I'm fairly new to BIAB (Mac) and not sure if this is the proper forum but I have a question about choosing styles. For instance, I have the Ultra Pak and when I search for a song in the style picker ("Silver Wings", Haggard), it shows the song in the top right window but the matching style it gives me is nothing like the song at all and is in fact some blues style. I tried scrolling through the options under the Country genre but the choices are overwhelming. Is there a better way to do this?

Welcome to the forum! PG Music does have a video tutorial about using the style picker under their support videos (https://www.pgmusic.com/videos.bbwin.htm). Unfortunately, it is several years old and was made with the Windows version of BIAB, but it should give you some ideas about using the style picker. The style suggested for a given song is often not terribly similar to a recorded version of a song, and it often does come down to sampling through styles until you find something you're happy with.

The most efficient and effective method I know of to find an accurate and suitable style for any song when using the StylePicker is to first open or import a MIDI file of the song.

Forum member Henry Clarke has released several excellent, easy to understand video tutorials demonstrating his techniques to use MIDI to automatically capture the "in the style of a song, the groove of the bass/drums, analyze the chords, and capture the melody if the file includes it. Stated earlier, BIAB has video tutorials. A third party company, Groove 3 has tutorials and Forum member Notes Norton has a Web site that specializes in professional grade MIDI Styles for BIAB that can be added into the StylePicker.

Any MIDI file loads the song title, melody, tempo, feel, time signature, BPM and the number of bars of the MIDI song. It also analyzes the Chords and populates the Chord Sheet. A Norton BIAB style will also set a Style from the BIAB StylePicker that may be sufficient for your song and his Style packages include a demo of each Style.

For instance, if you use a Norton third party style composed 'in the style of' Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings", The style may have a Pre-loaded BIAB StylePicker Style loaded to play the included demo of "Silver Wings" less a melody line. A Norton style 'in the style of' "Okie from Muskogee" may populate your BIAB Chord Sheet with a demo of "Okie from Muskogee". Understand using a MIDI file or a MIDI BIAB Style can be used for any song, not only the song being used to set the parameters for the "in the style" you're trying to capture.

I also have a technique that I use when I do not have a MIDI file. I find it absolute important to type in the chords first and then demo the chord pattern against the styles that the stylepicker says should work. Here's my tutorial. Hopefully it helps. It's worked wonders for me. I will say that nothing is going to give you an exact copy but that's not really the purpose. You want to capture the feel of the song you're trying to copy.

https://youtu.be/xWL_owkQgqU

To clarify on what the familiar Song Title feature is doing, it is using the song you enter to set the filters on the top left hand side of the Style Picker. This way you do not have to go through each one of them yourselves. Therefore, the resultant list is not meant to be a replica of the exact song you had entered and it just shows all of the Styles you have that match the same genre, tempo, feel etc. of the song.

I'd also like to point this out.

Many years ago, when BiaB was in its infancy and toddler stages, both PG Music and myself (Norton Music) picked styles for songs that weren't right, but were as close as what was available at the time.

The style picker might pick one of those styles. As time passed and thousands of styles were added, there might be much better styles to use for that particular song.

Plus, in the early days, before YouTube and other Internet resources, we relied on our memories for the song, which may or may not have been accurate, or may be from a different version of the song that lingered in our minds.

Right now, Mrs. Notes and I are going through our old Fake Disk #2 and choosing new styles for many of the songs. This disk was compiled before the Internet was popular, so there are many even better styles to choose from now.

When we get done, we'll make an announcement and send out e-mails. It will be a free upgrade to people who purchased this disk.

Notes ♫