Tried to construct an arrangement in 9/8 beat ..... just gets too confusing for me with BIAB's notation editor and the basic 4 to the floor matrix. Any tips from experienced arrangers? Guess i'll have to try some other software to get the beats right, but i would love to use some melodic and soloist experimenting with biab on this thing. - F

There are two ways (maybe more - others can chime in) to approach this.

1) Select a waltz swing style, which will give you a triplet per beat (so 3 triplets times 3 beats per bar gives you 9). If you use this method, you can only change chords every triplet In notation view, you'll have to select swing (versus straight) resolution to enter notes on the tripletized bar lines.

2) Select a straight waltz style and use 3 bars to represent the 9 beats in 9/8 time. Notation will look horrible and you'll probably have to set the tempo pretty fast. The advantage here is that chords can change on any note. It's a situation where it sounds good, but doesn't look good.

In either case, you won't get a proper time signature on the notation, since 9/8 is not a supported time signature in BIAB.

Being a supported time signature and a supported Notation time signature are two different things.

You can use 9/8, but you'll have to edit the old fashion way; either rerecord it or edit in the Event List, and not count on notation at all.

I do see John's Pic says BiaB supports 9/4 so maybe using that at 2X the tempo would work for you .. but again notation would not look right.

Thanks for the tips. Came across this style within BIAB: 98_4_5.STY. Says 9/8 meter grouped 4+5 in the info box. It sounds OK for experimenting, but notation indeed suck completely sort of, and only shows 4 beat measures there; can't make any sense out of that rhythmically. -F

The problem with many non 3/4, 4/4 styles is PG is still going to put 3 or 4 chords per measure. So for example, if you have a 5/4 style in a 4/4 measure, the first chord in the measure will be on the beat, but none of the others will be.

I tend to think of the spaces in the numbered matrix as cells instead of measures.

So if I want to make 5/4 I would make the first cell have three beats and the second cell 2 (or vice versa).

9/8? I could do 3 cells of 3 beats each.

7/4? One cell with 3 and another with 4 (or vice versa).

This doesn't work with notation, but I find the notation feature a convenience and not a full blown notation editor. However it works our musically.

There are a number of work-arounds to overcome some of the limitations of BiaB, and this is one of them.

BiaB is a great program, but it does have it's limitations. It gets better and better every year, and some of the past limitations have been solved. Until PG solves this one, this is the best solution I can think of.

Insights and incites by Notes

Adding to Notes post not only doesn't this work with notation it also doesn't work of you bring the files into a DAW. Anything other than 3/4 or 4/4 is a problem with dropping and dragging into Sonar.

FWIW - I don't know about RB. Does RB allow different time signatures? If so can I drop and drag them into Sonar? Or does RB have the same limitations as BiaB? Thanx in advance for your time.

RB will allow the handling of odd times MUCH differently than BiaB (most of the time).

RB actually uses a more complex time sig algorithm and adjusts the RealTrack/MIDI generation instead of 'fitting it in'.
It takes a bit of experimenting, but RB will take a 4/4 Realtrack, and if used in a 7/8 song it will add/truncate the data as needed to fit into the actual TimeSig/Tempo map so it is written correctly to pull into other DAWS ..


/just my experience/observation
//The notation is still wrong in RB, but the raw MIDI/audio is more 'correct' for the Time Sig and Tempo, so it translates to other software/devices better

The 7/4 song below was done by myself and TommyC (another member here) where we actually sent 7/4 RB seq files back and forth and generated at both ends ..
http://masteringmatters.com/stuff/Count_Me_Out.mp3

Pretty much everything but lead guitar, tube bell and horns was generated in RB
Drums, keys, rhythm guitar, bass .. all generated
Another user here (Oren) has done this with me a few times also. I like Odd Time!
You gotta listen a few times to allow it to grab ya.. thanks again tommyc. I had ball.

Mario; I'll be happy to share the seq file with you and see if it goes into Sonar for you in an acceptable way.

Interesting tips Rharv; i never used realband much sofar, will mess around some more soon ! ... just a thought: as BIAB seems to be very popular with Jazzers, why has the rhythmic measure counting and time sign system never expanded beyond 4/4 and 3/4 for so long by it's developers? Maybe it's too hard to rearrange the wagon sequence on a running train with too many clinging on to it: