One man Band, XG Works, or Band-in-a-box? Which has the best selection of styles, most natural feeling styles, best options for expansion. Anyone know anything about these?

Band in a Box was rated #1 in a competition recently. OMB is also very good and the support you will get will be excellent because Jos Maas (the author of OMB) is a member of SZ. Plus you can receive support through the Yahoo PSR Styles Group or by simply emailing Jos. Here is Jos's web site for OMB: http://www.1manband.nl

Best regards,
Mike

OMB seems to work with PSR styles, but any out there that are Korg related? I'm wondering if it's possible to find the korg pa1xpro styles for any of these programs, or at least something competitively equal. I always thought Korg's had a little more natural feel in the drum & bass compared to Yamaha, though Yamaha's are less busy all around, but I prefer to have good drum & bass and mute the busy tracks if needed, so I would love to find Korg pa1xpro styles for a software arranger. Does Band in the Box import styles from other companies such as Korg and can they be found?

XGworks is excellent for Yamaha styles and has the advantage of allowing external styles such as those from your keyboard. So the sky's the limit as there are several thousand styles around on the net for Yamaha keyboards. Great for keying in the melody and chords from your fake book and generating an arrangement.

Bryan

I, personally, think BIAB works very well with the Pa80. I just connect the Midi cables and it runs the Pa80 just fine. I know that AJ doesn't like them a lot because he feels they sound too canned, too slick.

There are virtually no Pa80 third party styles because, apparently, they are relatively too hard to do well and Korg does not seem very interested in helping people with the information required to do it. I don't personally know enough to make styles so this is all just observation from sitting on the sidelines and seeing what happens (or, in this case, what doesn't happen).

The only place you can find very many Pa80 styles is Fabio's site, and they are all conversions from other keyboards rather than original, done on the Pa80 styles.

One other possibility; the Pa80 will read (load) I30 styles, so it is possible to load them in and then save them back out as Pa80 format but you may have to do some internal editing to get them to sound the way you want.

All of the above is why I'm seriously considering adding a Tyros to go with my Pa80 and having the best of two worlds.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

Hi,
why don't you try the demo's, and make up your own mind about what suits you best.
OMB & XG works can both use psr styles.
BIAB has it's own style format, and Jammer ( which you didn't mention) has it's own format too.

http://home.zonnet.nl/josmaas/onemanband/
http://www.yamaha.co.uk/xg/html/midplug/m_mid10.htm#Downloads
http://www.soundtrek.com
http://www.pgmusic.com/biabwindemo.htm

best wishes
Rikki

I think BIAB is a very intuitive and well laid out program. Some of the BIAB styles are ok Tom. I think my main objection to some of them is that many seem to be centered around the Jazz genre, and in truth, I don't think any rigidly structured styles can really do justice to that type of music. I do think though, that the BIAB jazz styles are the best of the lot in the program, and I am not very impressed with some of it's other genres. I do like BIAB as a drum machine though. It's easy to step enter and then modify variations of drum notes and patterns to create user styles. I still think a BIAB and Jammer Pro are better for composing than an arranger in some ways, because each automatically allows for changes in the note data inside of a single style variation ( there are several midi files and other comntroller data within a single style variation ). Arranger pattern variations are generally locked into one midi file or passage for each instrument per style variation.

XG works is a good program, but all the style data has to be entered or step recorded manually, and I find it to be cumbersome when I want to jam along to something or get an idea that I want to develop quickly. The approach and interfce could be better. Although BIAB also requires one to step enter chords ( unless you want the program to enter some random chords for you, based on how you configure it), the process and interface makes it much quicker and logical to do ( at least for me ).

OMB allows you to change chords and variations in real time. It is, however, limited to Yamaha format styles. One advantage though is that it uses Cakewalk type instrument files. I simply replaced the default ins defintions with the Motif ES definitions, and then changed the file name to OMB.ins, and voila, I now have the ES patches available from within to use with OMB. That was sooo easy. I can't do that in XG works, and I had to hand make ins files for Jammer Pro and BIAB ( totally different formats ) for both the PA80 and Motif.

The alternative to BIAB is Jammer Pro. In some ways the two are similar, but each approaches song creation in a different manner. I really liked version 4, as it was very quick and easy to alter styles to your own preferences and tastes. Jammer Pro Version 5 is more complex, and allows you to edit style data on a piano roll type sequencer, but along with this and some other improvements, the OS became much more cumbersome to me and all in all it's a disappointment for me. Still, you can make some complex stuff with it and it uses different algorithims along with several pieces of midi data per style variation to make it sound more random and therefore "real" vs a locked arragher style. This is also true of BIAB, but with a different approach.

Jammer Live would be an alternative to OMB, as it allows for instant live play like an arranger, but it uses only Jammer format styles, and no style editing capabilities ( at least in the version I used )

I haven't tried Live styler or Real time style performer as extensively, but I think our own Frank L Rosenthal knows a thing or two about these programs. They are similar to OMB in that you use Yamaha format styles in real time, but they have different approaches and interfaces as well.

Rikkisbears mentioned it and I agree. Most if not all of these programs have working demos that can give you an in depth feel for the programs, so I would recommend to try them all. I did, and subsequently purchased all of them at different times except for Live Styler and Real Time style performer ( I'm a happy OMB user )

There is also an excellent jazz based program called Jazz++ sequencer. It has algo's built in that allow for creation of unique drum bass and rythym / harmony instrument pieces. It was once a commercial program, but has since become open source and is now freeware.

AJ




[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 11-29-2003).]

Hello BP,
Thanks for your really detailed review of these programs..
I really appreciate your response.

BP, I own the korg i30 interactive arranger, and my Korg Trinity V3.

I personally love the sounds of my Trinity.. And I love the Programing ease of my i30, but the sounds of my i30 are getting pretty much outdated...They sound fine, but I think, the Trinity still is more awsome !!

Now, Can you please help me?
I have OMB, not the latest version, but the previous one. And only the demo, but I didnt order it, because, I couldnt get the hang of it. Also, I wanted to use my trinity drumkits and basses instead of the i30 GM sounds..
Well, if Im able to give you a text file of all my patches on the Trinity, would it take too much time from your time to convert it to OMB format?
Or better yet, if you could teach me how to do it, I would be so greatfull !!

I think if Joe had this files available at his website, it would be so much better and a lot of people would be so much more interested in his software.

So, by using your conversion method, I for example, would be able to patch the drums track on OMB to my trinity drum track and it would sound perfectly?
This would be a dream come true, as I have no clue on how to do something like this...

thanks BP...


Peace,
Musikman

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BP,
I did a yahoo search on Korg Trinity V3 Cake walk ins file and found this one,
http://209.35.182.75/trinityhaven/SOFTWARE/CakewalkV3def.zip

Can this file be the one to use?

Thanks for your help BP..

Peace,
Musikman

I don't remember exactly how it worked in the older versions Musikman, but I don't think the earlier versions used the cakewalk type .ins files. I now have version 6, which does use the ins type files. I'm not sure whether vers 5 does or does not.

The file that you linked to in your last post appears to be the proper cakewalk ins file for the Trinity. It appears that there are three seperate ins files though. One for combinations, one for regular patches, and one for drums. You could probably open each of them up in notepad, and then copy and paste all of the data from one to the other, and then save it as a new ins file. You would need to do this becaue it appears that OMB will only recognize the default ins file ( named OMB.ins - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here Joe or anyone else ).

I had done something like this when making Jammer Pro device files for my PA80 and Motif. Not all the data was correct from the ins file, because a jammer dev file uses a different format, but at least I was able to copy the instrument names from the ins file, which saved me from having to type that part of the data in. In your case, since you will still wind up with an .ins file at to use, all the data should be correct.. It's just a simple matter of copy and paste.

Once you get the required data into one .insfile, all you would have to do is to open the OMB folder, and find the file named OMB.ins . ifm you want to, simply copy this file and save it in another folder for safe keeping should you ever want to reinstall it, and then delete the original OMB.ins file from the OMB folder.

Then take the Trinity .ins file, place it into the OMB folder, and rename it OMB.ins file, and it should work just fine. If your version does not have the OMB .ins file in it, it would be well worth it to move up to vers 6.

As far as Joe making the .ins files available at his website,.. I won't speculate as to whether he should or shouldn't do that or whether there might even be legal reasons that would prevent him from doing it, but my experience with Joe is that he has taken several suggestions from myself and from other users, and incorporated them into later releases of his software. he is very responsive and has made many upgrades based upon user requests.

BTW, I think there is an .ins file available for just about any modern day synth out there. All one has to do is look a little.

Good Luck

AJ