I believe that I am about through purchasing arrangers. At least until the treatment of voices and styles is a little less predictable and the units are less costly. In fact at home I am about to link my good old Yamaha 9000 via MIDI to my computer -- and when I want to really work out, I will practice some more challenging things via BIAB and some of the new KB sounds I am playing with. I just played with George Shearing's quintet in a circa 1960 thing that I converted to BIAB from MP3 files. Muted tracks, played with rhythm, etc. etc. Terrific practice.
Using my new ArtVista "Grand" voices -- love it.

Hi Cajun,
you can take out some of the repatition
in just say a omb ( psr ) style if you want to reprogram it ie you could have slight variations when you play, major chords , min chords or 7ths etc just to make it sound a bit more interesting.
Not as varied as in BIAB though which basically chooses it's patterns randomly.

You'll have a lot more fun having your psr midied to your pc.

Now you've caught my attention. Are you saying you have an mp3 of George Shearings & you managed to mute some of the tracks & you've played those parts instead?? Sort of music minus 1 concept??

ie might I be able to for instance mute Enya's Watermark solo piano part & play it myself instead?? or has my imagination just run away with me haahaa.

best wishes
Rikki

rikki:
Sorry -- I misspoke. What I usually do is take MIDI files (such as George Shearing or anyone) and then mute certain tracks in BIAB (melody, for instance, solo sometimes, sometimes piano, etc.). Then I play along with my piano VST. Since MP3 to MIDI conversion is such a bloody pain, I rarely even try it. But there are SO many MIDI files available, and so many sound really fine in BIAB.
(Last evening I was playing the lead on "Mas Que Nada" -- if you know that tune): in BIAB; slowed down a bit for my cold fingers; piano comping on but I soloed melody in an electric piano mode -- worked nicely. Then I left all parts on but the piano and comped as well as I could read the notation. As I said before, this for me is very necessary practice.

Hi Cajun,
thought it sounded too good to be true haahaa,
thought pg may have taken their Copy Scat program & taken it a step further by allowing muting of instruments, not just vocal track.

Actually a combination of the two might be interesting, remove vocals from recording with copy scat then run it thru BIAB & get the chords.

Must admit, I've never really had much to do with mp3's either.

Brings another piece of software to mind. Slow Blast, have you ever tried it? Supposedly slows down cd's without changing the pitch.

I was a Richard Clayderman junkie, have most of his cd's & sheet music. A lot of the piano solo sheet music actually matches his cd's. May be a great way for me
to get a bit of piano practice in.

I've heard the name of the tune, top of my head, I haven't got a clue how it goes.

best wishes
Rikki

I am going to experiment with the new MP3 chord recognition function by trying to COPY the chords in some way and paste them into another place, eliminating the vocal/melody/solo voice(s) ... in the process. I wonder if that might work.

I am getting fairly good chord recognition from the new function, it seems, trying about 12 MP3 files today.

Hi Cajun,
you've sort of lost me on that one.

I think you can use the chord progression you get from the mp3 & use it with a style, is that what you had in mind??

I tried the chord recognition with a couple of enya songs from one of my cd's. I actually have the matching sheet music to compare it with. On the whole it does a pretty good job of recognition.

It did some of the chords as maj instead of 7ths, but it did actually have the correct chord ie it had a Fmaj chord instead of an F7..
The songs I tried it with have fairly simple chord progressions, be interesting to see how well the software does with jazz chords.

best wishes
Rikki

I had trouble trying to eliminate the solo/melody/vocal parts from various MP3/WAV files -- AFTER I did the chord conversion into BIAB. Object being: keep the chords; play over that with my own melody/solo.
It's possible -- it seems -- to bring the MP3 into BIAB with the chords; then COPY the chords (but not the melody line) into a new "page". This accomplishes what I am trying to do.
Remember, I am not trying to mute parts in MIDI files, but MP3/WAV songs.
So far I have had a 70% success rate.

Rikki,

There is freeware to do the same thing
called Best Practice.

Thanks Vquestor,
I'll look that one up.

best wishes
Rikki

Hi Cajun,there is no doubt that BIAB is an hell of a program for practice,learning ,composition...it takes a bit of systematic learning (like 15 or 20 minutes a day) of studying the enormous features,but it's really worth.
And it continues to expand and grow...also,you don't get stuck with the sounds that you don't like,as you can use DXI instruments.
As Rikki pointed out,it has a zillion of styles,I too love the movie soundtrack and classical styles that it offers. And they are really instructional too.
I just hope that they find a way to implement intros and endings that are as good as the PSR's etc..
That is really the only weakness i see in BIAB. As far as the rest,it's an incredible program,agreed.