I have been a BIAB customer/user for as long as I can remember... I recently took up tap dancing and am wondering if I can create a new "drum" instrument in BIAB where different tap sounds could be mapped to notes on the treble scale, e.g.:
G#: Toe Stand G: Touch F#: Slam F: Step E: Brush D#: Pullback D: Spank C#: Toe Click C: Toe Tip B: Toe A#: Jump A: Hop/Leap G#: Heel Stand G: Dig F#: Heel Click F: Heel E: Heel Touch D#: Chug D: Scuff C#: Clunk (Outside) C: Clunk (Inside)
I would record each of these single tap sounds as a WAV file and, when I create melody line, I would like a middle "G" to make the sound corresponding to a "Dig" or the lower "E" to sound as a "Heel." It might even be possible to use simple chords, e.g., a G-G would be a "Stomp" and and F-F could be thought of as a Stamp.
In essence, I am asking if BIAB supports creating a new "drum" instrument with its own sound profile.
If this idea is possible, I would appreciate some guidance as to how I might proceed.
There's nothing built-in to Band-in-a-Box that would allow this, but you could load your samples into any VST drum plugin that allows you to load your own samples, and use that VST on a track in Band-in-a-Box.
You can do this in Kontakt and you can probably do this in any sampler.
Or record your wavs and in RealBand put them where you want them. Note that I am not a heavy user of RealBand and if this isn't correct then someone please correct me. But I'm pretty sure that it can be done there. I'm sure it can be done in other DAWs also. I know it can be done in Sonar.
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There may be an alternate workaround to get what you want--kind of. I did a similar thing for percussion, by recording live percussive instruments into RB at 100 bpm to a drum set. I can then save that at any tempo and create "loops" of a sort by cutting out stuff I don't want, or just silencing them, to create a percussion section of sorts on my own. See screenshot.
Last, I pasted a link to the Sonar instructions for making your own samples for Session Drummer. My wife is a programmer. She looked at the instructions and said if I did all the housework for two weeks she would do that. I am going with Plan A.
Thanks, Kent. I am not too familiar with VST's although, over the years, I have used BFD3 and Battery3 in stand-alone mode with a midi-controller called a Zendrum. The part that is confusing me is how to map the various recorded sounds to treble clef notes so that different arrangements, melodies, etc., can be played back in BIAB using the tap sound bank.
I did some research on the Internet and found this link - Clap Machine VST Plugin - in which the designer recorded hand-clap sounds. I listened to an arrangement a guy made using this plugin and it sounds a lot like what I am trying to achieve (Claptrap-2 Percussionists).
If I could make/buy something like that for tap sounds, would it be placed on the Soloist track in BIAB or an instrument?
Any chance I could call and talk to you about this project just to get myself properly oriented?
Right, you can do this with something like BFD3 or Battery (VST version, rather than stand-alone). You'd load your samples into the plugin to create your own drum kit, then each note on the staff will correspond to a different sound from the kit.
You can then assign the VST to either the Melody or Soloist track and enter notes using the Notation Window or Piano Roll. If you'd like to record the part using a MIDI controller (like the Zendrum or a keyboard), then assign the plugin to the Thru track as well, and make sure you're using an ASIO audio driver.
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Thanks, Kent. That additional explanation is helpful. First, I think I should attempt to load a VST version of BFD3 into BIAB. If I succeed with that step, it may seem clearer how to create a custom drumkit in BFD3 using audio recordings (wav files) of my tap sounds and map them to notes on the treble clef.
This kind of project is completely new to me, so I should probably hunker down and see if I can figure it out using the manuals/help tutorials. You've laid out the essential components. If I have additional questions, I'll post them here or give Tech Support a call.
I'd suggest looking at using the free Aria Player (the same one used by the Garritan Libraries) as the sampler. The Aria Player uses a fairly simple file format called .sfz, which is plain text. That means you'd use a "plain text" editor like Notepad or Notepad++ to create and edit the file.
You can build a .sfz file that describes how you want your samples to be mapped, and then load the Aria Player into BiaB, and import your custom .sfz instrument.
The <group> indicates that all the <region> tags that follow belong to it. A quick explanation of the opcodes associated with the group:
loop_mode indicates if the sample should loop or not. one_shot means it triggers once and stops, so there's no looping.
lokey indicates the lowest MIDI key that will trigger the group.
hikey indicates the highest MIDI key that will trigger the group.
pitch_keycenter tells how to transpose the sample. In this case, the trigger MIDI key is the same as the key center, so that sample will not be transposed.
group is the group number associated with the samples.
off_by indicates that if the indicated group number is triggered, if a sample is currently played, it will be turned off.
In short - the samples in the <region> are triggered by MIDI notes from the low note 41 to the high note 41. That means... note 41. Since note 41 is the "note center" of the sample, the sample sample will not be transposed.
Re-triggering the group will turn off any sample being played by the group.
The opcodes associated with the <region> are:
lowvel indicates the lowest MIDI velocity (0..127) that will trigger the sample.
hivel indicates the highest MIDI velocity (0..127) that will trigger the sample.
sample indicates the path relative to the .sfz file where the sample is.
Basically, there are 5 different samples associated with the region, each triggered by a different velocity.
The example file I pointed to does some other fancy stuff, such as:
This is like the prior example, but it introduces the seq_position, which allows triggering samples in a particular order, instead of the same sample again and again.
But... that's probably much more than you currently want or need.
If you only had a single sample per key, and didn't care about re-triggering, you would only need one <group> per MIDI key, and one <region> per <group>, like so:
Just cut and past this portion for each sample (replacing the MIDI note number and sample file name), and you're done. Save the file with each change, and you can test it out on the fly with the Aria Player. The player automatically notices the file has been updated, so you don't have to re-load it as you edit it, just save the file.
To use it in BiaB, load the Aria Player in the Realtime VSTI Plugin Settings, and import your .sfz file into the Aria Player.
The end file might look something like this (yes, you can use note names instead of MIDI numbers):
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Since note 41 is the "note center" of the sample, the sample sample will not be transposed. 
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