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Joined: Jun 2018
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Greetings to this forum. I am new as you will discover. I play a wind controller instrument (by ear only) and drums. However, I do not read music (yet). My interest is in taking the music that is in my head and getting it out to the real world. I hear it inside and hope that BIAB will assist in compiling the instrumentation needed to have a reasonably finished song. My main genré is not one that I see in the tracks, that being Classical Cathedral choir, with its harmonies, orchestrations, and style.
So, does anyone have an opinion on whether BIAB can be used to compose from scratch the sounds of this genre? There is little contemporary percussion and heavy "rock" licks in Gregorian chant. Traditional strings and percussion orchestra is an important part in many of the songs I listen to. Thanks for any opinion or helpful thoughts.
PS. I am thinking about buying a digital piano as hardware. Can BIAB be used in conjunction with a digital piano and DAW? Thanks.
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Joined: Sep 2010
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Could you perhaps elaborate on what you mean by "Classical Cathedral choir?" You mention Gregorian chant, but that's an unaccompanied monophonic style. That is, you might have a full choir, but they're all singing the same melody, and there are no instruments accompanying them. At the last presentation I attended on Gregorian chant, the focus was on setting text to existing chant melodies - there are already plenty of chant melodies, and there didn't seem to be any demand for new melodies to be written. Computer programs - including like BiaB - are capable of creating a thickened line. That is, if you've got a single melody and a chordal accompaniment, the melody can be "thickened" so that other voices use the same rhythm (durations) as the melody, but use different pitches. But this is "harmony" - the new melodic lines don't really have any independence. Strictly speaking, that's not entirely true - BiaB has a pretty sophisticated program for handling harmonic movements and resolutions. But the voices aren't really independent in a true polyphonic style. Writing parts that are harmonious with the original melodic line, but are rhythmically independent, is a lot to ask from a computer program! That's the realm of counterpoint, and while there are plenty of music theory texts that have been written that attempt to distill the rules of doing this, computer programs generally that follow those rules generally crank out dreadfully dull "music." So... no, you're not likely to find BiaB a great help in writing music in the liturgical chant style. However, I could recommend a number of good texts to get you started. Alfred Mann's The Study of Counterpoint is an excellent translation of Joseph Fux's Gradus Ad Parnassum. Fux's text was used for teaching by many famous composers. However, it teaches an "ideal" musical style, rather than style that was actually written. It uses "species" counterpoint to gradually introduce complexity, which is easy to understand. You might have a look at Direct Approach to Counterpoint in the 16th Century Style by Gustave Fredric Soderlund, which applies Fux's species method of teaching to the 16th century polyphonic style. The text assumes you're familiar with the style in general, and the focus is on counterpoint, rather than melody or form. Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century by Knud Jeppeson is probably one of the best texts I've run across on that style. There's a lot more discussion about what's idiomatic to the 16th century melody, and rather than simply citing rules, has numerous examples from Palestrina. Unfortunately, all of those texts assume you've got some basic skills at reading music. To be honest, if you're interested in composition, it's a skill that you'll want to develop anyway. They also assume that you're motivated to learn - there's a lot of information to digest, and it's not something that you can simply sit down, read, and they start cranking out choral pieces in the 16th century style. Gradus might be considered a beginning text, but the others certainly aren't. But that's because this sort of thing isn't exactly trivial to do. Also, you're not going to find anything about orchestration in these texts. Good chant simply doesn't need accompaniment. Again, citing examples of the sort of style you have in mind would be helpful. You cited Gregorian Chant, but I suspect that's not really what you had in mind.
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Can BIAB be used in conjunction with a digital piano and DAW? You can use BiaB to generate MIDI piano tracks that can be played by the digital piano, using with a MIDI style, or one of the MIDI SuperTracks. BiaB also works quite well with DAWs. You might want to check out the DAW plug-in mode. Also, BiaB comes with it's own DAW, called RealBand. So you might not need to purchase a DAW, depending on what why you want to use a DAW.
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Joined: Dec 2015
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Hi
Well as said above I don’t see how BIAB can help you, as it works by generating styles based on the chords you insert on the chord chart (a chord progression).
You say you hear the sounds in your head, but unless you can translate that to meaningful chords you have no starting data for the program to work with.
BIAB can extract chords from audio, or midi that you have played in but they have to be present, so you would still need to convert the sounds in your head and play them on your midi keyboard.
Your wind instrument controller (that you play by ear) will probably only generate monophonic notes to a midi stream. You would then need to add say a third or minor third, and fifth. and more 7, 9 etc to get the chord you want. Wind controllers are not something I use, so others may advise a better way of achieving this,
You will need a fair amount of musical theory to achieve what you want and make BIAB work in your situation I think
Just my thought
Mike
BIAB2021 UltraPlus,AsusN55S1Tbssd, W10/64,Akai EIEpro Yamaha CVP405,SquireStrat, CoolsoftVMidSynth Novatation Impulse61 Ctr kbd, Cwalk blab Kontakt http://mikesmusic.byethost16.com/
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Adding to David's excellent advice I will add that RealBand only comes with the PC version of BiaB. If you have a Mac you will use Garage Band or another DAW. My advice is that if you don't already have a favorite PS DAW then learn RealBand as it may be all that you need. Plus it is free with BiaB. I play a wind controller and as Mike has said it is monophonic, that is it will only play one note at a time. There are exceptions to that but you will need to know music theory, have some MIDI knowledge and more than one sound source that is capable of producing harmonies. Based on what you have said this is way beyond your current capabilities. There is harmony-generating software. BiaB, at least the PC version - I have no knowledge of the Mac side, has one. There is third party software that does a better job. But again you will need some music theory to use them properly. So my advice is much like David's. Get some basic music theory. There are some sites you may want to visit: https://www.basicmusictheory.com/https://www.musictheory.net/lessonshttps://www.music-theory-for-musicians.com/basic-music-theory.htmlGoogle/Bing basic music theory and you will find a lot more sites to visit. Good luck and if I can be of any help just PM (Private Message) me.
Me, it's not about how many times you fail, it's about how many times you get back up.
Cop, that's not how field sobriety tests work.
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Update Your PowerTracks Pro Audio 2024 Today!
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A few excerpts:
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