Hi,

before I will finally go the arranger keyboard route as a composing help I tried out the usual software suspects (latest version demos) in combination with my midiguitar. That means: yammie styles played by live styler (live use), omb and biab (step composing with chords and patterns). The soundmodule is hypersonic 2, which is great for that.

My findings are, the graphical user interface of biab and omb is simply terrible and windows 3.0-like. Much like software looked about 15 years ago. I believe graphics make a difference if you like to use your laptop or not for composing music. The UI especially in biab is a nightmare and way too cluttered - though a tons of features is included - in a very confusing way. But then again: These two are the only ones I found for step sequencing with chords and yammie styles.

I may be wrong, but it seems biab can use yammie styles but not to their full extend: There are only two variations and fills possible when you want to change your style part. Or does it offer four variations and fills + break somewhere else in the menus? I did not get to grips with it. Can you input style variations like you do with chords?
This is possible in OMB but strangely enough the styles sounded stiff and wrong and composing a few bars resulted in patterns that went quickly out of groove when looping. My laptop holds an intel 4 (2.8 GHZ) under its hood - that should be fairly enough.

What experiences did you have with those proggies. I am not far from going the arranger keyboard route (pa1x that is) - even if there are loads more possibilities and flexibility with the formentioned software. But it seems way more timeconsuming (biab) then I expected to build a song that sounds decent. Still I would fork out the money for the proggies if I knew that biab offers more than two variations (A + B) and would be on par in that sense to uptodate arrangers. And if I coud be assured they are more or less bugfree which I doubt with livestyler.

Any suggestions?

Best regards

Heinrich

Go for a hardware arranger keyboard and enjoy playing music instead of spending a lot of time on programming and configuring softs!!
Just my opinion
Stam

I don't use BIAB on stage to perform, but I do use it for charts, lead sheets, transposing charts, and style file creation.

The UI is very busy at first until you come to grips with their design philosophy. Everything is ICON / BUTTON driven. As soon as you learn a few essential buttons, it becomes much clearer. You can clean up the interface by closing some of those Control bars to make it more simple looking.

Spend some more time with the program and check out their user forum, ask questions, it's not so bad once you get used to it.

Al Giordano www.al-giordano.com

[This message has been edited by kbrkr (edited 06-09-2006).]

BIAB is not really geared toward the live player. Some folks do use it live but in these instances more like a midifile player than an arranger. I don't think you can use Yamaha .sty files in BIAB without modifying them btw. They both have a .sty extension, but the formats are not the same. Much like the Korg PA series and Yamaha series boards both use .sty files, but they are structured in a completely different way from one another.

Don't be fooled by the 2 variations though. There are several subvariatons within each BIAB variation, so you wind up with more than the 4 variations you get with most arrangers.

I've used OMB live, and continue to keep it on hand as a backup. It sounds good enough with SGM 180 and / or Bennett's another XG soundfont, provided I add some effects to each instrument channel. My main reason for using softsynths though is that the overall quality of lead or panel voices is unmatched by anything hardware that I've ever played, and that my system is open ended so that I can add the modules and sample sets of my choosing.

The interface of OMB is fine for me. Pretty much every function I need to use in real time can be controlled using my Motif ES as my midi controller.

AJ


[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 06-09-2006).]

Thanks for leading me in the right direction, fellas.
Al, cleaning up the UI - I will try to do so. Still, the design looks cheapo and unfriendly to my eyes.
Bluesplayer, thanks for pointing out that BIAB and yamaha use different stylestructures even if the ending sounds the same. I am quite unhappy about this bcause I feel that BIAB styles sound a little simple to me. I hoped to use yammie dance and R&B styles to make up for that, but tweaking those styles seems quite timeconsuming then.
I did not understand though what you meant by subvariations - can they be compared to varaitions C, D and Breaks of the real keyboards qualitywise?
Has anybody here trie to combine steinbergs groove agent or virtual bassist with OMB or BIAB?
Or does Jammer pro a better job than BIAB for contemporary music? I understand it takes a lot of work to set up songs with it...
Sorry for so many questions, I am still at the beginning of the software route. Might be I am leaving it as stam pointed out.

Best regards

Heinrich

Heinrich,

Most of the BIAB styles contain more than one drum pattern, more than one bass pattern, etc within each variation. I can't remember the exact formula without looking over BIAB's style creation tool, but each of these is assigned a "weight" ( number from 0-9 ), which determines how often and in some cases when a particular pattern plays in a variation.

I think effects placement is one of the main things that is overlooked when we try using these apps with our softsynths. If you were to turn off all or most of the effects in the style section of a hardware arranger, the change in sound would be very apparent.

Jammer pro is in some ways like BIAB, but also in other ways very different. I liked the old interface ( version 4 and earlier ), because of it's straightforward approach and simplicity. Version 5 and beyond added several new features, but also added several steps that I need to do to get similar results that I got from earlier versions. At vers 5, I lost interest in the program.

I've worked with groove agent and virtual bassist. Both do a very decent job for holding down basic but very good sounding rythym patterns, but pretty much your locked into whatever patterns each program gives you. For drum patterns, I like Rayzoon's Jamstix, though it is quite a bit more complicated than Groove agent. It plays very well for someone like me who likes progressive type of rock with elements of fusion and sometimes other percussion mixed in. It would probably take me hours to program the complex drums in FL or Sonar that Jamstix can give me in minutes. Rayzoon is scheduled to release a bass module shortly as well, which I am looking forward to. I don't think either of the Rayzoon apps will be an optimum tool for the live player, but they should work well for composing from scratch, or for general jamming.

I'll never leave the software realm, if for no other reason than I could spend many thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars on different hardware boards and still never come close to the amount and quality of sounds that I have rooted in software. I am very much into analog and analog modeled sounds, and it's hard to find any hardware that can match up with apps like Pro53, Absynth, CS80V, Pentagon, etc


AJ



[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 06-09-2006).]

your answer is most appreciated, AJ. I will go on for - say 2 months - joining the software world and will buy a reasonably priced notebook for only that. From what I´ved heard nfrom the groove agent demos I especially like the old drumstyles to maybe mix them with other sounds and some hiphop elements. Sounds weird? Sounds good! Thanks for yoiur help, guys. I will let you know how I go along with it.

Best regards

Heinrich