Actually, it's a bit more than just disappearing. First, I need to state that this happened all of a sudden like, which means I probably hit a button or checked a box somewhere I shouldn't have. But I have no idea where. And yes, I did the Options/Preferences thing, and looked all through the selections there. Couldn't find anything that seemed to relate to the problem. Right clicking on the note or the staff didn't reveal much of anything either.
I've been editing the chords in a string track of one of my songs. Things were going great and I decided to save the song last night before retiring for the evening. So this morning I call up the song and continue with my edits. Now, the edits are actually where I'm changing the values of each note -- velocity and duration -- plus I'm adding more notes to each chord -- which technically aren't chords at all as they stand. They're intervals.
So I load the song I was working on last night, only to find that all my changes were gone. They hadn't been recorded in the saved song. Strange. So I re-entered the chord data for a four bar section, then proceeded to copy that data to other spots in the song where it was repeated.
Then I advanced to the next four-bar section I wanted to expand into actual chords, but suddenly when I clicked on a location for a new note, the interval that had been there disappeared. So I undid my new note selection and the interval came back. I was in Editable Notation Mode when this occurred. I tried the Staff Roll Notation Mode, but it didn't make a difference.
Thinking that this peculiar behavior might be confined to a track other than the Melody track, I switched to the Melody track and tried inserting a note. Same difference. The note(s) at that same time value on the staff disappeared. I played the tune and, sure enough, my replacement notes were sounding and the original ones were gone.
So I exited that song file and called up another one -- an .MGU file, by the way. This one displayed another peculiar property. The strings track on it (MIDI, not a RealTrack) was empty -- the entire track. But when I clicked on "Play" suddenly the notes appeared for the whole track. But if I tried to add anything to the track, at the point I added a note, any others that were at that same time value disappeared.
So I reloaded the original song I was working on, only to find that, again, none of the notation I'd added to the file had been recorded.
At this point, I was ready to start throwing things, so I got up and fixed myself some lunch instead.
Now, I'm back, but I'm clueless as to why BiaB is behaving the way it is. All I know is, as it sits right now, it is almost useless to me.
I've been editing the chords in a string track of one of my songs. Things were going great and I decided to save the song last night before retiring for the evening. So this morning I call up the song and continue with my edits. Now, the edits are actually where I'm changing the values of each note -- velocity and duration -- plus I'm adding more notes to each chord -- which technically aren't chords at all as they stand. They're intervals.
So I load the song I was working on last night, only to find that all my changes were gone.
Michael,
This is normal behaviour.
The only tracks that natively allow midi note entry to be saved by default are the Melody and the Soloist tracks. These are the user input tracks. All other BIAB tracks (Bass, Drums, Strings, Guitar, Piano) are reserved for BIAB to create backing tracks.
If you want to save midi note entry on any of the BIAB-reserved tracks, the way to accomplish it is to freeze the track after making the changes.
With that in mind, had you frozen your String track last night prior to saving, the changes would have been there this morning.
Hiya Noel. Hehe you're name is quite topical this time of year, eh?
OK, I was wondering if it were something like that. But I didn't really know how to go about searching through the help file to find it. I'm sure there's more info on the BiaB tracks and freezing them in the help file, so I'll also do some reading up on the topic there.
I was on the phone with Tech Support -- I guess it's been a couple weeks ago now -- and he showed me a work-around for this problem. I was wanting to get into the Event List of one of the other tracks, but you can only view and/or edit the Melody or Soloist tracks' Event Lists. Since my Soloist track was empty, he showed me how I could copy one of the other tracks to the Soloist track, make the edits there, then copy it back to its original location. Now, though, I'm not sure I remember just how we did that. I should go play around with it for a while. I wonder, though, if I edit a track in the Soloist track, then move it back to its original position, will I still have to freeze it? Probably, I'm thinking. Not so for the Event List, though. I was able to clean some stuff out of it that was causing problems and it didn't return once I put it back where it belonged.
So anyway, your explanaition explains why the chord data I entered wasn't saved. But it doesn't explain why the note data I was entering was causing the existing notes to disappear. This was happening in the Melody track as well. And not only that, I wasn't able to stack notes to produce harmonies. When I entered a note with the same time value as a preceding note I'd entered (to stack a chord, for example), the one I entered before would disappear. I just now double-checked the Melody track, and it still isn't letting me enter chords or intervals. This is just as annoying as the program not remembering my changes.
The weird thing though is I was able to enter multiple notes just fine earlier today, and then suddenly it just wouldn't let me do it anymore. I've rebooted the program to see if that might help. I haven't tried rebooting the computer yet.
I really don't like being stymied like this. So, since this particular song file was all midi save for the drum track, I saved it to midi (thankfully BiaB converted the drums to a decent midi track) and brought it into Sonar. I'm not all that crazy about Sonar's notation edit capabilities, but it works at least. So I'm gonna get the work done I need to get done in Sonar, then I'll import it back into BiaB with all the notation changes I wanted. I wonder if I'll still need to freeze the track. I'm thinking not. But I'll make a backup of the file just in case.
I was able to successfully edit the MIDI file in Sonar, but importing it back into BiaB didn't work out so well. Even though I specified in Sonar to save it as a Type 1 MIDI file, apparently it actually saved it as a Type 0. All of the notation data now shows up in the Melody track, even though the instruments themselves are assigned to their proper tracks. Strange.
But now I find myself quite literally stuck. For some unknown reason BiaB won't let me enter more than a single note at any given position in any song file I've tried so far, so it isn't really possible to do anything but the most basic of edits to my BiaB song files.
I'm gonna call tech support about this tomorrow. Hopefully they'll be able to get to the bottom of things.
When you load a midi file into BIAB, the only two options are to load it onto either the Melody track (the default) or the Soloist track. It loads on either of these tracks as a multichannel midi file.
The Bass, Drums, Piano, Guitar and Strings tracks are reserved by BIAB for the creation of backing tracks.
The being said, it is possible to use the SEQ button (upper image below) to load in a single track from a midi file and then use "Edit | Copy special | Copy/move tracks" to transfer that midi track from the Melody to another track. These are advanced BIAB techniques.
At the end of the process, you'll need to FREEZE the track to which the midi information was transferred.
Will your project be saved as a midi file to be used in another program to render the midi or will your final result be rendered from BIAB using one of its available synths?
As Noel has pointed out, the Melodist, Soloist tracks as well as the Audio Tracks have unique uses in BIAB and the remaining tracks are specialized for BIAB use. BIAB is optimized as a Midi program but not in the traditional sense, it's optimized for BIAB track generation. There's no other program like it.
As a feature to expand the capabilities of BIAB, PGMusic developed the Performance Track.
A Performance Track allows audio WAV files to exist on tracks otherwise reserved for BIAB exclusive use.
A great solution to issues like you're facing but best useful when you are working in the BIAB program and will render midi in BIAB is to render the track as audio, import the audio and move the audio to a Performance Track. If you are not rendering from within BIAB, render your final result as a WAV file, import it to the Audio Track and move it to a Performance Track will produce the same result.
A Performance Track does not regenerate whether tracks are frozen or not. It is permanently saved.
Your intended use to save as midi or render as audio will determine a Performance Tracks value to you in this particular project.
Charlie and Noel, thanks for your replies. This is very good stuff to know, and I will possibly have need of it in the future. But for now, I'm content with generating MIDI tracks in BiaB and doing as much mixdown in BiaB as is possible, then moving the file over to RealBand for final mixing/editing before creating a WAV file.
I'm actually more comfortable doing this in Sonar, but since many of my songs have an assortment of RealTracks, when I save the file to MIDI, these tracks don't get translated over. Yes, I could save them as audio, but then the level of edit I have available in Sonar is confined to audio editing, so it ends up being not all that different from RealBand.
I'm waiting to call into Tech Support over the separate issue of BiaB not allowing more than one note at any give point on the staff. 20 minutes and counting before they will be answering their phones. Stay tuned.
Gad, I knew it was something simple! Stupidly simple! You know that row of check boxes withe the words "Note" "Rest" "Mono" and "Clean" next to them? Guess which box I had inadvertently checked? Yep, you guessed it.
Okay, back to building some nice chord progressions in tracks other than Melody. And then freezing them.
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Handy flash drive tip: Always try plugging in a USB device the wrong way first? If your flash drive (or other USB plug) doesn't have a symbol to indicate which way is up, look for the side with a seam on the metal connector (it only has a line across one side) - that's the side that either faces down or to the left, depending on your port placement.
Update your Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows® Today!
Update your Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows for free with build 1111!
With this update, there's more control when saving images from the Print Preview window, we've added defaults to the MultiPicker for sorting and font size, updated printing options, updated RealTracks and other content, and addressed user-reported issues with the StylePicker, MIDI Soloists, key signature changes, and more!
A few excerpts:
"The Tracks view is possibly the single most powerful addition in 2024 and opens up a new way to edit and generate accompaniments. Combined with the new MultiPicker Library Window, it makes BIAB nearly perfect as an 'intelligent' composer/arranger program."
"MIDI SuperTracks partial generation showing six variations – each time the section is generated it can be instantly auditioned, re-generated or backed out to a previous generation – and you can do this with any track type. This is MAJOR! This takes musical experimentation and honing an arrangement to a new level, and faster than ever."
"Band in a Box continues to be an expansive musical tool-set for both novice and experienced musicians to experiment, compose, arrange and mix songs, as well as an extensive educational resource. It is huge, with hundreds of functions, more than any one person is likely to ever use. Yet, so is any DAW that I have used. BIAB can do some things that no DAW does, and this year BIAB has more DAW-like functions than ever."
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