The Steel Guitar Forum

I remember a few months ago you said tabbing the "Black Album" is the easy part,the rhythmn tracks are the problem...I'm sure I speak for alot of your fans, I'd certainly buy your tab books without taped rhythmn tracks .You could setup a "Band in a Box"arangement for each tune and just ship a floppy disk w/ the tab...secondly,My wife is sold on accupuncture and it might really help with your arthritis..There's a very good practitioner here in New Jersey...Must work,I can't remember the last time I saw an arthritic chineese steel player!! Hope to see you in Redbank,NJ in August...JS

Good one, John. I don't know whether it would be legit to use the BIAB for rhythm tracks so I wouldn't consider it until I knew for sure. Excellent suggestion though, if it could be done. In fact it would open the door to things beyond the album.

Buddy;
Directly from the BIAB website:
"Now you can convert ("burn") your Band-in-a-Box composition directly to an Audio-CD."
Kinda sounds like that's what they planned.
Cool!

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My best,
Ernie

The Official Buddy Emmons Website
www.buddyemmons.com

That could also mean the software has the capability to do so for your own personal listening and dancing pleasure. Whether you could put something together for sale or resale would be my question.

Big E
Go ahead and make CD's with BIAB. I created the rhythm tracks for my E9th Gospel course (Forumites: available on my website!! ) with BIAB. When you burn the CD, the files are encoded as .WAV files which can be read by any CD player and don't require the BIAB program to play, so there is no software licensing/usage problem that I can see.

I also create my tab books in a desktop publishing program called Pagemaker (v. 6.5 if anyone is interested ) Again, once it's in print form, the software company has no say in the matter. It's only when pirated versions of their product are distributed that they get their corporate bowels in an uproar.

BIAB has some excellent styles, and has some mediocre styles IMHO. The quality of your sound card... the samples contained therein... is a real determining factor as to how successful the output sounds.

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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

Ditto on what John said. Being somewhat of a novice on C6, It would be nice to get a bump in the right direction for learning some of the Black Album stuff. I definitely could live without the rhythm tracks. However BIAB does sound like a viable option.

My 2¢
David

Once again, directly from their website:
"Are the songs that I create using Band-in-a-Box copyrighted?
No, Band-in-a-Box didn't make the song, you did!"
Also, what the Herbster said.

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My best,
Ernie

The Official Buddy Emmons Website
www.buddyemmons.com

Thanks Herb and Ernie. You've made my day. Gotta close down. There's a tornado warning coming in for Hermitage.

I'd like to add to that, by tweaking the individual styles or writing them from scratch, you can have complete control over what BIAB feeds you.

I think it would be cool to make the BIAB files available for those with that program as well as the CD rhythm tracks. You could even include them on the same CD, like some artists include video that requires a computer to play on their CDs.

Just a thought.

LTB<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Larry Bell on 05 July 2001 at 09:27 AM.]</p></FONT>

MIDI files are more portable and less proprietary than BIAB files. You can output a MIDI file from BIAB to floppy disk. That's really the least expensive way to go, and I think it meets all of our needs.

Looks like there are several options. I can see a definite advantage to offering BIAB rhythm files to use with their software because of its ability to slow the tracks down and work up to the tempos. Being able to transpose the rhythm track to other keys would also be a plus.

Any MIDI sequencer program can transpose, change tempos, etc. when playing standard MIDI files. BIAB files are only playable with BIAB.

b0b's right -- the MIDI files are certainly usable by more people, but I still see some advantage in providing both MIDI and BIAB formats. Both files are very small, so real estate on the CD probably wouldn't be an issue.

LTB

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<small>Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Emmons D-10 9x9, 1971 Dobro

Larry, If I were selling real estate on the CDs, I wouldn't have to fool with the music. Now that you've mentioned it, what would the advantages be for you?<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Buddy Emmons on 05 July 2001 at 11:49 AM.]</p></FONT>

The only thing illegal would be if you were releasing copyrighted material and/or arrangements by someone else other than yourself and selling them. At that point, you would need a license from the copyright owner, and pay the standard statutory license rate.

If you wrote the song (of if it is public domain), no problem.

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Ole Dantoft on 26 February 2004 at 10:33 AM.]</p></FONT>

For people that don't have a computer, which there are still a lot, anything but a standard CD (or for some a cassette) would be worthless. It would be a good idea to have them included on the CD, but not as the main format. I'd hate to have to take my computer with me if I wanted to work on a tune while I was out on the road.
Just a couple of thoughts...

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My best,
Ernie

The Official Buddy Emmons Website
www.buddyemmons.com

Hi, Buddy
The advantage would be that the songs could be loaded directly into BIAB. That way one could edit the parts in various ways within that program. Also, if you created new styles, those might be useful for other tunes.

It's no big deal. The MIDI files would be very useful.

BTW, at 50 cents or less for blanks, CD real estate isn't very expensive, so get the $$ out of your eyes.

LTB

BUDDY & BOB
I created a "BUD'S BOUNCE" rhythm track using BIAB. I used a RAY PRICE style and just entered the chord progression in the key of F. I then saved it as a MIDI file. I then open the MIDI file in CAKEWALK and I edited the sound tracks (base, guitar, keyboard , drums, & tempo) once again. I also have, ROLAND VSC88 Sound Canvass that came with BIAB ver#10. This is where I play all my MIDI song files that I donwload off the internet.

The track sounds very professional I use it to practice with, sound better than my band ( don't tell them I said this about them).

This Roland VSC88 takes MIDI FILES that are available on various webs sites on the Internet. There are hundreds of these files of all types of music, rock jazz, blues classical and C&W.

Try this, do a search on, COUNTRY MIDI you'll come up with, DICK ANDERSON COUNTRY MIDI GUITAR. He has lots of MIDI C&W songs to download. You can import his songs into CAKEWALK but not BIAB.

The big draw back to the above is I no longer depend on commercial made country rhythm tracks, I can create my own, and they sound just as good, there strictly for my personal use only.

KEN

I just went to google and visited a bunch of midi sites. I have a roland sound module, not a cheap sound card. I've been into midi for a while, but you know what?

Midi has a long, long way to go before it reaches the sound of live musicians in a good studio. It's fine for a practice tool, a demo tool and other whatnot, but it doesn't get it for much else. IMHO.

Last night I heard some music from a TV movie and I could tell it was midi. The trumpet had THAT sound. The midi sound. The not quite real sound. No one else noticed, or cared.

Long live those with a real instrument in their hand instead of a keyboard.

Ken

KEN LANG
I may have posted my reasoning about the MIDI song down loading wrong. I use most of the MIDI songs minus the keyboard for my own personal jamming sessions. I do own tons of cassette & CD rhythm tracks by different steel players who have produced them over the past 25 years. Some cassette tracks are O.K. other cassette tracks to various C&W songs are not that good at all, quality wise. I find the newer CD produced rhythm tracks are very, very good in quality. I have all of Buddy Emmons cassette rhythm tracks to his SWING series with Ray Pennington. I only wished he had produced them in CD.

The problem with cassette is that after playing them over and over again they seem to stretch and get off key. CDs seem to have a better sounding quality. Also you need a very good variable speed cassette player for most of the cassette tracks, even the one's that are produced today.

Al Brisco's new CD has a companion CD rhythm track and so does Herby Wallace new CD, both are excellent CD productions. You can go on stage and use them to play along with, they are that great for back-up.

With the downloaded MIDI songs I can change key as well as slow them down or speed them up. I can also loop each part of the progression.

I have two Compaq PCs. One is a 1998 MS Win95 the other is a 1999 MS Win98. I added a new soundcard to the older PC and purchased a 5 speaker system that made these midi tracks sound so professional, grant you some of the MIDI songs are poor quality and I guess that's because the person who made them via a midi keyboard had a cheap soundcard or a cheapo midi keyboard compared to some MIDI songs that are as if they came from a recording studio. I guess the person who made these higher quality sounding MIDI songs has a very expensive soundcard or midi keyboard. One Midi song that seems to have been made professionally is, "HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN' yo what a sound production I get, maybe it was made in a studio.

I would like to go into a studio with a professional band to produce very high quality rhythm tracks but it would cost a fortune, besides producing tracks on my own is a challenge and the more you try the better you get at it.

I also have the new BOSS JS-5 Jam Station which has a very good soundcard but is hard and fustrating to operate and takes alot time in doing so.

To me MIDI is the way to go, who knows maybe the future will hold a better 'MIDI MOUSE TRAP"

KEN