstalled RealDrum Sets 1-10, 11-20, & 21-29.

I am definitely only choosing style: 'BM_CWLTZ'

What I found is that there are two demo songs available when pressing the Load Song Demo button (do others get this choice?).

The RealDrums change depending on which demo song you load. See below:

I only get 1 choice and that is the NashvilleWaltzSw (which is the correct drum pattern)

Looks like one of your choices NashvilleSwing8 which is a 4/4 pattern.

That my friend might just be the error we have been looking for.

Truth be known, I have seen this type of error occur on the past and PG came out with a fix in the next updated.

Now my BIAB install is a fresh one that I did right after the 2022 release came out so I have the latest Realdrum version which I re-downloaded back around the middle of December. Others who are seeing this error just might have a older install which might by why you have 2 choices for the demo song, one which appears to have the wrong drum track.

I would suggest highly at this time that you re-download and re-install the RealDrum packages just to insure you have the latest ones. I have found in the past that PGMUSIC does update what can be downloaded from your account.

It's worth a try.

Did you redownload the package or just reinstall from what you already had.

Here is what I have on my hardrive. If you don't count the duplicates, I have 1 style file, 1 sgu file and 1 WMA file.

Thanks JCL,

I did download and reinstall RealDrum Sets 1-10, 11-20, & 21-29. About 3Gb of data.
Clearly most people only get a choice of one demo song (with the correct 3/4 drums).

I think I'll report this to the developers

I've got two different demo's. Interestingly Demo #1 which has the incorrect RealDrums is from a much later date (2019)
(Tip: Right-click and open image in new tab to see full size)

That looks like a leftover from an earlier install. Sort of looks like to me that back in the olden days (2019), that drum package might have had the 4/4 version included.

As a last look, I would see if you have more then 1 WMA file on the hard drive. I only have one and that plays in 3/4 time. If you happen to have more then 1, I would not be surprised if the other one plays in 4/4 time.

Like I have said, I have seen it in the past with one other another style.

I haven't messed with this yet... but one of my first thoughts was finally... a Frank Zappa style.... ok... I'll shut up and go sit back down.

No, it's a Bruford style .. or Fripp

.. whatever time everyone is gonna play in, I'm doing something else ..
If Belew is gonna play a 10 note phrase, I'm gonna do 11
eventually it will resolve

Definitely only one BM_CWLTZ.wma file on the disk, and only one BM_CWLTZ.sty but there are two different .sgu files.

The WMA would be what I hear if I listen to a pre-made demo, which is different to what I hear when I load the Song Demo. BTW, the WMA file has the correct drum timing.

And I assume one of the two SGU files you have loads the incorrect drum pattern?

That's exactly correct.

Number 1 plays the 4/4 drum pattern (in 3/4)
Number 2 plays a 3/4 drum pattern

I can fix it by just deleting the first SGU, but I'm not the only person who has this problem, so it won't fix the issues others are witnessing also.

Another interesting item is that number 2 has a date of 2013 and number 1 has a date of 2019

I would venture to say that everyone who has this problem will have 2 SGU files on their PC instead of just 1. If it were me having the problem, I would just delete the 4/4 version. I doubt that PGMUSIC will have an update that would delete the erroneous file if present.

I suspect you are right.

If the O/P reads this (or any one else with the same problem), look in:
x:\bb\Demos\RealTracks - Demos\
check to see if you have these two BM_CWLTZ demo files, and delete (perhaps rename) the highlighted one shown here:

I have the BM_CWLTZ Demo 2 only.

...Deb

I have both demos, and removed the first one with the fiddle. The second one loads fine, but if I load the style itself instead of the demo song, I still have the problem with the 4/4 time on the drum track.

Hope this helps.

Yours Sincerely,
Kelly John Sapergia

I've reported it to the developers again.