PG Music Home Forums User-to-User My Favorite Things The more I delve into BiaB's manual and features the more I'm blown away (plus Hotel California Jam)

At the risk of sounding snooty, I'm often puzzled, and sometimes even a little astonished, when I see certain styles requested in the Wishlist forum.

While I use BiaB for instructional purposes pretty much exclusively, I love messing around with various settings, tracks, styles, and functions, and have found myself blown away time and again at the sheer genius of this program and its algorithms.

The thing is, if you just pick a style type in a few simple tri-tone chords and some sevenths thrown in, then, IMO, you're gonna get anything that sounds more than lukewarm backing track unless you really work with the pushes, shots, holds, and refrain from having all the instruments playing for the entire song's duration.

I think one of the reasons for this is that the styles almost sound TOO good--in that you can't really hear what each individual track is capable of…with its shots, pushes, holds and different phrase selections (which are selected by the program based on how long each a phrase is to play), which notes you gave it to work with, whether you have a melodist or soloist Realtrack generated using information from a MIDI track, and so many more parameters having such an astonishing wealth of possibilities I could go on about it forever.

Just to demonstrate the adaptability of styles once you work with them, I have uploaded a medley of soloists jamming over MIDI data extracted from a melodist generated track based on Hotel California. You have new age piano, Celtic mandolins and fiddles, jazz guitar and trumpet, and a resonator slide guitar track. There's also an accordion track and MIDI synth vibes and bass and guitar. This was just something I did on a lark a while ago, and I didn't even do a shred of tweaking in Realband that would have taken this even further.

Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-423212678/biab-jamming-hotel-california-inspired-solo/s-oehaA

Anyway, I guess the point of this rant is to encourage everyone to read as much of the manual as possible, and above all experiment! There is so much you can do with tempos swaps, multi-drums, hybrid styles and all that good stuff this program has to offer.

P.S. I am well aware that I have but a shred of the expertise that a lot of the veterans here have, so please forgive me if I came off as condescending. This post was originally conceived out of my surprise that there were so many requests for styles that are more than adequately represented in the current BiaB catalogue (at the same time conceding that many styles are almost entirely lacking…flamenco, marches, and Middle Eastern spring to mind…and no, loops don’t count as styles even though I love what you can do with ACID-ized loops in BiaB and it's one of my favorite features).

I don't think your post is at all snotty or condescending. I constantly see posts by folks I consider "power users" that essentially state "I didn't know that" or "I didn't know the program can do that". Simply put, the program is amazing.

Think of some of the different ways people use the program; create backing tracks, playlist media player, practice partner, music composition, print music scores, digital recorder and more I haven't thought of off the top of my head.

I strongly believe introducing 50 new features every year is both a blessing and a curse. New features are exciting and renews interest in the product. It also means the product is constantly changing so it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the program's capabilities.

That's so very, very true, Jim

Every time I write a song in BIAB, I am honestly amazed at just how many tools Dr Gannon and his team have given me to work with. BIAB really does make making music a joy!

And, to add to what you and DeaconBlues have already said, there's always something new, unknown and exciting to discover around the next corner! It's incredible software.

Regards,
Noel

There's some really good point in there, DeaconBlues09! We're stoked you enjoy the program as much as you do

Two things -- Maybe more --

Your comments make good and relevant points .

A personal tip I enjoy experimenting with that I learned while working with songs in the ACW, is to replace a chord with a variation chord taken from the triad of the major scale notes.

For instance if your progression has (D), every so often replace the (D) with an ( Asus) which seems to make the Biab engine choose from a different selection of phrases from what it uses from simply using the (D) repetitively.

Second, because a mixer track can have as many as 10 different instruments occupy the track, I often do a search for the session artist on that track and choose another RT or more by the artist using what turns out to be in most cases, the same instrument in a sometimes slight variation of the original track instrument which changes up the pace and pattern of my song beyond just what I get with inserting Part Markers. It is seamless to go between different RT's on a track between two or more instruments multiple times and can be as short as a single bar. That makes the track unique and different from what a normal track generation produces so a particular RT becomes unrecognizable as a Biab RT.

An extension beyond my two points: I enjoyed your "Hotel California" mashup and wonder what RT you used for the first solo guitar?

Hey Charlie,

First of all, I'd like to apologize for having taken so long to reply...things have been crazy busy for me at work right now, and I've barely had a moment to boot up my BiaB and review these forums in depth.

You bring up two excellent points. With regards to the first--I cannot agree more. In fact modifying the voicings to mimic and augment what the melody is playing can produce some stellar and unexpectedly unique results that sound nothing like the demo tracks of the RTs used to generate a composition. As for your second point, this is something I have come to really appreciate rather late in the game, and I urge all beginners to explore the various options available within your style set not only across instruments (as they "play well" together), and also, for instance, looking for variations available within brackets for the same instrument (e.g. [Bluesy], [Outside], [Simple], [Held]), and switching them at different points of your song for maximum effect.

As for the RT I used for the first solo; I'm terribly sorry but I do not recall the actual RT, and, (maybe because I saved the track as an SGU way back when ????) it only shows a single piano track I used in a multi-instrument style...and when I revisit the medley maker, it only shows that track in the first slot :-(

If you happen to know how I can restore that information, I'd be more than happy to oblige with the track number!

No problem. Life happens and sometimes includes work.

I can narrow down the RT as well. I thought it worked quite well with the song and had given thought to play with it on my system.

Regarding recovery, it's doubtful in BIAB but you came close. Had you tweaked the song in RB, RB makes periodic backups and you likely could have opened a backup to recover which instrument you used.