How useful do you find BiaB?

Scoredog · June 2020

I just purchased it for 79 bucks (PMG's write up spiked my curiosity) and am totally blown away. I of course have not figured out a lot of what it can do but for source music as a composer it will pay itself back with one cue. I almost find it dangerous as I don't need to hire rhythm section players for many type TV cues anymore as there are world class players hired by BIAB and the software works great. I am not sure if there are premade materials but inputting a song is fairly easy and once you get the hang of it, it will go very quickly. By buying #109 #110 (30 bucks each) you get the Gypsy Jazz template and it can handle almost any swing tune, sometimes with a good soloist you can cop licks from. It is freakin kewl. As many of you know I am a full time composer and again am blown away by the flexibility of the software.

richter4208 · June 2020

Score......post some clips when you get a chance

Buco · June 2020

@flaco lots of videos about how to enter a chord progression, pretty easy to do. It can extremely complicated and have a steep learning curve, that I agree. But as I'm using it more and more I like that I can manipulate the track any way I like: leave the bass only, put instruments on either side of the mix, pan or center, turn up or down certain instruments in the mix etc...I really like flexibility that you don't get with the YouTube backing tracks. And I get distracted much less too. It took me forever to decide to spend the money but now I think it's very much worth it.

https://youtu.be/9RZqDJjeoBU

flaco · June 2020

@Buco Thanks! It's not the entering of the chords that's a problem. It's the playback after that point that doesn't work for me, particularly which style to select to hear the instruments. I only have a few of the real tracks/real styles available from the packs I've purchased, and whatever I have seems to create a situation where no matter what I select I can only hear one or two instruments. For example, I toy around with some Irish music and I have the bozouki real track, but none of the other instruments what would be required for the complete Celtic style. So if I select that style I JUST hear the bozouki. I was hoping there would be a setting where I would hear a mix of the real tracks for the bozouki and at least MIDI for the other instruments, but I can't find that setting. I have googled this and not found answers. It seems like everything in the software is trying to force me to buy a bunch more of the style packs to have functionality. When I have looked at what it would take to purchase additional real tracks to fill out the collection, it seems like it would be pretty expensive. To me the PG Musicwebsite is just as user unfriendly as the application is, so maybe I'm missing something obvious.

Buco · June 2020

@flaco Why not calling them directly? They list a support number and a live chat. Just seems a pity to spend the money and let it sit unused. They might even offer remote control of your computer to show what can or can't be done. Lots of companies do the remote control support these days. You took the time making those awesome looking picks, might as well get to the bottom of this. We should all consider ourselves lucky, the 2020 version has 50 new features!

Scoredog · June 2020

I decided to start a new thread instead of getting this lost in this longer thread but I have a test example here....at the request of Richter.

He chose "I Can't Give You Anything But Love".......I chose a Gonzalo solo template which originally played at 250 bpm and dropped the song to 190 which is fairly typical for this song.

Remember when listening that no one except me actually played "I Can't Give You Anything But Love".

What you will hear...

First part is a "Robot" Gonzalo playing a solo and I am doing the comping...pretty cool

btw Simon Planting on bass

2nd and 3rd part I am playing the solo and Gonzalo and John Jorgenson are comping for me (how cool is that?)...

There were a few timing issues with the bass part against my rhythm where I could have fixed the bass part in Logic X but i wanted to leave it as most people would use BIAB. It is amazing that even using a tempo that far away from the template Gonzalo, John and Simon originally started that the time is as tight as it is.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fr5vbcihpiunmw8/I%20Can%27t%20give%20You%20example.mp3?dl=0

Quadropenta · June 2020

Hi Flaco

Thanks for the tip on backing tracks on Denis's DC-Musicschool site. Can they be downloaded? If so, I can't figure out how. thanks.

rudolfochrist · June 2020

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/102054#Comment_102054

The backing tracks (as well as all of the other videos) are streaming only and can't be downloaded (<tech-nerd-mode>From a technical standpoint streaming is a special variant of downloading. Basically you still download, but you don't end up having a video or audio file.</tech-nerd-mode>). I remember, when DCMS was still fresh (i guess?), there was a ZIP file with ca. 40 backing tracks available for download, but it is gone now.

Stephane Wrembel had some really good backing tracks as well. Someone re-uploaded them. Give the search on this forum a try.

-Sebastian