I know this sounds CRAZY, but when I got my first starter copy of Band in a Box in 2014 (and boy was I overwhelmed with those 26 real tracks) I thought that COMPOSITION was the name of the game.
I did not yet realize (in my ignorance) that is was all about the 21 Tigabytes of RAM in Windows 15, running a super-quad, water-cooled, AMD flexchip with the latest installation of Imitation Guitar Box 12.
Are you sayin' that it still IS about writing a song people would actually want to listen to?
Just give it to me straight man.
I can handle the truth.
David Snyder Songwriter/Renaissance Man Studio + Fingers
The solution to sluggish performance is NOT "get a faster computer" when comparable DAWs do NOT suffer from the same sluggishness.
In my time working here, the only times I've ever heard complaints of sluggishness in RealBand were the result of the hardware. Computers with Celeron or Intel Atom CPU's and only 1gb of ram technically meet the minimum requirements for BIAB and RealBand, however they're not really up to the task, especially once you start adding plugins to the mix.
That said, RealBand works great on my low end 2012 desktop - it has a CPU rating of 4760. I've also had success using it on an "ultra-thin" laptop that I got for free out of a junk bin, which had a super low powered CPU rated at a mere 1795 (this is a sub-ghz chip!), and for a handful of tracks and lightweight plugins it was fine - not that I'd recommend that particular CPU for people who want to do music production.
On these older slower systems, other DAWs aren't nearly as quick for me, with the possible exception of Reaper considering it's so lightweight - but it still doesn't generate Realtracks and I personally find the workflow for arranging to be slower, which is nothing to do with how quickly the software moves and everything to do with how quickly I move.
Originally Posted By: David Snyder
PG. DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS NONSENSE AND DO NOT MAKE REALBAND OBSELETE.
Don't worry, we like RealBand.
Originally Posted By: David Snyder
As a metaphor, I have a LOT of instruments but I don't play the same one every time. That would be stupid. RealBand is one such instrument.
Exactly! RealBand is not the only DAW I use (I probably use more of them than most people due to my work here), but what it does is unique, so it remains part of my toolkit. Whatever floats your goat though - if you prefer to use Studio One, or Pro Tools, or Logic, or whatever, we're not forcing you to change - that's exactly why we created the DAW plugin, so that you can add to your existing workflow rather than trying to replace your workflow.
Originally Posted By: David Snyder
To me, an overwhelming number of posts go on like, "I have 21 Tigabytes of RAM now in Windows 15, running a super-quad, water-cooled, AMD flexchip with the latest installation of Imitation Guitar Box 12."
So I guess you don't want to hear about my new 8-core 16-thread 5ghz i9 build with 64gb of ram eh?
I love these posts! I always get some new ideas. I used Real Band at first. but could not get 3rd party plug ins to work and it would randomly crash. I think it might be a 32 bit thing the the file size gets huuuuuge. Then heard about Reaper. It had better (for me any way) instructional videos. The series "how to record your Band" got me going.
So right now I make tracks in BB then export. When I need some more instruments I open BB again and then export more tracks.
I have the BB vst loaded in Reaper but I only use it their for the track settings and following the chords when I play along. I don't like the way the BB vst needs to generate a set of tracks to your temp folder that you have to go and clean out.
Simon. thanks for your hardware comment, and the fact rb will carry on as a product. Marty. i use vsti plug ins in both reaps and rb. i would suggest you contact pg support , and detail the plug ins your trying to use in rb plus your computer configuration. i would be surprised if they couldnt help you. best to you marty. ---------------------------------------------------------
SUBJECT : DRUM FILL GENNING. this next trik/idea is for people new to rb. one of the neat things i like about rb is DRUM FILL GENERATION. its so neat to do in rb.
all included FREE ! and cos there is so much trak flexibility rb has certain advantages over other methods with its large no of 48 traks. i mean you could go bat crazy with drum traks and generating fills for same out your ying yangs. and drum trak comping from different traks etc.
IN SUMMARY FLEXIBILITY IN CREATING DRUM TRAKS/FILLS. in the past in big studios i would have had to hire a session drum player. and they were very very good. but not a lot of us can afford that. neither can i (and many others ) afford to spend large on big drum sample libraries and vsti plug ins. i have other family responsibilities.
meanwhile pg is kind enough to provide us with a nice big real drums library. i'll now summarise genning drum fills. the steps. 1. open up chord view and experiment with various combos of k.d. (k = song key ) you could fill every bar with k.d eg k.d,k.d etc etc, the whole chord sheet.... or just here and there. k.d indicates to play only drums. 2. then experiment with different combos on the chord sheet of shots and pushes in combination with different part marker breaks etc etc. you have to generate of course the fills like you do a regular drum trak from the huge pg real drum library. (read the manual for more detailed info.) 3. this is really important..IF YOU WANT OODLES OF FILLS INSTEAD OF THE OCCASIONAL FILL, PUT A PART MARKER AT BEGIN OF EVERY BAR eg green or blue. i was doing this this morning to gen a funky urban more modern drum trak with fills. in fact further , you could build a whole library of drum fills. midi and/or audio if you wished. 4. you could gen lots of drum and fill traks on different traks and then comp the ones you like for a final great drum trak if you wish. you could mix various perc and regular rd styles together. maybe mix latin with rock for example. and IF THAT ISNT ENOUGH , remember those old drum machine hardware sounds from years back ?
tother day i used a free plug in of such from the computer music mag suite of plug ins called cm 505 drum vsti plug in. clacks and chirps and kiks n old skool sounds etc etc...lol, and generated a trak of that. then i experimented with "dune" a fab synth with oodles of sounds included free in the computer music mag collection of 80 plug ins. (note pipeline i think the on line cm mag only costs 5 buks ? once a year i pay 20 buks for the paper mag. cheap considering what i get .)
what i mean to say is useing rb it opens up a huge vista of possibilities/flexibility. for drum comping includeing useing plug ins AND.. 4. there are different views in rb for moving around all the genned fills etc. both audio and midi.
for example say you like a fill at bar 5 , but not bar 43. no problem. good old copy and paste. space limits me. but i really dig the flexibility rb gives me in comping drum traks n fills. (i would urge the new user to read the manual and go through all the different rb "views" and "windows". they all are very usefull in moving bits of audio and midi around till you get what you like.).
as you can see, and as david noted correctly , rb is just great for song arrangeing and composition, and testing out lots of different arrangements. let me finish by saying , lets say, for example your really happy with a song arrange, but you want to experiment further. no problem , save as eg arrangeone.seq. while working on arrangetwo.seq. and experiment away in arrangetwo.seq ---------------------------------------------------------
i'm done for now /hth/ymmv/till next time and happiness to all...vivre le rb.lol. om ps other day i slowed down a drum trak , and i was able to isolate a sample of a rd single hit i really liked. pps. forgot to mention. in rb you could do a minute of a drum solo if you wanted like a live drummer might at a live show if you arrange it right.
Simon. tother day i used a free plug in of such from the computer music mag suite of plug ins called cm 505 drum vsti plug in. clacks and chirps and kiks n old skool sounds etc etc...lol, and generated a trak of that.
I have a pair of TR505s. Mid 80s poor cousin to the 808. Fabulous for its time (though some say otherwise) though the tempo would drift ever so slightly.
Cheers rayc "What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
I usually laugh out loud when I read these type of posts and I wonder if it is just me.
To me RealBand serves as very useful purpose as a TOOL. Let me explain where I think it fits.
1.) RealBand will generate, ugh, Real Tracks. Last time I checked, Reaper and Cakewalk and Studio One do not do that. (I like the BIAB VST but I don't use it that much. It is cleaner for me to work in RealBand until my tracks are ready.)
2.) Real Band will open a BIAB file. Last time I checked, aforementioned DAWs will not.
3.) My workflow (if I use Real tracks) is normally this: BIAB basic file, open it up in RB, add extra tracks if I want, export .wavs, then import into Cakewalk.
4.) I LOVE recording audio in RB because it is so easy to edit, copy, paste, manipulate. Way easier than Cakewalk, to me. It records great audio. I MIX in Cakewalk. I RECORD in RB.
5.) Audio Chord Wizard works great for me in RB. The other day I recorded a pretty complicated Flamenco original in RB.
Then I turned on ACW and let it rip. It was pretty accurate. If you are analyze something you RECORD there at tempo it seems to be super accurate. But FIXES on the fly were super easy as I listened to the track and corrected a bar here and there in just seconds.
THEN I chose a backing Flamenco style. It synced up perfectly. Song is ready to mix.
I challenge anyone to try this in Pro Tools.
So, I see everything as just another tool. Good old Real Band will generate tracks and midi charts for those tracks for you. What's not to love???
I'm with you on 1,2,3.
4 & 5... not so much.
I've used Sonar so long that it's second nature to record anything in it. Regarding ACW..... it's amazing what that thing does. However, it's not foolproof. Ive had a few projects that were easier to simply type in the chords myself.
For making my backing tracks on the songs I write and having them sound professional and not midi/mechanical, nothing beats using RB to generate those tracks. NOTHING.
Last edited by Guitarhacker; 10/14/2105:44 AM.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
A lot of limitations in RealBand can be remedied with a few add-ons.
KV Element allows chaining midi vsti, using Vst3, plugins that won't work in RealBand normally, advanced routing, allows all vst windows to be opened at the same time...
It's all about the habits of our work when we create and RealBand is an integral part of my work, although I also use DAW (Studio One) and other music applications (eg RX9 from iZotope), I work with Realtrack with the modem "Also Generate RealChart" and also with Midi SuperTrack and I also use MultiRiff, so far I haven't worked only with the Band-in-a-Box VST DAW Plugin, because I'm used to creating tracks in RealBand and my habit is connected and strongly inspired. However, a user who uses his DAW and uses the Band-in-a-Box VST DAW Plugin can also have an inspirational connection. However, it doesn't have one thing (at least in the BIAB application) I didn't find it. And this is the function "Split midi drums ...", because I like to mix drums separately and if I use, for example, Contact with instruments "DSK MUSIC HQ Instruments" it will make my work easier. In RealBand, I set in Preferences that I don't want RealDrums for this case, that I want Midi. There are a lot of other tasks where I don't even realize how important RealBand is to me. I have had a band-in-a-box since 2005 and with the arrival of RealBand, which came later, I started to work better.
BIAB 2023,RB 2023,PTA 2023,Windows 11,Studio One PRO 5.52,Melodyne Studio 5.3.1,Sibelius 8.4.1,Acoustica 7.4.14,Notion 6,Progression 3,Harmony Assistant 9.9.5c,RX9,Ripx DeepAudio 6.4.0,Kontakt 6.8.0,DeCoda 1.3.0,Synthesizer V Studio Pro 1.90 a další.
nice to hear other people like rb as i do. i was beginning to doubt my sanity. lmao. briefly i typically do a song as follows. 1. finish chord layout/sheet. 2. go through zillions of styles noting down the rt id's etc i like for the song. i normally end up with 30 to 50 i like. 3. right cliking over traks in rb //genning traks based on my shortlist of rt's//midi supertraks//other midis. 4. if i want fx on a trak i plug in a dx pg for roughing things out without hard printing....the old trik is to dupe a trak, so one trak is dry and second has the fx on.
and that normally gets me started on a song. and building the sound picture i'm always hunting for. i like bars view a lot for manipulating midi n audio bits.
Now that it's 64bit there are many things that can be done to modern it up, BUT I don't know how enthusiastic they are to improve it, or is it just what it is and that's it, take it or leave it ? Jeff could be over in Hawaii these days just taking it easy or helping with Biab ?? Did the RealDrumsCharts get put in yet ?
When you save it seems to have to write all the wav files again, if it just imported the wav files into an associated folder to the project file and used non destructive editing. This will make moving, cutting, copying, fading, crossfading, volume etc.. a breeze.
They had destructive editing from back in the 90's when you had to process the wav offline because there was not enough processing power to process in realtime.
When I vertical scroll the tracks there is a delay and it keeps scrolling after you have stopped the mouse wheel, should be nice smooth and responsive. As I scroll this webpage it's smooth and responsive.
So do you think it's something that's worth improving or just make do with it as it is ???
And with non destructive editing, if you copy or cut a section it won't create a new wav file to build the size of the SEQ up, it will just reference the original wav file start and end points in the wav, this way the section I cut can be resized out to the same size if need be by dragging the ends. If I copy the track 100 times the SEQ file folder will still be the same size there won't be any extra files created.
If you want new users to come to RB then I think this is a good idea to modernize it. These are things that put me off using it rather than another DAW. The Instant Gen/Play that I talk about in the BiabVST Plugin can also be done in RealBand especially !! RealBand will tell bbw2 hey I need these chords for this RT, it will randomly choose the chord sections from the RT files, but rather than then generating those sections to RAM then rendering them to more wavs it just tells RB what section to playback direct from the source RT files. The RT files don't need to be copied to the SEQ folder as they are a permanent location reference.
Sure, it would need a re-write to compete with modern DAWs, but what needs to be done to RB that will make you use it more ???
With the vertical track scrolling I move the mouse wheel up/down a few times then go and get a cup of coffee when I come back it's still going up and down by it's self with the cpu usage on 95%. Do you need to have all 48 tracks in there when you don't use them ? maybe if you have an Add Track, Delete Track so you don't need it to scroll so many tracks and all the track bmp images, maybe do away with the bmp track images ? Be able to drag a track up/down to change it's position.
I have the same issue with the scroll and have mentioned it to Jeff. I think the Save takes longer mainly because RB also makes a backup of the previous version, and THEN writes the new SEQ file, which a lot of DAWs don't do (at least in the way RB does). So that may explain the longer save time anyway. I do like a lot of the suggestions you've made above Pipeline, FWIW
Make your sound your own! .. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Add updated printing options, enhanced tracks settings, smoother use of MGU and SGU (BB files) within PowerTracks, and more with the latest PowerTracks Pro Audio 2024 update!
Download and install this to your RealBand 2024 for updated print options, streamlined loading and saving of .SGU & MGU (BB) files, and to add a number of program adjustments that address user-reported bugs and concerns.
Did you know... not only can you download your Band-in-a-Box® Pro, MegaPAK, or PlusPAK purchase - you can also choose to add a flash drive backup copy with the installation files for only $15? It even comes with a Band-in-a-Box® keychain!
For the larger Band-in-a-Box® packages (UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition), the hard drive backup copy is available for only $25. This will include a preinstalled and ready to use program, along with your installation files.
Backup copies are offered during the checkout process on our website.
Already purchased your e-delivery version, and now you wish you had a backup copy? It's not too late! If your purchase was for the current version of Band-in-a-Box®, you can still reach out to our team directly to place your backup copy order!
Note: the Band-in-a-Box® keychain is only included with flash drive backup copies, and cannot be purchased separately.
Handy flash drive tip: Always try plugging in a USB device the wrong way first? If your flash drive (or other USB plug) doesn't have a symbol to indicate which way is up, look for the side with a seam on the metal connector (it only has a line across one side) - that's the side that either faces down or to the left, depending on your port placement.
Update your Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows® Today!
Update your Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows for free with build 1111!
With this update, there's more control when saving images from the Print Preview window, we've added defaults to the MultiPicker for sorting and font size, updated printing options, updated RealTracks and other content, and addressed user-reported issues with the StylePicker, MIDI Soloists, key signature changes, and more!
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."
Convenient Ways to Listen to Band-in-a-Box® Songs Created by Program Users!
The User Showcase Forum is an excellent place to share your Band-in-a-Box® songs and listen to songs other program users are creating!
There are other places you can listen to these songs too! Visit our User Showcase page to sort by genre, artist (forum name), song title, and date - each listing will direct you to the forum post for that song.
If you'd rather listen to these songs in one place, head to our Band-in-a-Box® Radio, where you'll have the option to select the genre playlist for your listening pleasure. This page has SoundCloud built in, so it won't redirect you. We've also added the link to the Artists SoundCloud page here, and a link to their forum post.
We hope you find some inspiration from this amazing collection of User Showcase Songs!
Our User Showcase Forum receives more than 50 posts per day, with people sharing their Band-in-a-Box songs and providing feedback for other songs posted.
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