Hi,

Is there an easy way to increase a song's length - to
give room for a solo, or new verse?

thanks

In BiaB, one play through of a song is commonly known as a 'Chorus'
You can have an Intro, One or more Choruses, and a Tag (ending).

The chorus may be up to 255 bars in length (the total song including intro, chorus, and tag ending cannot exceed 255 bars)

You set the song length and number of choruses from the Song Menu. You can have one 'chorus' in which you repeat the song or sections of it as often as you like.

You can insert bars, copy bars etc from the Edit drop-down menu.

I suggest you go to the Video Tutorials page and review some of the easy-to-follow instructions there. The Beginner section would be a great place to start.

Also have a look in the Intermediate Section for Band-in-a-Box® repeats: DC al Fine

Just edit the END number to give you more measures if you need it.

I first UNFOLD the song to one chorus, as it's called. That puts the song in a linear format. Easier for me to work with in that format. Then simply "part mark" your verses and choruses and bridges. Place your solo's where you want, add the intro, outtro, and whatever else you need.

Add measures if you need more, delete if you need less. Most of the time, I end up deleting quite a few from the project.

I hope the next update lets us expand to more than 255 bars, I frequently wind up with two versions - top to middle and mid to end.

Just need a 16-bit bar counter. 256 is from the pre-Windows XP era.

It goes back way, way further than XP. Think Commodore, Tandy, Apple II, original IBM's and earlier still.

You wouldn't need 16 bits. Who wants to have 65535 bars? At 200 bpm this would be roughly 22 hours in 4/4 and 16 hours in 3/4. One needs quite some stamina to play that long.

But 12 bit is quite inconvenient to program nowadays.

I would even go to 64 bits. Then some areas of that field could be used to specify parts of a tune. Just imagine to have more than one chorus in a song and several verses.

Version 2016 is probably near. Just maybe, just maybe?

thanks videotrack and GHinCH

Very good advice!

and I will be looking forward to improvements
in 2016.

The Soundsmith

I hope the next update lets us expand to more than 255 bars, I frequently wind up with two versions - top to middle and mid to end.




2 versions - that's interesting? Do you need that
for solo space?

Raising the maximum number of bars is probably an invasive operation in the file structure of any BIAB music file.

I have not investigated the structure, but I assume that, if the file structure experiences some evolution, it must be a well thought through operation. (Does that make sense in English?) I reckon that there are more items on the wishlist that request an evolutionary step regarding the file structure.

There also must be a converter from old to new and new to old. And there is a good chance that some files cannot be converted to the old file format, because some content exceeds the limits of the old structure. Maybe we encounter something like MySong.mgu and MySong.mgux in the future. I can see the reluctance of PGMusic to take that step. Maybe this step comes at the same time we see a brand new BIAB and a brand new RB.

There are several points I would like to see realized:
1. Less restrictions. That includes, specifically, the number of bars and, not quite so specifically, a better interoperability with other programs.

2. The same look and feel of all the PGMusic programs. That is, have the same functions of the respective programs

• look (almost) the same,
• be at the same place, and
• behave the same.

This also reduces software maintenance tasks, because you really could use separate modules for these.

3. Topic #2 also induces a leaner structure of menus. Yes, there are maybe more submenus, but: "Open" can unfold to

• Open BIAB-File
• Open MIDI-File
• Open Audio-File
• Open Karaoke-File
• Open Special

Each of the above could, if necessary open another submenu. Then the "File Drop Down Menu" is greatly reduced. The same goes for quite a few of the menu items. Hot keys are not affected.

And I believe, that a "maximum variety of choices" and "zero error tolerance" don't go together. And I don't believe this will happen before 2018.

I forgot one thing to mention:

If you at PGMusic go over some of the topics above, please name the menu option and the program module the same. Let me choose the Song Form Maker to open the Song Form Maker. (Now I have to select the Song Form Dialog to open the Song Form Maker.)

Some songs that begin life as 32-bar AABA tunes require that I double the bar length so I can play half-time samba rhythms - the song is now 64 bars, and if I play 4 choruses with intro and tag ending: 8+64*4 (256) +32 for the tag and I am way over the limit. So I do the song, save it twice and cut from the middle, or at the end of the solos. Render to WAV and join in Adobe Audition. A bit of a PITA, but it works.

While it would indeed require remapping bar counter/location data to extend the length,, I don't think it is necessarily as difficult as you envision. It has bee awhile since I did any hard coding, but while your concerns are certainly valid, conversion would not have to be that difficult, and could occur on the fly, or upon first opening, New extensions (.MGL, for long, for example) would not be a burden, your old data should translate easily and all should be good in BIAB-land.

Of course, the REAL world would have things to say about it... :-)

All this discussion about the 255 bar limit has hijacked KGU's original post, and would get proper attention in the Wishlist.

After having not used BIAB for some time, today I entered a tune to try to audition some transcribed chords for a tune a band will be covering.

I ran into the same problem of having difficulty finding a way to extend the song length.

Some searches later - I as able to figure it out - but from a usability standpoint there could be improvements.

My case may or may not have been similar to the original poster (in song structure). However, it would be useful to have (under key/tempo) along with "Start" "End" and "Choruses" a box for last measure.

For me, I wasn't aware that the ending (as 2 measures) was "fixed" and that adding a "tag" (thought this would mean it would repeat) is actually a coda. I was able to get the form I wanted by adding a "tag" (coda) of a set # of measures.

The usability feedback would be that what you see on the screen without going through buried menus does not seem to allow editing the length of sections or the tune.

I was expecting a right-click to show an "insert measure" and "delete measure" feature. I was able to use "cut" to clear out a measure - but didn't see an insert measure.

It only takes a few choice keywords in your favorite search engine and a little reading to get around the interface - but there could be improvements even after you know where to look to improve keystroke/mouse-click counts.

I don't know the technical details on how easy/difficult increasing the 255 bar limit while maintaining back compatibility would be.

I've been using BiaB since it was a DOS program and I've seen it grow through the years from a simply little app that fit on a floppy disk to the wonderful multi-purpose app it is today.

I suspect that if it was an easy thing to do things like increase the bar limit or MIDI resolution, it would have been done already.

I never-ever finish a song in BiaB. I always export to a MIDI sequencer or DAW and put finishing touches on the music there. It can make the very good output of BiaB something truly excellent with minimal work (it's actually play).

I also make EXPANDED styles that turn each cell into a half measure, but that allows 8 chords per measure. The result is only 127 4 beat measures of music..

So when I run out of BiaB measures, I simply do as much as I can, stop at a logical part (A or B marker) and export. Then I'll continue it on a new BiaB song and export it as well.

I can then load both into a DAW, copy the second and paste it on the appropriate spot of the first.

I've even done two 20 minute medleys this way for use at a singles dance club.

BiaB is a wonderful program. But like most, it has it's limitations. Thinking creatively can allow you to overcome many of the limitations.

Insights and incites by Notes