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#443586 - 12/30/17 04:41 PM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: Dnj]
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Member
Registered: 12/14/99
Posts: 521
Loc: University, MS 38677 USA
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I’ve been using BIAB live for several years, now, with guitar and vocals. Often, I have a woodwind player and other vocalists join in, as well. I also use arrangers on other gigs. The BIAB program is much less expensive than an arranger, even though you must purchase a computer (laptop in my case). It offers so many styles, it’s hard to keep up with them. If a person knows chord changes, you can create a full arrangement in a matter of minutes. I like being able to change keys and the number of choruses on the spot to accommodate other musicians. The real styles (real audio files) sound authentic through a good sound system. With a little effort, you can create hundreds of songs ready to go at the push of a button. I’ve got my folders of tunes organized by country, jazz, pop, rock, standards, Broadway/show, holiday songs, waltzes, tangos------you name it. I’m not giving up arrangers; however, BIAB is a great tool for song writing, practice, and live performance.
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#443595 - 12/31/17 12:14 AM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: J. Larry]
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Senior Member
Registered: 03/02/06
Posts: 7143
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I’ve been using BIAB live for several years, now, with guitar and vocals. Often, I have a woodwind player and other vocalists join in, as well. I also use arrangers on other gigs. The BIAB program is much less expensive than an arranger, even though you must purchase a computer (laptop in my case). It offers so many styles, it’s hard to keep up with them. If a person knows chord changes, you can create a full arrangement in a matter of minutes. I like being able to change keys and the number of choruses on the spot to accommodate other musicians. The real styles (real audio files) sound authentic through a good sound system. With a little effort, you can create hundreds of songs ready to go at the push of a button. I’ve got my folders of tunes organized by country, jazz, pop, rock, standards, Broadway/show, holiday songs, waltzes, tangos------you name it. I’m not giving up arrangers; however, BIAB is a great tool for song writing, practice, and live performance. i think if someone goes for a full software setup, having different tools like BiAB, Varranger, Reason, VST's, Logic, mainstage and Bitwig all readily available in your macbook really makes sense.. However, for everything that requires realtime interaction, like using an arranger or selecting real time scenes in bitwig, a dedicated user interface is required. But using BiAB, as a backing-sequencer should work straight forward, just press play and go... Another thing that comes to mind, is the huge difference between BiaB for PC and BiAB for MAc. I guess for BiAB its better to have a PC then a MAC...*same goes for Varranger, the reason i don't owwn Varranger is the fact that it only runs on PC and not on MAC.
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#443598 - 12/31/17 05:05 AM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: Bachus]
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Senior Member
Registered: 09/21/00
Posts: 43703
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I’ve been using BIAB live for several years, now, with guitar and vocals. Often, I have a woodwind player and other vocalists join in, as well. I also use arrangers on other gigs. The BIAB program is much less expensive than an arranger, even though you must purchase a computer (laptop in my case). It offers so many styles, it’s hard to keep up with them. If a person knows chord changes, you can create a full arrangement in a matter of minutes. I like being able to change keys and the number of choruses on the spot to accommodate other musicians. The real styles (real audio files) sound authentic through a good sound system. With a little effort, you can create hundreds of songs ready to go at the push of a button. I’ve got my folders of tunes organized by country, jazz, pop, rock, standards, Broadway/show, holiday songs, waltzes, tangos------you name it. I’m not giving up arrangers; however, BIAB is a great tool for song writing, practice, and live performance. i think if someone goes for a full software setup, having different tools like BiAB, Varranger, Reason, VST's, Logic, mainstage and Bitwig all readily available in your macbook really makes sense.. However, for everything that requires realtime interaction, like using an arranger or selecting real time scenes in bitwig, a dedicated user interface is required. But using BiAB, as a backing-sequencer should work straight forward, just press play and go... Another thing that comes to mind, is the huge difference between BiaB for PC and BiAB for MAc. I guess for BiAB its better to have a PC then a MAC...*same goes for Varranger, the reason i don't owwn Varranger is the fact that it only runs on PC and not on MAC. I don't own anything Mac or Apple yet...a PC man I remain for now,...that said why do arranger kb players frown upon using SMF files, Mp3 tracks etc, but accept using the "automatic chord input method" BIAB to play on top of? at least with smf/mp3 you actually play & create tracks to use vs just typing in chords? at least with vArranger you have to play,what am I missing here?
Edited by Dnj (12/31/17 05:06 AM)
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#443603 - 12/31/17 06:34 AM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: Dnj]
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Senior Member
Registered: 09/29/05
Posts: 6703
Loc: Roswell,GA/USA
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Donny, with all due respect, I think what you're missing is that you expect (demand?) that everyone justify everything they do. Sometimes people just do things because they want to, no reason or justification needed. As Bachus said (or implied), just because you use one thing doesn't mean you have to exclude everything else. What's wrong with having a variety of tools in the toolbox? Different tools for different jobs (or different tools for a different approach to the same job). Some people just like to experiment; like having a car collection; you don't collect them because one is better than the other; you collect them because variety is FUN (I could have used a wife/girlfriend analogy here but chose not to ). I have an old (2015, I think) copy of BIAB and find lots of fun uses for it, such as inserting it inside REAPER or generating lead sheets or extracting chords from a midi file, etc., etc. I think it's a really clever program that (frankly) with the exception of 'live playing', is nearly as flexible and useful as an arranger (and a hellava lot cheaper). JMO. chas
_________________________
"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]
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#443632 - 12/31/17 12:53 PM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: Dnj]
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Member
Registered: 10/27/03
Posts: 526
Loc: CA
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I've experimented with software arrangers (real and non-real time) and concluded for myself that it requires too much settings and preparations to be useful in live situations. I also preferred simple, minimum setups in gigs, less cables, built-in vocal processing/harmonizer, etc which the software arranger hardly provides. Currently I owned the latest vArranger (Dan, the developer doing a great job in perfecting this S.A.) in my opinion, the one of the most versatile software arranger available yet I still preferred the hardware arranger especially for spontaneous arrangements, recordings and simply playing for fun. Maybe I need to take another look on software arrangers and spend some more time working on it. Just my 2 cents.
_________________________
Jim
SD90,Korg I3, KMA Liverpool,TC Helicon Play Electric, Fender Sonoran Guitar, vArranger, Bose S1 Pros, Bose L1 Compact, Aiwa Exos-9
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#443654 - 12/31/17 06:59 PM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: Dnj]
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Senior Member
Registered: 12/22/02
Posts: 6020
Loc: NSW,Australia
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Hi Donny, I have both, and as others have said , you can’t really compare the 2 programs. Biab is for creating backing tracks or songs by typing in chord progressions, or even getting it to create it’s own progressions ( I think) , haven’t used it in quite a while, though I did upgrade yesterday. I used to have it midied to my pa800, ie type in chords biab, the pa800 would then follow the chord progression, I found it a good way of auditioning styles for a song. Used to get some interesting results mixing biab and korg tracks together ie replace a korg guitar track with a biab guitar real track. I like experimenting.
V arranger is a real-time software arranger . It also has a mode where you can type in chord progressions and create a backing track. I didn’t actually buy it for its real-time functions , I wanted access to the ketron and Roland styles it can play and be able to create the midifiles I needed for my style conversions hobby ,for my Korg.
_________________________
best wishes Rikki 🧸
Korg PA5X 88 note SX900 Band in a Box 2022
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#443755 - 01/02/18 07:18 AM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: rikkisbears]
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Member
Registered: 03/22/17
Posts: 449
Loc: Mountain Home, AR
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Most interesting topic! I have been a uiser of BIAB for 20 years. And using arrangers just as long. I believe in using every tool available to make my music as good as possible. I laugh everytime I see someone advertise they use no karaoke. They use the auto-play features of their keyboards! This argument started years ago when we started using rhythm units with our organs. Pushing wood to eliminate the bass player.
BIAB has the ability with their real tracks to produce real sounding insturmantal backups. Yamaha i touting their real drums that BIAB has had for 10 years or longer. The difference in quality of real tracks versus midi tracks is huge! The learning curve to get trully professional results is high but combination of BIAB and a good arranger keyboard really can't be beat.
I've never tried vArranger so can't speak to it. I would sy that at this very moment there are over 300 users on the pgmusic's website forum. People from the company write to the forum. It is not unusual to read a answer to a customers post from Peter Gannon the main writer of the program as well as several of the other programers at pgmusic. They have always offered a money back guarantee so you can't go wrong if you buy it and don't like it send it back no questions asked.
_________________________
PSR 740,PSR 3000, Mirage, tx7, mp32, Pro Tools 10,11 SONAR, Reaper, BIAB 2020 and a pile of Computer Music mags w/disks College student was working on Doctoral, Education Now just doing courses to do courses
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#443800 - 01/02/18 01:49 PM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: rikkisbears]
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Senior Member
Registered: 09/21/00
Posts: 43703
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Hi Donny, I have both, and as others have said , you can’t really compare the 2 programs. Biab is for creating backing tracks or songs by typing in chord progressions, or even getting it to create it’s own progressions ( I think) , haven’t used it in quite a while, though I did upgrade yesterday. I used to have it midied to my pa800, ie type in chords biab, the pa800 would then follow the chord progression, I found it a good way of auditioning styles for a song. Used to get some interesting results mixing biab and korg tracks together ie replace a korg guitar track with a biab guitar real track. I like experimenting.
V arranger is a real-time software arranger . It also has a mode where you can type in chord progressions and create a backing track. I didn’t actually buy it for its real-time functions , I wanted access to the ketron and Roland styles it can play and be able to create the midifiles I needed for my style conversions hobby ,for my Korg. Rikki first of all Happy New Year and thank you for the explanation I understand more then I did before now ...good luck with your music.
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#443890 - 01/03/18 12:19 PM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: Dnj]
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Senior Member
Registered: 12/22/02
Posts: 6020
Loc: NSW,Australia
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Rikki first of all Happy New Year and thank you for the explanation I understand more then I did before now ...good luck with your music. HiDonny, Happy new year to you too. Sorry bit late getting back, just sent off last of my Xmas guests, had 6 staying over Xmas, worn out haha. Quite frankly if you do use audio backing tracks , biab could be worth looking at more so than VArranger, mainly because you already have an arranger keyboard anyway. Arranger styles were better suited to the type of songs I liked, big band , Latin , show tunes. Biab has great country, rock , pop , jazz etc, did notice it has big band now too. I’ve had biab since day one, never really used it to it’s full extent, I enjoyed playing around with my keyboards too much. Actually if all I wanted to do was create backing tracks to sing along to, or as backing for playing another instrument, I’d be more inclined to buy biab over an arranger keyboard, provided the styles suited.
_________________________
best wishes Rikki 🧸
Korg PA5X 88 note SX900 Band in a Box 2022
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#444016 - 01/04/18 10:41 PM
Re: Who is using Band in a Box or vArranger & Why?
[Re: Dnj]
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Senior Member
Registered: 12/22/02
Posts: 6020
Loc: NSW,Australia
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Hi Rikki,.....so are people just buying song charts, etc, pic a BIAB Style and copying the chords from them to BIAB to create the backing track? Hi Donny, can be as simple as that, and basically what I have done in the past. I have a fake sheet, type in the chord progression, it has copy and paste function, so usually doesn’t take all that long, pick a style and generate the song. (You put the little markers in for verse and chorus). Don’t like the style, pick a different, generate, see if that sounds better. The audio styles sound really good. You really need to have a peek thru the videos just to see what it is capable of, quite mind boggling. From the 3 instrument midi styles back in the early 90’s now to very elaborate audio styles. The forum members are really helpful. There’s another program included called Real Band. Sequencer basically, it also uses the biab styles. You have more control over the individual style tracks. Ie you can again type in a chord progression , choose style, generate, then record additional tracks over the top to create a complete song. It loads midi files and reads the chords if the file has them , if not it will come up with it’s own. Something I tried, was replacing a midile track with one of biab’s audio tracks ie replace the midi drum track with an audio drum track from biab. Even tried it with just say an audio strumming guitar track. Program that doesn’t seem to be mentioned much , but, it’s a good one and part of the package. Still haven’t had a chance to try my new 2018 version.
_________________________
best wishes Rikki 🧸
Korg PA5X 88 note SX900 Band in a Box 2022
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