Hello,

I am quite new to Band in a Box.

I have several music sheets for different songs that have one intro bar that is not a complete measure and a final bar that also is not a complete measure. Togeter the intro and final bar is one complete measure.

How can I add these into and ending bars into Band in a Box? I can't find any information about this in the user guide or helptext.

I find it very easy to put in the bulk of the songs but I can not find out how to enter the intro and final bars unless they are complete measures.

Greatful for any advice on this matter.

I'm guessing here, on how I would try to accomplish this....

I do not believe BB will allow partial measures from what I have seen so you will need to use a workaround.

In the intro, select a 2 bar intro and insert a chord in the first measure followed by 3 dots. I believe that is a silent chord.

You can also enter a chord into the second half of the measure for beats 3 & 4.

In addition, if you enter G, D into the 2nd chord window in the measure it will play the G on the 3rd beat and D on the 4th....

I use this quite often to "walk the chords" or the bass line (G/G#, G/A) so...while I have never tried this>>> placing 3 dots G...,A for example, might let you start the tune on the 2nd or 4th beat in the measure rather than the first or third.

There are all sorts of cool workaround things .... for example you can also mute just specific instruments in measures.... In a song I'm working on now, I have a few measures where the band stops but the drums continue to play.....also in the intro it's just a drum beat.....

I have found that if I can think it, I can normally get BB to do it in some fashion.

With the highlighter on any bar, press the F5 key. You will see "# of beats this bar." Change the number to 2. On the next bar, change the number back to "4" for the rest of the song.

And experiment with all the commands on this page while you are at it...

Is the intro bar a pickup? In other words, just a note or a few notes of the melody?

That's what my thought was. I've had BB actually do some pickup notes when it was rendered as real tracks. It doesn't do it all the time, but on occasion it will. I will experiment with this myself the next time I want the pickup notes....

Hi Shlind,

Welcome to the forums

You said ...

What you describe is standard music transcription and it is often used simply to provide a musician with the most visually economical form of notation. It is not always an indication of the arrangement of a song. I've found that most fake books will give notation in the way you mention. I usually add a 4 bar introduction (which then means that the pickup measure occurs in the latter part of bar 4) and an ending that goes beyond what is notated.

The above being said, if you want to start the song without an introduction, simply bring the pick-up notes in on the latter part of the second bar of the two bar count-in BIAB provides.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Noel

Hello,

Thanks all for the inputs. It solved the issue for now.

Many thanks.