I am 67 y/o, own 2 acoustic guitars, a set of diatonic harmonicas, several amplifiers and a recently purchased Suzuki SCX-64 chromatic harmonica . I have not played most of these instruments for around 27 years. I have finally realised that I am getting old... and that I might want to use some of my "spare" time to relearn the instruments. Last year I purchased the BIAB software and is way more than I will ever use but it is fun to "master". I am not into nor do I understand MIDI and other things that this program does.
Having said all that, I am trying to get a backing track of "The Shadow in your Smile" by John Mandell or Ella Fitzgerald to play with my harmonica. In the process of attempting this feat I did the following:
I clicked on "Style" then I clicked on "Choose Style From Song Title". I typed in "The Shadow of your Smile" and it gave me some information as far as "Artist", "Genre" and "Key". The software gives all this information but does not provide me with a button to DL "the" track.
I guess I am expecting too much from this machine ;-). Nevertheless, is there a website that I can DL the track. I did find sheet music on-line and backing tracks for similar songs but nothing I felt comfortable playing. At some point I guess I will figure out BIAB and will probably be able to compose the song myself.
If I understand your question fully, you may have an expectation that you will find a style that produces exactly what you need. Sometimes that's true, but usually it requires experimentation and tweaking. Don't be discouraged if that's what you concluded, because that's normal.
When you say you are looking for a button to download the track, what you must first do is enter the chords into BIAB from your sheet music. After you type in the chords, then experiment with just about everything: style, tempo, key.
Or, since that's a popular song, Google for a BIAB version of it. I'm almost positive you'll find someone else has made one.
I was wondering what you meant by "nothing I felt comfortable playing". Could you elaborate?
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Typing the song name and getting a result does not actually provide with that particular song. It is merely a way to find styles that work well for, or are "in the style of" that particular song. It will not give you a "karaoke" backing track for the song that has the arrangement there for you.
What you need to do is to first enter the chords of the song into the chord grid (which you should have, since you indicated you have the sheet music). Then, you can select one of the appropriate styles for the song, click play, and you will then have a backing track that you can use to play along with.
If you haven't, you should look at some of the basic videos available. Groove3 has a pretty good BIAB video tutorial, which is several versions behind 2019, but the concepts will mostly be the same. It doesn't take that long to go through that series of videos and you can get a great feel for how the program works.
One thing you can do also is to search for a BIAB SGU file that you can download from the web. Most likely, it will be pretty old and use only MIDI styles, but you can replace the style with any other appropriate style that you have in your BIAB package. But that SGU file will have the chord progression in it.
What you aren't going to get is a note for note backing track that sounds like the recording (in other words, just because you type in "Shadow Of Your Smile" Ella Fitzgerald, you aren't going to get a copy of her version of the program).
Hope that made sense.
Keep asking your questions; lots of folks here are happy to help you over the learning curve.
John
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Thanks Matt Finley. I am presently in the process of the "experimentation and tweaking" part. It is just that this is an overwhelming program to master. Hopefully I will get there sometime in this life.
My other point is that I actually do not have the sheet music but if that is the case than I will have to purchase or DL it from the web in order to enter the chords into BIAB.
When I said " nothing that I felt comfortable playing" I meant that since I have not played for many years I am just getting into reading music, signature, chords, tunes, etc. It is coming back to me, especially when I look back at some of my guitar lesson books which were hand written by my teacher back in ~1965-1969. I still have a good ear...(at least one) that should help me through. Anything I am doing now is all from memory. I did listen to some similar jazz tracks for "The Shadow of your Smile" but I was having a hard time joining in with the harmonica. I think I need to distinguish the place in the tracks where the intro ends.
jford, I think the main word here is "karaoke". That is exactly what I was dreaming of (expecting). I also read Matt Finley's previous response and I think I get the message. I will check into "Groove3" and the BIAB SGU files and hope I find what I am looking for. Thanks for the info.
I have found two items of interest online. I DL a PDF sheet music by Johnny Mandel (1965). I also found something that might work for me as far as getting to learn "The Shadow of Your Smile" on guitar. I signed up for a guitar lesson by Richard Severson on www.guitarcollege.com. It has the sheet music, a m4v instruction video and a mp3 performance track. All this will definitely help me learn the song and I will get to work with BIAB.
I found an MGU of this song, zipped it, and uploaded it here ShadowOfYourSmileZipFile unzip it and you have your MGU
hope it works!
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Many times Gaucho10 Youtube can be your friend. Here's just one example and surprise, surprise it was created from Biab. Now, this is just an audio file recorded from Biab but it displays the chord grid showing everything you need. When it comes to old standard stuff like this it's all over YT. All I did was go to YT and type in Shadow of your Smile backing track.
Now, just to give you an example of how bad Biab can sound, here's another track I found that sounds like crap. Whoever did this one has no clue plus he's noodling around on a keyboard badly. It's stuff floating around the internet like this that can make noobies think Biab itself is crap.
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A few excerpts:
"The Tracks view is possibly the single most powerful addition in 2024 and opens up a new way to edit and generate accompaniments. Combined with the new MultiPicker Library Window, it makes BIAB nearly perfect as an 'intelligent' composer/arranger program."
"MIDI SuperTracks partial generation showing six variations – each time the section is generated it can be instantly auditioned, re-generated or backed out to a previous generation – and you can do this with any track type. This is MAJOR! This takes musical experimentation and honing an arrangement to a new level, and faster than ever."
"Band in a Box continues to be an expansive musical tool-set for both novice and experienced musicians to experiment, compose, arrange and mix songs, as well as an extensive educational resource. It is huge, with hundreds of functions, more than any one person is likely to ever use. Yet, so is any DAW that I have used. BIAB can do some things that no DAW does, and this year BIAB has more DAW-like functions than ever."
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