Band in a Box styles for Pa2x/ Pa800 - an update

mbncp · Post by **mbncp** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:51 pm

Some one generated psr styles (tyros) from a bunch of biab styles (800+).
Wouldn't it be easier to convert from there ?

rikkisbears · Post by **rikkisbears** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:57 pm

Hi Rob,
haven't had a chance to look for mine, if I can't find it, that would be great. I'll let you know. Sometimes I update things if I find an error so possibly mine could be more current??

Rob Sherratt wrote:Rikki,

I found a copy of the one you created for the Pa800. Shall I email it to you so you can check it works OK and then post it on CSS?

rikkisbears · Post by **rikkisbears** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 12:22 am

Hi,
not sure if we're talking about the same styles, but an internet buddy of mine may have actually created them.
He basically did them as an experiment with Michael Bedersom's Stylemaker software ( for Psr's). If it's the same one's they were created in batches & never tweaked, except for a few that he had use for.

Don't know how well they would convert. Emc sometimes doesn't do a brilliant job on converting factory styles, so a conversion on top of a conversion?? don't know.

For myself I'd prefer to have a bit more control of what phrases I use in a style part. For anyone who may not be familiar with how BIAB works, it's different to how a keyboard plays back a phrase.
A keyboard plays back a fixed phrase that gets transposed to whatever chord is played, whereas BIAB randomly picks phrases for it's songs depending on chord type, & length of of the phrase between chord changes. Some of it's phrases only suit one particular chord type.

It's styles can be made up of upto 100's of short phrases varying in length from 1 beat up to 2 bars & it mix & matches them.

Basically if you're not happy with the phrases it's chosen for your song, you just hit the play button again, and it regenerates and alters some of them.
You just keep doing that till you think it sounds ok.
You can have a bit of control over the phrases it chooses by modifying the style & setting any phrases you don't want it to use to 0 ( I think) This way they won't get picked.

As I'd sooner have a bit more control over what is in my midifile.

mbncp wrote:Some one generated psr styles (tyros) from a bunch of biab styles (800+).
Wouldn't it be easier to convert from there ?

miden · Post by **miden** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 12:37 am

Rikki and Rob,

I have just converted my PA2xPro.ins and PA2xproDrums.ins files to BIAB .pat files.

If you get stuck, I can now send these to you via email, if you would like them or I can post them to Rons' site.

Dennis

mbncp · Post by **mbncp** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:20 am

rikkisbears wrote:not sure if we're talking about the same styles, but an internet buddy of mine may have actually created them.
He basically did them as an experiment with Michael Bedersom's Stylemaker software ( for Psr's). If it's the same one's they were created in batches & never tweaked, except for a few that he had use for [..]

Must be those, I actually tried them in my s900 and some are pretty interesting. But sure, if you want something nice, it's better to go one by one and do some heavy duty tweaking.

Btw, a few years ago I made an ocx (some dll) that can deal with midi files (among other things), so if you need some midi file tools it's fairly easy for me to do pretty much anything (splitting, changing tracks/channels, re-voicing, ...). Although I'm a C/C++ developper I use most of the time vbscript for this kind of stuff, it's on all win machines and the code is always open source, and free

Now if korg was so kind to share with us the different file format, I wouldn't mind, did already too much hacking and reverse engineering boring stuff

rikkisbears · Post by **rikkisbears** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:00 am

Hi Dennis,
I just found mine & uploaded it. I think it's ok. If it's flawed we'll upload yours instead.
It's been a while since I used it.

miden wrote:Rikki and Rob,

I have just converted my PA2xPro.ins and PA2xproDrums.ins files to BIAB .pat files.

If you get stuck, I can now send these to you via email, if you would like them or I can post them to Rons' site.

Dennis

miden · Post by **miden** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:34 am

rikkisbears wrote:Hi Dennis,
I just found mine & uploaded it. I think it's ok. If it's flawed we'll upload yours instead.
It's been a while since I used it.

miden wrote:Rikki and Rob,

I have just converted my PA2xPro.ins and PA2xproDrums.ins files to BIAB .pat files.

If you get stuck, I can now send these to you via email, if you would like them or I can post them to Rons' site.

Dennis

No problemo!!

D

rikkisbears · Post by **rikkisbears** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:42 am

Hi,
some of them might have been ok, especially the ones he tweaked. With that many , I must admit I didn't go thru all of them.

It would be great if there was a similar program to Stylemaker for the Korg. It worked quite well. Michael had a number of Templates that set up the song in BIAB ie 1 for pop , 1 for Jazz, then Stylemaker did an automatic midifile to style conversion. The important part was to make sure that BIAB came up with a reasonably good version of the midifile.
It still required a bit of tweaking afterwards.
I've been wracking my brain as to why I decided not to use Stylemaker to create a psr style & then convert it to Korg format( with or without the use of EMC).

I've just remembered. Yamaha don't use controller 64 ( sustain) in their styles. BIAB do. Ifound it deleted sustain in Piano tracks & made them choppy. In Yamaha styles the sustain is actually due to the length of the note, they're very legato. This works ok if converting Yamaha to Korg, but not vice versa if the piano track has sustain controllers in it.

Someone suggested I try lengthening the piano tracks in a sequencer, some of the upmarket sequencer apparently can take the sustain function into account?? my 2 inexpensive ones can't.

Figured it might be easier to try & work out a different method.

Still working on the notion of setting up a Song Template something along the lines of Michaels template, but a max of 32 bars. 32 Bars will load into a style part, then using the onboard copy & cut functions to divide the midifile into the 4 variations , fills, count in & ending.
Additional intro's & Endings with chord progression would have to be done as a seperate midifile.

Second option would be to save each of the style parts as seperate midifiles & import them that way.

I've tried the first method, takes me roughly 15 to 30 minutes to put the style together with only a count in & default BIAB ending. Just need to get the template right to try & vary the variations.

I actually use pc sequencer & the onboard sequencer to do my editing.
Sounds fascinating what you're talking about, but I'm not terribly computer savy. You've sort of lost me with ocx , dll's etc I see these files in my pc, but wouldn't have a clue what they do. haahaa

No doubt may come in handy for members with more computer skills than me.

mbncp wrote: Must be those, I actually tried them in my s900 and some are pretty interesting. But sure, if you want something nice, it's better to go one by one and do some heavy duty tweaking.

Btw, a few years ago I made an ocx (some dll) that can deal with midi files (among other things), so if you need some midi file tools it's fairly easy for me to do pretty much anything (splitting, changing tracks/channels, re-voicing, ...). Although I'm a C/C++ developper I use most of the time vbscript for this kind of stuff, it's on all win machines and the code is always open source, and free

Now if korg was so kind to share with us the different file format, I wouldn't mind, did already too much hacking and reverse engineering boring stuff

Mickb · Post by **Mickb** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 3:02 am

mbncp wrote: Now if korg was so kind to share with us the different file format, I wouldn't mind, did already too much hacking and reverse engineering boring stuff

AMEN TO THAT

iaoranaemaeva · Post by **iaoranaemaeva** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 8:34 pm

Mickb wrote:
mbncp wrote: Now if korg was so kind to share with us the different file format, I wouldn't mind, did already too much hacking and reverse engineering boring stuff

AMEN TO THAT

+1

rikkisbears · Post by **rikkisbears** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 11:16 pm

Hi ,
PG music, has brought out a new program called Real Band
http://nn.pgmusic.com/demos/demo_rbw.php

Bit of a hybrid between Powertracks sequencer & Band in a Box.

In a nutshell it reminds me of Powertracks 12, but with the ability to load Band in a Box styles .

I think it may well be perfect for creating the midifiles required as a basis for our korg styles.

The big difference is the midifile can be edited before importing it into the korg. Also unlike with BIAB where the whole style gets regenerated if your not happy with something, in Real Band you can import individual tracks from a BIAB style & just regenerate a single track.

Still got a bit of testing to do, but for me it's almost the perfect program for the way I convert & create my Korg styles from midifiles.

best wishes
Rikki[/B]

miden · Post by **miden** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 11:37 pm

Rikki,
Thanks for the heads-up..I am going to download that down and have a look at it.

That has always been my main bete noir with PG the fact you had to buy BOTH programs and even then the integration was not as smooth as you would like.

Cheers
Dennis

rikkisbears · Post by **rikkisbears** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:00 am

Hi Dennis,
it might possibly do as a replacement for PT, but not neccesarily for BIAB.
BIAB is still needed if someone wants to edit or create BIAB styles. Plus there's other functions BIAB can do that this program can't.

Personally I bought it anyway, for the sake of the $59 it cost me, well worth it. Just check all the options available if you do decide to buy.
It seems to depend on what vers. BIAB you have ( if any) What style sets you want etc etc
Fortunately my BIAB was the latest megapak upgrade, so I only needed the basic version.

Be careful if you decide to do it as a download, the program itself is only 40 mb's, but the Real Tracks ( audio files) are 100's of mb's each.
I may have to change my order to postage if I decide I want the audio files that came with my order. I didn't realize there'd be so many gigs to download .
I've mainly bought it for the midi functions not the audio.

I did find one bug so far, when trying to load a midifile 0 file, it's placing all the data in a single track instead of seperate tracks. Fortunately they're aware of it & no doubt will fix it.

miden wrote:Rikki,
Thanks for the heads-up..I am going to download that down and have a look at it.

That has always been my main bete noir with PG the fact you had to buy BOTH programs and even then the integration was not as smooth as you would like.

Cheers
Dennis

miden · Post by **miden** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:22 am

Rikki, I have an older BIAB 12 Mega Pak disk that I bought ages ago...But I have been looking at this BIAB 2008.5 and the Real Band and I DO like what I am hearing.. I might just bite the bullet and buy the full package, its going to cost a bit but it would be great for composing as well.

I can see why you think it is VERY useful for style creation and if a reliable way can be worked out to get the styles across to the Korg...Look out world!!!

Cya

D

rikkisbears · Post by **rikkisbears** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 11:51 pm

Hi Dennis,
I'm pretty excited about the program. I've even gone back to checking out the Style Creation Functions for BIAB styles.
The 2 programs aught to make an interesting combination, BIAB for editing/creating BIAB styles, then Real Band for the creation & editing of the midifile as a precursor to importing it into the Korg's stylemaker.
BIAB should work by itself, but RealBand just makes it so much better.

I haven't got a suitable simple drum pattern style creation tool in any of my low cost sequencers so I decided to check out BIAB's drum grid editor a bit more thoroughly. I'd been under the mistaken impression that the 18 drum instruments shown in the grid was all that was available, fortunately I was wrong. Also the pattern grid is only 1 bar , so the way BIAB picks patterns randomly may not always suit.
Even discovered I can have total control of the order I want the drum patterns to be played back in.
Be great to be able to come up with a bunch of custom drum patterns that could be used in Korg styles.

Just got to get my head around a few more functions & I'll post some tips, midifiles & hopefully some styles.

miden wrote:Rikki, I have an older BIAB 12 Mega Pak disk that I bought ages ago...But I have been looking at this BIAB 2008.5 and the Real Band and I DO like what I am hearing.. I might just bite the bullet and buy the full package, its going to cost a bit but it would be great for composing as well.

I can see why you think it is VERY useful for style creation and if a reliable way can be worked out to get the styles across to the Korg...Look out world!!!

Cya

D