I guess we’ll have to disagree with calling them styles. I think on a non-arranger player site, you’d be bang on the money. But anywhere where arranger players gather, unless it’s real-time it’s not really a ‘style’…

Of course it’s mostly semantics, and the results are definitely a step up from most arrangers, but calling them styles on an arranger forum might end up confusing many. I think that calling it a semiautomatic way of creating backing tracks is a bit closer to the truth, in arranger terms.

And sorry for not chiming in sooner, but welcome back Henni..! Great to see you back here, even if not as an arranger player any more. Please feel free to share about how your ministry and life in general have gone. I always admired how you used your talent to help others and spread love… ♥️

Hi Diki,

Thank you for your kind words.

What follows now is my own personal opinion:

To me, those things are still styles. They sound like styles and are used just like styles even though the arrangement is no longer in real-time.

BiaB makes it nearly impossible for any one with an arranger to compete successfully in the commercial music market. Yes, the arranger is well suited for the gigging world, but lack finesse when it comes to producing music (especially new music) for the broadcasting sector. Also, the FULL version of BiaB is much, much, much more affordable than most arrangers & it comes with 11,500 very, very high quality "styles".

Yes, I know this comment will draw a lot of flak, but I'll stick to my opinion. As far as the creation of new music is concerned, I am rather convinced that very little can compete with the newest BiaB.

The next major breakthrough would be to adapt BiaB to also cater for real-time playing albeit a bit toned down. Imagine if Ketron could make use of everything already created by BiaB for their new Event follow up. Also, we are now comparing many thousand of "styles" to the limited four hundred or so on most arrangers.

You'll realize that, as I demo many, many more "styles", they are ALL of exceptional quality & very pleasing & inspiring to listen to. Listen how seamlessly the solo sections follow the odd chord changes to even the finest detail - they seem to have mastered that now in their newest release. No arranger has ever inspired me more although I would still use one as soon as I can afford.

Keep well my friend.

Henni

As one that uses tracks primarily, I’m in your corner on this one Henni, but I usually have to moderate my own opinions on this by remembering this is still an ARRANGER forum (and by extension, an arranger PLAYER’S site) so I have to keep this in mind.

Use BIAB to create your track, it then becomes immaterial what device it’s played on, arranger, workstation, laptop tracks player, even a smartphone!

There’s one other aspect I haven’t touched on. Arrangers are primarily an amateur keyboard. Don’t all get mad, there’s plenty of us pros that love them too! But by the numbers, I’d say the majority of them end up in the hands of hobbyists and beginners. And if there’s ONE thing that the arranger does that no other backing system can, that is to accommodate players that might throw an accidental extra bar in, or miss a cue and start late. Backing track has no idea what you are doing. But an arranger will happily throw in an extra bar, or an extra bar or two, or jump to the ‘one’ instantly if you accidentally came in in the middle of a bar! They are very forgiving to beginner players…

I like the end results of much of what BIAB does. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter one whit what you play the file on! We can debate up and down all day whether it’s an arranger or whether it’s a backing track generator, but the bottom line is, you can’t ‘play’ it. Which makes it moot..!

You are correct - most of the time my enthusiasm gets the better of me. Please forgive me. The one thing in life I am avoiding like the plague is making waves. My life has not been easy in the latter part despite my good intentions. It hurts sore...

Nothing wrong with making a few waves! I’ve been known to generate the odd tsunami! 😂

Remembering who the reader is goes a long way to showing us the way to evangelize a product. BIAB is a great way to quickly generate quite convincing tracks. In some ways, the Event is running along the same lines, but in real-time, an actual ARRANGER.

But BIAB’s content seems massively larger, and the offline nature of its track generator sidesteps (as BIAB has always done) many of the unavoidable consequences of the style engine never knowing the next chord until you play it! Better voice leading and smoothness of transitions has always been a BIAB ‘edge’. I don’t honestly see the Event ever solving that while it’s real-time.

Something that always excited me was the idea of a BIAB type style player that worked on the chord sequencer’s data. There, the arranger actually DOES know the next chord before it’s played. Seems the prefect opportunity to get those better transitions and voice leading tricks that BIAB does so well!

I think it helps un-muddy the water not using ‘styles’ interchangeably on an arranger forum, where we already have a pretty firm definition for the term. And a good clear statement that this is NOT a real-time arranger style.

But for those of us using tracks primarily, it’s an amazing product, especially compared to its earliest incarnation as a Sound Canvas SMF generator with no audio at all..! 🎹👍🏼

One thing that strikes me as a killer use for BIAB using the audio tracks if you have an Event is, this might be the way to add a massive library of well played, solid tempo real guitar loops with FULL choice of chords and voicing in a myriad of styles!

The Event is capable of streaming from a huge selection of chord types, but obviously, it’s damn expensive to create an entire style library with all chords, all keys, so only a subset of the styles allow more complex chords like sus4, aug6th, 11th, 13th etc. BIAB got all of them (mostly!).

So using BIAB to export the guitar loops (or bass, or drums, whatever) might allow for a good way to turn a BIAB ‘style’ (see?! I said it myself!😂) into an actual live style in the Event!

This might be the best thing that ever happened to Ketron, who have always been a bit light on content with full chord type availability. This makes it SO much easier to stitch a live audio style together than hiring guitarists!

I guess the only caveat might be, if you want to create AND SELL styles with BIAB’s Live Loops in them, you might have to be careful whether that is infringement or not… But for private use only (live gigs) I see no reason this is illegal. Just don’t try to sell them!

My thoughts precisely!!! I could not have said this better.

Also, notice how some of the newer BiaB styles now have up to eight distinctive variations - the differences are not subtle at all, but see how they seamlessly flow into one another.