Currently BB auto-sets the time signature of the lead in measure from the background style chosen. So if I chose a 4/4 style (eg _BGMEDLEY), the lead in measure in the notation window always shows 4/4.

But this method of auto-setting the leadin time sig from the style is NOT intuitive. For example in my case, I was creating a waltz song, and happened to Edit / Set Time Signature to 3/4 time before changing the style that was loaded.

So suddenly I'm looking at the notation window, with the lead in measure at 4/4, and bar 1 at 3/4, right after explicitly telling BB this is a 3/4 song. Very confusing. Worse yet, there is no explicit way for me to change the lead in measure. The Options / Prefs / CountIn-Met dialog has no ability to set time signatures for the lead in measure either (as it should not).

I used the online chat service (Clayton?) and after some digging, we found out that BB sets the lead in time sig from the STYLE that is active, and NOT from the time signature of bar 1. So when I changed the song style to BGWALTZ (which has a 3/4 time inside of it), the lead in count automagically changed to 3/4.

I can see some logic in setting the count in from the style, assuming that the style sounds are used for the count in, or something like that. But it is very confusing to users to see 4/4 on the leadin bar, with no way to change it, and 3/4 on bar 1.

A better approach would be to auto-set the lead in bar time signature to whatever is in Bar 1. So when the time signature of bar 1 is changed, change the lead in time signature at the same time.

Alternatively, if you must keep the unintuitive auto-set from the style in place, then please warn me with a pop up message that the time signature of my style does not agree with the time signature of Bar 1, so that I can correct the visible 4/4 (bar 0) and 3/4 (bar 1) issue immediately, when I first set the 3/4 time for the song.

Yes, this has been discussed and it's good to have this reminder.

I think it should be an option, though, and not just automatic to set it by measure one. There are times when I like to make one or two pickup bars at the beginning and have the actual song begin in bar 2 or 3. Drum fills are one such use. While I think I would almost always want the count off to be the number of beats in the first bar of the actual song, I would like the option of deciding that. Think about a song in 5/4, for example. In BIAB, this must be a repeating series of 3 then 2-beat measures (for Take Five, at least; other patterns are possible).

As Matt states, it's been raised many times. Intro count-in's really are an oversight and I am surprised they haven't been attended to previously.

If you have a song with a mixture of 3/4 and 4/4, and you want to use the same style throughout, you have to choose a 4/4 style. BUT, it the first bar is 3/4, the count-in is still 4/4 (1, 2, 1,2,3,4) Whoa! Very confusing. The song should use a count-in that matches the time signature of the first bar.

(I'm thinking Lennon and McCartney's 'Fool On The Hill')

Not very hard, surely?


Trevor

But as an option, including a choice of number of beats up to, say, nine.

Yes, something like this as a suggestion