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Hi, I tried to find more info about this but can't. I generate a lyrical melody in Synth V. I want to know how well BIAB does when I import that MIDI file and get BIAB to generate a musical track. Some video demos of the procedure would be great too. Kinda opposite of this excellent video.

Last edited by GodAtum; 08/08/24 07:11 AM.
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To the best of my knowledge, Band-in-a-Box can not automatically generate the backing tracks to support a melody.

The user would need to select a style, use the default style tempo or figure out the best tempo, use the default key signature or select another key and then enter the song chords.

A user without any musical theory knowledge can use style defaults, the chord builder feature to aid in selecting chords and their ears to come up with backing tracks that will support a melody generated by Synth V. Band-in-a-Box can help a user with no or limited music knowledge understand music better. More music knowledge will help a user obtain more sophisticated backing tracks easier.


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Thanks for the reply. I have a style, tempo, key signature and chords. It seems BIAB offers import of a LyricLab file which contains the lyrics and chords (see video). Unfortunately I use HookPad, so will have to manually enter everything. I hope BIAB consider adding support for HookPad and Synth V.

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Originally Posted by GodAtum
...
I hope BIAB consider adding support for HookPad and Synth V.

That's a worthwhile request to make in the Wish List section:
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=9&page=1


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I need to find it, but I thought BIAB does have a feature that can make something given only a melody.


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There is an option to interpret chords from a MIDI file, but I'm fairly sure that it requires multiple parts (bass, guitar, piano, melody etc) and therefore I'm not sure if a single note melody could be used successfully.

File > Import Chords > Import Chords from MIDI file (MIDI Chord Wizard)

From the integrated help:
"Import Chords from MIDI File (MIDI Chord Wizard)

Many people who play music by ear think of songs in terms of "Chords and Melody." However many MIDI files lack chord symbols, so they become difficult to learn without the user having to figure out the chords in a time consuming process. Now you can open any MIDI file in Band-in-a-Box, and Band-in-a-Box will automatically figure out the chords of the song for you. It automatically analyzes the MIDI file, figures out where the bass, piano, melody and other tracks are, and then figures out the chord changes for the song. The chords are written onto the Band-in-a-Box Chord Sheet like any other song. This allows you to quickly learn how to play a song from a MIDI file - just read it into Band-in-a-Box and you'll see the chord symbols, and then learn the Melody! You can also read tracks into the Melody and Soloist tracks."


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So from what I can find online:

  1. Import Melody from MIDI file from Synth V
  2. Enter the key, tempo and chords manually
  3. Select a style and generate the music


I'm guessing BIAB is not intelligent enough to match the generated music with the imported melody MIDI file? The 2 will just sound awful?

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Originally Posted by GodAtum
So from what I can find online:
  1. Import Melody from MIDI file from Synth V
  2. Enter the key, tempo and chords manually
  3. Select a style and generate the music

I'm guessing BIAB is not intelligent enough to match the generated music with the imported melody MIDI file? The 2 will just sound awful?

If the melody has some form of accompaniment, such as a bass line together with some other instruments, then BIAB can work out the appropriate chords. If the melody only consists of single notes, any matching chords could be interpreted in many different ways. Even an accomplished musician / song writer could determine multiple different chord sequences, none of which may be correct.

It's not related to 'intelligence', it's related to having adequate material to work from.

I doubt anything would sound 'awful', it may just not sound right. I'm guessing that you are not very experienced with music, especially music theory.

What does your Synth V Melody consist of?


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Originally Posted by AudioTrack
Originally Posted by GodAtum
So from what I can find online:
  1. Import Melody from MIDI file from Synth V
  2. Enter the key, tempo and chords manually
  3. Select a style and generate the music

I'm guessing BIAB is not intelligent enough to match the generated music with the imported melody MIDI file? The 2 will just sound awful?

If the melody has some form of accompaniment, such as a bass line together with some other instruments, then BIAB can work out the appropriate chords. If the melody only consists of single notes, any matching chords could be interpreted in many different ways. Even an accomplished musician / song writer could determine multiple different chord sequences, none of which may be correct.

It's not related to 'intelligence', it's related to having adequate material to work from.

I doubt anything would sound 'awful', it may just not sound right. I'm guessing that you are not very experienced with music, especially music theory.

What does your Synth V Melody consist of?

Yes I'm new to music theory and making music. The Synth V file is like the one shown in this video, it's a MIDI file with single notes.

According to the video, it looks like the only way is to get BIAB to generate the whole song and then import the melody MIDI into Synth V. Then try and make lyrics to fit that melody.

Last edited by GodAtum; 08/09/24 02:11 PM.
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Originally Posted by GodAtum
Yes I'm new to music theory and making music. The Synth V file is like the one shown in this video, it's a MIDI file with single notes.

According to the video, it looks like the only way is to get BIAB to generate the whole song and then import the melody MIDI into Synth V. Then try and make lyrics to fit that melody.
I watched the video. It started off with the chords and structure of a song, then added the melody and lyrics. BIAB cannot make a song from a single melody line. It was never designed to do that. In fact, I don't know of any product that could successfully achieve that. Others may know more.

You could give a single note melody line to 5 different composers and ask them to put chords to the song. I guarantee you that you would get 5 completely different results.


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Thinking further, why not just ask ChatGPT to generate the chords as well as the melody, then just enter those chords into BIAB and import the melody?


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I found this elsewhere, and haven't tried it, but this sounded more like what you are looking for:

"There's also this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/songsmith-2/

which uses a BIAB engine to generate accompaniment to a melody line (Songsmith analyzes an audio melody...for example, you can hum a melody into it...and it generates a chord progression based on that melody, using a handful of BIAB styles to play back the accompaniment). The project never went very far and it doesn't actually do a very good job of generating musical chord progressions.."


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BIAB can generate chords from a melody using the Reharmonist feature (Edit | Chords | Chord Reharmonization).

Before I can say anything further about it, though, I need to find out more and work out how to use it effectively. I have not used this feature ever. Technically, it's possible to export the SynthV melody as MIDI and then load that into BIAB. Once the MIDI is loaded, selecting Reharmonist will generate chords based on the MIDI melody. I have a few SynthV vocal melodies so I'll try using these over the next couple of days, and I'll let you know what kind of results I get.

--Noel


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Thank you for finding that, Noel. That’s what I recalled, but like you I never tried using it.


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Originally Posted by Noel96
BIAB can generate chords from a melody using the Reharmonist feature (Edit | Chords | Chord Reharmonization).

Before I can say anything further about it, though, I need to find out more and work out how to use it effectively. I have not used this feature ever. Technically, it's possible to export the SynthV melody as MIDI and then load that into BIAB. Once the MIDI is loaded, selecting Reharmonist will generate chords based on the MIDI melody. I have a few SynthV vocal melodies so I'll try using these over the next couple of days, and I'll let you know what kind of results I get.

--Noel

very interesting, I look forward to your findings.

Last edited by GodAtum; 09/02/24 10:43 AM.
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As promised, I have tried Reharmonization on a few of my SynthV vocals (exported as MIDI from SynthV). I have also used a number of different styles in both Jazz and Pop genres to see how that affects the chords added to the chordsheet.

Firstly, pop-based styles give less embellished chords than the jazz-based styles. This is what I anticipated.

From my perspective, the generated chord progressions had limited usability. The process certainly gave me ideas about potential chords that never occurred to me when I wrote the songs. This was good. Used in conjunction with the Chord Substitution process, I was able to find some additional interesting progressions. I could also choose to work on the whole song at once or sections by setting the number of bars I wanted to reharmonize.

For me, the process was not a 'one-stop shop'. At most, it gave me ideas to try out and to consider. Selecting chords for a vocal line still required my manual input to get a harmony that was most comfortable.

Last edited by Noel96; 09/10/24 04:23 AM.

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Originally Posted by Noel96
As promised, I have tried Reharmonization on a few of my SynthV vocals (exported as MIDI from SynthV). I have also used a number of different styles in both Jazz and Pop genres to see how that affects the chords added to the chordsheet.

Firstly, pop-based styles give less embellished chords than the jazz-based styles. This is what I anticipated.

From my perspective, the generated chord progressions had limited usability. The process certainly gave me ideas about potential chords that never occurred to me when I wrote the songs. This was good. Used in conjunction with the Chord Substitution process, I was able to find some additional interesting progressions. I could also choose to work on the whole song at once or sections by setting the number of bars I wanted to reharmonize.

For me, the process was not a 'one-stop shop'. At most, it gave me ideas to try out and to consider. Selecting chords for a vocal line still required my manual input to get a harmony that most comfortable.

Thank you for the info, that's really useful.

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